Andrey Desnitsky

Andrey Sergeevich Desnitsky – historian, consultant at the Institute of Bible Translation,

Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Part 1. TOOTH FOR TOOTH

Executions, fines, compliance with harsh laws - how can the God of Love demand this from a person? But this is precisely how the Old Testament appears to many of our contemporaries, which demands “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Heirs of Marcion

“I personally went through all the stages of hesitation and doubt and one night (in 7th grade), literally one night, I came to a final and irrevocable decision: I reject animal psychology Old Testament, but I fully accept Christianity and Orthodoxy. It’s like a mountain has been lifted from your shoulders! I lived with this, and I am ending my life with this.”. This is how a man who can hardly be suspected of softness and pacifism, General A.I., wrote about his religious choice. Denikin. He went through several wars, including a civil one, was a dictator over a vast territory, did not hesitate to take harsh measures to restore order - and considered the Old Testament to be excessively cruel. Why?

The issue of the cruelty of the Old Testament is not new, as is almost everything in this world. Already among the first Christians there were those who argued: the Christian God of Love cannot have anything in common with the cruel, vengeful and capricious “god” as the Old Testament portrays him. And perhaps this “god” is actually none other than Satan. The most consistent exposition of these views was a theologian named Marcion.

The Church condemned his teaching as heresy. Following Christ and the apostles, she argues that the Old Testament is an integral part Holy Scripture, and that the God of the patriarchs and prophets is the same as the God of the apostles and evangelists, and that not only New Testament, But “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for teaching.”(2 Timothy 3:16).

However, Marcion's heirs are still alive today. Even among Christians, many, if they do not reject the Old Testament, then treat it with some suspicion, as a historical monument that does not have much significance today. They are certainly wrong: it is the Old Testament that tells us about the creation of the world, the Fall, the emergence of the chosen people and their relationship with God. He leads the reader to the Gospel Message, which without him would have remained incomprehensible: what prophecies were fulfilled? What kind of sacrifice was made? Why was the crucifixion and resurrection necessary at all?

But what repels the modern reader from the Old Testament? First of all, his “cruelty”. Well, the Bible is a truthful book, and if people always killed and hated each other, if even the greatest righteous people were flawed, it tells about it honestly and openly. She is not a collection of sappy stories, and that is why she can be trusted.

With this, it would seem, everything is clear. But doubters are not reassured: the Old Testament does not just talk about the cruelty of individual people, it attributes this cruelty to God himself. And the main accusation that can be heard here is the harsh Law, which requires giving an eye for an eye and punishing with death for violation of adultery. Let's try to understand this in more detail.

Let’s just first agree: we cannot judge people who lived three thousand years ago as our contemporaries. They differed from us not only in that they had no electricity and had no idea about the existence of America. They had slightly different ideas about the world, and they can only be judged based on the realities of that time. We won’t blame Columbus for not finding it on the school globe before sailing to America, or Field Marshal Kutuzov for not sending aviation and tank divisions against Napoleon? It is unfair to blame the ancients for not having what is accessible and familiar to us today. Moreover, it is worth thinking: did we get all this from them?

Law: source and meaning

Any legal system is built on some foundation. For a law to be valid, it must be sanctioned by someone's authority. Today, as a rule, constitutions refer to the “will of the people,” which, as we know, is often nothing more than skillfully applied political technologies. But in ancient times the law was always understood as a gift from above, and the Old Testament was no exception.

But there was one peculiarity in the Old Testament. The surrounding peoples believed that the gods gave them laws simply to streamline their lives and ensure justice. But on Mount Sinai, Moses was given not just a legal code, there a Covenant was concluded, that is, an agreement between the entire Israeli people and God: “I will be your God, and you will be my people”(Leviticus 26:12). Actually, outside of this Covenant, the Israelites were just runaway Egyptian slaves, but having concluded it, they became a genuine people with their own state, their own territory, their own religion and culture. The covenant looked like an agreement between the king of a great state and the tribe subject to him: he promised them protection and patronage and demanded in return complete loyalty and obedience.

Therefore, the most terrible crimes in the Old Testament were considered those that meant betrayal of God: idolatry and witchcraft. The punishment for them was immediate death, just as in modern states they kill terrorists who take up arms against the legitimate government.

Actually, relations within the Israeli community were regulated based on the same principle: "Be holy because I am holy"(Leviticus 11:45) - the Lord demands this from the Israelis, and if so, then injustice, oppression, and robbery become impossible and unacceptable. Therefore, the norms of criminal law receive in the Old Testament the same sacred status as the norms of worship: they, in fact, become inseparable.

Community Justice

So, in the Old Testament law we find many punishments for crimes against one’s neighbor, which seem to us to be excessively cruel. Why punish adultery with death? Why gouge out the eye of someone who has gouged out someone else's eye - perhaps by accident? However, even in our legislation much would seem ancient man cruel - for example, imprisonment, which the Old Testament Law did not know. How can you tear a person away from his home for many years? If he is guilty of theft, let him pay double, and if he is a murderer, then we will kill him. Moreover, it will not be a professional executioner who will do this, but the community itself will throw stones at him. Remember how Jesus saved a woman caught in adultery from execution? He did not acquit her, but appealed to the conscience of the judges: “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”(Gospel of John 8:7) - and they separated, not wanting to fulfill the obvious requirement of the Law. Yes, it would be fair to execute her, everyone thought, but personally I cannot take on such responsibility.

After all, justice was not an impersonal machine then; it was carried out by society itself. It is one thing to file an application in court and hear a sentence passed on someone, and quite another to take a heavy stone in your hand and throw it at a living person. Here you really think three times before making an accusation.

In addition, those who committed manslaughter were completely freed from criminal liability. Such a person could take refuge in special “cities of refuge,” and if he managed to prove to the elders there that there was no enmity between him and the murdered man, that it was an accident, then he could remain in the city until the death of the high priest, and then was returning home. The only restriction is that such a person should not leave the “cities of refuge.” But still, it cannot be compared with prison or camp imprisonment.

Another of our norms that would have seemed cruel to the ancient Israelites is the conscript army. Men could only be drafted into the army during war, and then only those who had recently gotten married, built a house, or planted a vineyard were exempt from conscription. War is war, and a person has the right to live his private life, and he cannot be taken away from his young wife, new home and first fruits.

And in general, against the background of those laws that existed in many Christian countries quite recently, the Old Testament will seem very soft. He, for example, prescribes corporal punishment in some cases - but strictly limits it to forty blows, so as not to mutilate the person. Let's compare this with the famous “running through the gauntlet”, practiced in Russia before mid-19th century. The Old Testament generally does not know punishments that would mutilate a person (tearing out the nostrils, cutting out the tongue, and so on), although a few centuries ago they were completely common in “civilized countries.”

What does “tit for tat” mean?

If we compare the Old Testament with other legal texts of the ancient Near East, we see even more differences. Yes, they were all based on the notorious principle of talion: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” that is, the criminal must suffer the same damage as he inflicted on the victim.

In fact, this is not a bad principle at all, it does not require revenge at all, but limits it: if your eye is knocked out, then you have the right to do the same, but nothing more. I wish we could adhere to this principle, at least in personal relationships.

But, of course, it can also be used in different ways. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi prescribes: if someone took the son of his debtor as collateral and treated him so badly that he died, then he must give up his own son to die. And if the builder built the house so poorly that it collapsed and buried the customer’s family under the rubble, then he should be killed - no, not the builder, but his family. The builder himself is free from punishment if the customer is not harmed. In contrast to these laws, the Old Testament proclaims the principle of personal responsibility. For all crimes, only the criminal himself is punished; he cannot be replaced by anyone.

But the differences are especially great when it comes to crimes against other people’s property. Babylonian legislation (as, by the way, the recent Soviet one) punished certain types of theft with death: for example, in Babylon, a criminal who broke the wall of someone else's house had to be hanged against that very wall. Old Testament legislation prescribes that a thief should be punished with a double fine; True, the owner of the house has the right to kill the robber on the spot in self-defense, but only at night, when it is difficult to assess the degree of the threat. And no property crime is punishable by death - only by fine.

Crimes against the individual (that is, against God and against one’s neighbor) according to the Law of Moses, on the contrary, are punished very severely. Almost all ancient codes of law, including the Koran, establish the right of redemption, but the Old Testament clearly states: “Take no ransom for the soul of a murderer, but he must be put to death, for blood defiles the earth.”(Numbers 35:31-33). And that's why: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, his blood will be shed by the hand of man: for man was created in the image of God.”(Genesis 9:6). At the same time, for other rulers of the ancient Near East, as well as subsequently for many Christian countries, and for Soviet Union, a person was more of a national economic unit, so it was not difficult for him to set a price: to take a fine for his murder and, conversely, to take his life in payment for the damage caused. At all, human life is considered in the same Code of Hammurabi as a certain sum of money, and not such a huge one.

For example, the Code of Hammurabi insists: “If the robber was not captured, then the robbed person can show before God all his missing things, and the community and the headman, on whose land and territory the robbery was committed, must compensate him for all his missing things. If a life was lost in this case, then the community and the elder must weigh one mina of silver to his relatives.”. That is, obviously innocent people pay in order to maintain a “balance.” And the Old Testament instructs the local community, in the case of an unsolved murder, to simply perform a cleansing sacrifice.

Or another rule of Hammurabi: “If a person stole either an ox, or a sheep, or a donkey, or a pig, or a boat, then if it belongs to a god or a palace, he must pay thirty times the amount, and if it belongs to a muskenum(to a peasant tenant), he must repay tenfold. If a thief has nothing to pay with, he must be killed.". What does the Old Testament require in such a case? “The one who steals must pay; and if there is nothing, then let him be sold to pay for what he stole; if he is caught and the stolen property is found alive in his hands, whether it be an ox, or a donkey, or a sheep, let him pay double for them.”(Exodus 22:3-4). The difference, as we see, is huge.

Biblical Principles of Modern Law

However, the point is not even that the Old Testament turns out to be in many cases fundamentally softer than the Code of Hammurabi and other sets of laws of that time. Most importantly, he puts forward some general principles of a legal society that seem self-evident to us today, but at that time they were revolutionary. And although we are accustomed to looking down on the Old Testament, believing that Christian legal consciousness is much superior to it, if we look more closely, we will see that only now the ideas of the rule of law, already laid down in the Old Testament, are becoming the generally accepted norm.

Firstly, the Old Testament proclaims the equality of people before the law, making an exception only for foreign slaves. And the medieval codes of Christian states contain all sorts of gradations: for the murder of a nobleman there is one punishment, for the murder of a peasant - another. Even the status of the criminal influenced the severity of the punishment: for what common man executed, for which the noble was fined. The Mosaic Law does not know this.

The consequences this led to can be seen in one example described in the Bible. The Israeli king Ahab liked the vineyard of his subject, Naboth, but he refused to sell “the inheritance of his fathers.” Note, do not give away for nothing, but sell at a good price! Ahab was never able to get Naboth to voluntarily agree to a deal. A charge was fabricated against the obstinate man and he was executed, but this crime of Ahab angered the Lord so much that the prophet Elijah told the king: “Thus says the Lord: In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, the dogs will lick your blood also.”(1 Samuel 21:19). By comparison, Ivan the Terrible was confident that he was “free in the belly” of his subjects; As for their property, to this day the state forcibly buys land from their citizens to build on them new road, or demolishes an old house to build a new, more expensive one - and no one even thinks of asking the owners’ consent.

Another important principle that we have already talked about is a person’s personal responsibility for his actions: “Fathers should not be punished with death for their children, and children should not be punished with death for their fathers; everyone must be punished by death for his crime."(Deuteronomy 24:16). Former seminarian Joseph Stalin even quoted these words, although he was very far from fulfilling them.

The third pillar of a legal society, derived in the Old Testament, is the inviolability of the human person. This norm was precisely affirmed by the strict, practically no exceptions, separation of crimes against the person, which were punishable by death, and crimes against property, which were punishable by a fine with compensation for damage. And if today this has become an axiom for us, then we should not forget that this was first said precisely in the Old Testament.

Of course, all this does not mean that the Old Testament Law is perfect and self-sufficient. If this were so, there would be no need for a New Testament. But today we can say that the Old Testament establishes a certain stable foundation of the social structure, a certain minimum, without observing which society can at any moment slide into the swamp of permissiveness and arbitrariness. And the New Testament is addressed to the individual, for to forgive one’s debtor or to turn the other cheek is a decision made by each person individually; society cannot raise this to a legal norm, otherwise it will simply allow the strong to mock the weak.

The Old Testament Law is a solid, earthly foundation; New Testament grace is a soaring upward, towards the heavenly ideal.

Part 2. DOES THE BIBLE CALL FOR GENOCIDE?

In the previous part we discussed the question of whether the Old Testament Law was cruel. But the Law is not yet the most shocking place in Holy Scripture... It is much more difficult to modern man accept and understand the accounts of how the Israelites exterminated civilians, as the Bible states, under the direct orders of God. Is that really true? And how can this be explained?

Joshua, Elijah, Jehu...

It’s worth looking at first - where exactly in the Old Testament do we read about such events? First of all, of course, in the book of Joshua. Probably, if a vote were held among modern Christians about which book to remove from the Bible, it would receive the overwhelming majority of votes. “That same day Jesus took Maked and smote him with the sword... he left no one who would survive and escape; and he dealt with the king of Maceda in the same way as he dealt with the king of Jericho. And Joshua and all the Israelites with him went from Makeda to Libnah and fought against Libnah; and the Lord delivered her also into the hands of Israel, and they took her and her king, and Jesus destroyed her with the sword, and every living thing that was in her: he left no one in her.”(Josh. 10, 28-30).

In modern language this is called genocide, and today it is being tried in international courts. But then, it turns out, Joshua acted in full accordance with God's will: “And in the cities of these nations, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, you shall not leave a single soul alive.”(Deut. 20, 16).

We find something similar on the pages of other books of the Old Testament... The Prophet Elijah competes with the priests of the pagan deity Baal and, after defeating them, kills them all (1 Kings 18). However, there is no doubt that they would have treated him in exactly the same way if they had turned out to be winners. And King Jehu generally gathered all the prophets of Baal and killed them without any competition (2 Kings 10).

Why is there so much blood?

On the one hand, we should not forget that for a typical pagan, the truest god will not be the one who speaks of mercy, but the one who turns out to be stronger. Here is a typical story about the rivalry between paganism and Christianity in Altai, conveyed by a German ethnographer of the 19th century. V.V. Radlov ( "From Siberia. Diary pages". Moscow, 1989, p. 181): “My master told me that he once spent the night in a yurt where a shaman was performing his tricks. Having drawn a magic circle around the yurt, he entered it, but immediately jumped back out, as if drawn by an invisible force; on the street he immediately fell into a frenzy, continuously shouting: “There is a stranger lying in the yurt, and on his chest there is a hot coal, it burned me.” And the narrator wore on his chest an icon given to him by Father Macarius."(we are talking about St. Macarius Glukharev, the enlightener of Altai).

Something very similar sounds in the story of how the Philistines took captive main shrine Israelites, the Ark of the Covenant, and took it to the temple of their main deity, Dagon. The next morning they found his statue lying prostrate before the Ark (1 Samuel 5).

The moral superiority of Christianity over shamanism, theological subtleties, liturgical beauties - all this does not seem to the pagan to be any important and significant until he is convinced that a small icon is capable of depriving the power of the shaman, who until now seemed to him the most powerful person in the world. Only such a victory opens the gates of preaching, only it can give weight to words about morality, theology, and liturgy. Rev. Macarius, of course, did not kill the shamans, but in the time of Elijah it was clear to everyone that this theological dispute could only be resolved with the death of one of the parties.

“They only understand force,” the colonialists said about “savages.” Of course this is not true. But something else is true: they really don’t understand powerlessness. Missionaries in New Guinea, for example, had to deal with the fact that the story of the crucified Christ did not evoke any sympathy or respect among the local tribes. He was killed, which means He lost, could not even stand up for Himself - well, how then can He help us?

And in order to be heard, preachers of the One God often have to convince people, first of all, of His power, His unconditional ability to prevail over pagan deities. But... not at the expense of the civilian population, like Joshua - I would like to object here. And so we will have to figure it out further.

How they fought in those days

In the time described in the book of Joshua, the destruction of a defeated enemy was the norm, not the exception. The commanders of antiquity would have laughed when reading the Geneva Convention, which required humane treatment of prisoners of war. Here, for example, is how the Assyrian king Ashurnazirpal II described his glorious exploits: “With many of my troops I besieged and conquered the city, killed six hundred fighters with weapons, burned three thousand prisoners in fire, leaving not a single one of them as hostages. I stacked their bodies in towers, and burned their young men and women at the stake. I skinned their chief of the settlement and covered the city wall with his skin. I conquered another settlement in the vicinity, killed fifty of their warriors with weapons, and burned two hundred prisoners in the fire...” And so on ad infinitum; notice that he brags about it.

Maybe he was a maniac? Not at all. Reliefs and drawings of almost all ancient peoples show us kings who raise murder weapons over defeated enemies: bound, unarmed, naked. The winners saw such a murder as a manifestation of their greatness and power.

Looking at these images, reading these chronicles, you begin to understand how much new the book brought, at the very beginning of which a person is called the image and likeness of God (an icon, in modern language), and his murder is declared a crime. And that book was the Bible. The world in which biblical preaching has been heard for centuries has changed beyond recognition. And if Hitler and Stalin committed atrocities comparable in cruelty to the Assyrians, they would never have thought to brag about it.

Moreover, today we see that modern cases of mass murder of civilians (Auschwitz, Gulag, Hiroshima) become a “pain point” only in those countries that grew up on the biblical tradition. Who in Turkey remembers the Armenian genocide in 1915? In Japan - about the brutal murders of the Chinese in the 1930s and 40s? Almost no one. And not because the Turks or Japanese are more callous than the Germans or Russians, but because their traditional culture is not based on the biblical commandment “thou shalt not kill,” on the vision of man as the image of God, which was brought into the world by the Old Testament.

And yet this does not solve the problem... Let’s say that the disgusting custom of dealing with prisoners and civilians was so familiar that the Lord at that time did not consider it necessary to abolish it. But why did He call for him to be followed?

What is “civilian population”?

Let's step back for a moment and look at the recent experience of World War II. Civilians died then not only in fascist concentration camps, but also under Allied bombs. There is still a debate about how justified the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: yes, they led to terrible casualties, but if they had not happened, American military historians say, Japan would not have capitulated, the USA and the USSR would have had to land troops on Japanese islands, and there would be even more victims.

However, even ordinary bombs dropped on a military factory, train station or warehouse - didn’t they kill civilians? Even a sniper bullet in the trenches of Stalingrad ended the life of a man who, personally, may not have been guilty of the atrocities of the Nazis and who had a wife and children left at home. But we are ready to justify these sacrifices, because we understand: the Nazi war machine had to be broken at any cost. Pity for one particular German would mean death and slavery for thousands of people.

In the war with the indigenous peoples of Palestine, the Israelis, of course, did not use weapons mass destruction. But they fought not so much with an army, but with an entire civilization that had to be destroyed, like the Third Reich in our time. And here military victory could easily lead to religious and cultural defeat, as has happened more than once in history: the victors gradually and somehow imperceptibly adopted the culture, traditions, rituals, even the language of the vanquished...

So what were these rituals? The Bible, archaeological finds, and ancient historians all testify that Canaanite traditions included sacrificing their own children, not to mention sexual orgies associated with fertility cults. The ancient Romans were not at all a sentimental people, but the sacrifices of children among the Carthaginians (a people closely related to the Canaanites) disgusted them; and it was they who became one of the main arguments why “Carthage must be destroyed.” Not just conquered and subjugated, like other cities, but destroyed, destroyed - and when the city was taken, that’s what they did to it. Even its territory was plowed up with a plow to show that such a city should no longer exist in the world.

The ancient Israelites treated the local population of Palestine in exactly the same way. Abraham was also told that his descendants would take possession of this land, but not immediately, because “The measure of the iniquities of the Amorites has not yet been filled.”(Gen. 15, 16). That is, God waited for changes for the better for many centuries. He appointed a certain invisible line, a “measure of lawlessness,” beyond which destruction awaited this entire civilization. And this can hardly be called too cruel: the evil infinity of sin would be much worse.

In relation to the Canaanites, the Israelites in this case acted as the “scourge of God” - later other peoples (Assyrians, Babylonians) would play the same role in relation to Israel itself. But it’s not just a matter of punishment: Israel had to protect itself from all the abominations of the local religion. The nomadic Israeli pastoralists would have simply disappeared into the sophisticated urban civilization of Palestine, which was far superior to them in its cultural level. As a result, the doctrine of One God would be lost by humanity. In a word, if these peoples had not been exterminated, then for many centuries, perhaps to this day, people would have sacrificed their children to idols and would have considered this the highest form of religiosity. Would it be more humane?

Herem, aka anathema

So, when the Israelites destroyed the Canaanite cities, it was not just a matter of displaying “valiant prowess” and not even about punishment, but about something much more important and serious. To understand this, let's look at the story of a man named Achan, told in the 7th chapter of the book of Joshua: he was flattered by part of the spoils of Jericho (fine clothes, gold and silver) and saved them for himself. But the Lord sent military defeat to the Israelites and declared: “the accursed thing is among you, O Israel; therefore you cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the accursed from you.”.

The word “accursed” in Hebrew sounded like “herem” (its Arabic equivalent entered the Russian language as “harem”, that is, something forbidden for all but one person). And in the ancient Greek translation the word “anathema”, which is more familiar to us today, appeared... What is it?

This word means nothing more than sacrifice: something completely, completely and forever given to God. It is removed from everyday use and a person no longer has the right to use it. This could be a piece of land or an animal, which in this case was sacrificed. But in this case we were talking about entire cities. The Israelites were told: nothing of what you conquer belongs to you, it is all given to the Lord. None alive soul, not a single item from these cities could remain with the Israelis, as in case of plague or radioactive contamination. In those harsh times, this meant one thing - total extermination.

Of course, these days, when someone is anathematized by the church, they do not kill him, but they say approximately the same thing: this person has nothing to do with us, let the Lord deal with him as he sees fit (this is how he used this word). Apostle Paul, for example, in 1 Cor. 16:22).

This is strikingly different from what the Assyrian kings did and boasted about.

What does the book of Joshua teach?

Of course, this is far from the only possible interpretation of this difficult book. Unfortunately, throughout history, people have easily cited it to justify their own conquests. For example, North American colonists often saw themselves as Israelites reclaiming their “promised land” from the wicked natives. This partly explained their cruelty towards the Indians.

Yes and in modern state Israel is often remembered by Yeshua Ben-Nun (this is the name of Joshua in Hebrew) in connection with the question of state borders: since he conquered this land, it means that it is ours forever, and whoever does not agree with this, let him get away.

Of course, such a reading is very far from the original meaning of the book. Yes, it draws boundaries - but only for its time; Yes, it prescribes the extermination of peoples - but only these specific peoples that have long disappeared from the face of the earth. And that’s not really what the book is about... What does it teach in the first place?

“Be strong and courageous; For you will give to this people a possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them; just be strong and very courageous, and carefully keep and fulfill all the law that Moses My servant bequeathed to you; do not turn away from it to the right or to the left.", - this is what the Lord says to Jesus (Isa. 1:6-7). This book begins with this call, and not at all with a call to destroy all living things, although today it is this that is most often remembered.

The Israelites - perhaps for the first time in world history - refused to exterminate their enemies on their own initiative, placing the decision in the hands of their God. Yes, they fought bloody wars, but they were “God’s wars,” wars against those who acted as His enemies. If they invaded someone else's land, it was not because they really liked the land, or because its inhabitants offended them in some way, but because the Lord commanded them so.

And those who cite this book to justify their own military campaigns are completely wrong: no one has the right to extend what was said to Joshua in a specific historical situation to other times and other peoples.

From Joshua to Jesus Christ, who gave us the commandment to “turn the other cheek,” there was still a very long way to go, but a very important step along this path had been taken. And in the book of Joshua many times we see the phrase “be strong and courageous.” Modern Christians often forget these words. But at all times there are moments when a believer needs to be not a contemplator, but a warrior. This is what the book of Joshua teaches.

Andrey Desnitsky

IS THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CRUEL?

Andrey Sergeevich Desnitsky – historian, consultant at the Institute of Bible Translation,

Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Part 1. TOOTH FOR TOOTH

Executions, fines, compliance with harsh laws - how can the God of Love demand this from a person? But this is precisely how the Old Testament appears to many of our contemporaries, which demands “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Heirs of Marcion

The issue of the cruelty of the Old Testament is not new, as is almost everything in this world. Already among the first Christians there were those who argued: the Christian God of Love cannot have anything in common with the cruel, vengeful and capricious “god” as the Old Testament portrays him. And perhaps this “god” is actually none other than Satan. The most consistent exposition of these views was a theologian named Marcion.

The Church condemned his teaching as heresy. Following Christ and the apostles, she asserts that the Old Testament is an integral part of Holy Scripture, and that the God of the patriarchs and prophets is the same as the God of the apostles and evangelists, and that not only the New Testament, but “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for teaching.”(2 Timothy 3:16).

However, Marcion's heirs are still alive today. Even among Christians, many, if they do not reject the Old Testament, then treat it with some suspicion, as a historical monument that does not have much significance today. They are certainly wrong: it is the Old Testament that tells us about the creation of the world, the Fall, the emergence of the chosen people and their relationship with God. He leads the reader to the Gospel Message, which without him would have remained incomprehensible: what prophecies were fulfilled? What kind of sacrifice was made? Why was the crucifixion and resurrection necessary at all?

But what repels the modern reader from the Old Testament? First of all, his “cruelty”. Well, the Bible is a truthful book, and if people always killed and hated each other, if even the greatest righteous people were flawed, it tells about it honestly and openly. She is not a collection of sappy stories, and that is why she can be trusted.

With this, it would seem, everything is clear. But doubters are not reassured: the Old Testament does not just talk about the cruelty of individual people, it attributes this cruelty to God himself. And the main accusation that can be heard here is the harsh Law, which requires giving an eye for an eye and punishing with death for violation of adultery. Let's try to understand this in more detail.

Let’s just first agree: we cannot judge people who lived three thousand years ago as our contemporaries. They differed from us not only in that they had no electricity and had no idea about the existence of America. They had slightly different ideas about the world, and they can only be judged based on the realities of that time. We won’t blame Columbus for not finding it on the school globe before sailing to America, or Field Marshal Kutuzov for not sending aviation and tank divisions against Napoleon? It is unfair to blame the ancients for not having what is accessible and familiar to us today. Moreover, it is worth thinking: did we get all this from them?

Law: source and meaning

Any legal system is built on some foundation. For a law to be valid, it must be sanctioned by someone's authority. Today, as a rule, constitutions refer to the “will of the people,” which, as we know, is often nothing more than skillfully applied political technologies. But in ancient times the law was always understood as a gift from above, and the Old Testament was no exception.

But there was one peculiarity in the Old Testament. The surrounding peoples believed that the gods gave them laws simply to streamline their lives and ensure justice. But on Mount Sinai, Moses was given not just a legal code, there a Covenant was concluded, that is, an agreement between the entire Israeli people and God: “I will be your God, and you will be my people”(Leviticus 26:12). Actually, outside of this Covenant, the Israelites were just runaway Egyptian slaves, but having concluded it, they became a genuine people with their own state, their own territory, their own religion and culture. The covenant looked like an agreement between the king of a great state and the tribe subject to him: he promised them protection and patronage and demanded in return complete loyalty and obedience.

Therefore, the most terrible crimes in the Old Testament were considered those that meant betrayal of God: idolatry and witchcraft. The punishment for them was immediate death, just as in modern states they kill terrorists who take up arms against the legitimate government.

Actually, relations within the Israeli community were regulated based on the same principle: "Be holy because I am holy"(Leviticus 11:45) - the Lord demands this from the Israelis, and if so, then injustice, oppression, and robbery become impossible and unacceptable. Therefore, the norms of criminal law receive in the Old Testament the same sacred status as the norms of worship: they, in fact, become inseparable.

Community Justice

So, in the Old Testament law we find many punishments for crimes against one’s neighbor, which seem to us to be excessively cruel. Why punish adultery with death? Why gouge out the eye of someone who has gouged out someone else's eye - perhaps by accident? However, even in our legislation, many things would have seemed cruel to ancient man - for example, imprisonment, which the Old Testament Law did not know. How can you tear a person away from his home for many years? If he is guilty of theft, let him pay double, and if he is a murderer, then we will kill him. Moreover, it will not be a professional executioner who will do this, but the community itself will throw stones at him. Remember how Jesus saved a woman caught in adultery from execution? He did not acquit her, but appealed to the conscience of the judges: “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”(Gospel of John 8:7) - and they separated, not wanting to fulfill the obvious requirement of the Law. Yes, it would be fair to execute her, everyone thought, but personally I cannot take on such responsibility.

After all, justice was not an impersonal machine then; it was carried out by society itself. It is one thing to file an application in court and hear a sentence passed on someone, and quite another to take a heavy stone in your hand and throw it at a living person. Here you really think three times before making an accusation.

In addition, those who committed manslaughter were completely freed from criminal liability. Such a person could take refuge in special “cities of refuge,” and if he managed to prove to the elders there that there was no enmity between him and the murdered man, that it was an accident, then he could remain in the city until the death of the high priest, and then was returning home. The only restriction is that such a person should not leave the “cities of refuge.” But still, it cannot be compared with prison or camp imprisonment.

Another of our norms that would have seemed cruel to the ancient Israelites is the conscript army. Men could only be drafted into the army during war, and then only those who had recently gotten married, built a house, or planted a vineyard were exempt from conscription. War is war, and a person has the right to live his private life, and he cannot be taken away from his young wife, new home and first fruits.

And in general, against the background of those laws that existed in many Christian countries quite recently, the Old Testament will seem very soft. He, for example, prescribes corporal punishment in some cases - but strictly limits it to forty blows, so as not to mutilate the person. Let’s compare this to the famous “running through the gauntlet,” which was practiced in Russia until the mid-19th century. The Old Testament generally does not know punishments that would mutilate a person (tearing out the nostrils, cutting out the tongue, and so on), although a few centuries ago they were completely common in “civilized countries.”

What does “tit for tat” mean?

If we compare the Old Testament with other legal texts of the ancient Near East, we see even more differences. Yes, they were all based on the notorious principle of talion: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” that is, the criminal must suffer the same damage as he inflicted on the victim.

In fact, this is not a bad principle at all, it does not require revenge at all, but limits it: if your eye is knocked out, then you have the right to do the same, but nothing more. I wish we could adhere to this principle, at least in personal relationships.

But, of course, it can also be used in different ways. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi prescribes: if someone took the son of his debtor as collateral and treated him so badly that he died, then he must give up his own son to die. And if the builder built the house so poorly that it collapsed and buried the customer’s family under the rubble, then he should be killed - no, not the builder, but his family. The builder himself is free from punishment if the customer is not harmed. In contrast to these laws, the Old Testament proclaims the principle of personal responsibility. For all crimes, only the criminal himself is punished; he cannot be replaced by anyone.

But the differences are especially great when it comes to crimes against other people’s property. Babylonian legislation (as, by the way, the recent Soviet one) punished certain types of theft with death: for example, in Babylon, a criminal who broke the wall of someone else's house had to be hanged against that very wall. Old Testament legislation prescribes that a thief should be punished with a double fine; True, the owner of the house has the right to kill the robber on the spot in self-defense, but only at night, when it is difficult to assess the degree of the threat. And no property crime is punishable by death - only by fine.

Crimes against the individual (that is, against God and against one’s neighbor) according to the Law of Moses, on the contrary, are punished very severely. Almost all ancient codes of law, including the Koran, establish the right of redemption, but the Old Testament clearly states: “Take no ransom for the soul of a murderer, but he must be put to death, for blood defiles the earth.”(Numbers 35:31-33). And that's why: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, his blood will be shed by the hand of man: for man was created in the image of God.”(Genesis 9:6). At the same time, for other rulers of the ancient Near East, as well as subsequently for many Christian countries, and even for the Soviet Union, a person was more of a national economic unit, so it was not difficult for him to set a price: to take a fine for his murder and, conversely, to take him away life in payment for the damage caused. In general, human life is considered in the same Code of Hammurabi as a certain sum of money, and not such a huge one.

For example, the Code of Hammurabi insists: “If the robber was not captured, then the robbed person can show before God all his missing things, and the community and the headman, on whose land and territory the robbery was committed, must compensate him for all his missing things. If a life was lost in this case, then the community and the elder must weigh one mina of silver to his relatives.”. That is, obviously innocent people pay in order to maintain a “balance.” And the Old Testament instructs the local community, in the case of an unsolved murder, to simply perform a cleansing sacrifice.

Or another rule of Hammurabi: “If a person stole either an ox, or a sheep, or a donkey, or a pig, or a boat, then if it belongs to a god or a palace, he must pay thirty times the amount, and if it belongs to a muskenum(to a peasant tenant), he must repay tenfold. If a thief has nothing to pay with, he must be killed.". What does the Old Testament require in such a case? “The one who steals must pay; and if there is nothing, then let him be sold to pay for what he stole; if he is caught and the stolen property is found alive in his hands, whether it be an ox, or a donkey, or a sheep, let him pay double for them.”(Exodus 22:3-4). The difference, as we see, is huge.

Biblical Principles of Modern Law

However, the point is not even that the Old Testament turns out to be in many cases fundamentally softer than the Code of Hammurabi and other sets of laws of that time. Most importantly, he puts forward some general principles of a legal society that seem self-evident to us today, but at that time they were revolutionary. And although we are accustomed to looking down on the Old Testament, believing that Christian legal consciousness is much superior to it, if we look more closely, we will see that only now the ideas of the rule of law, already laid down in the Old Testament, are becoming the generally accepted norm.

Firstly, the Old Testament proclaims the equality of people before the law, making an exception only for foreign slaves. And the medieval codes of Christian states contain all sorts of gradations: for the murder of a nobleman there is one punishment, for the murder of a peasant - another. Even the status of the criminal influenced the severity of the punishment: for what an ordinary person was executed, for a noble person a fine was imposed. The Mosaic Law does not know this.

The consequences this led to can be seen in one example described in the Bible. The Israeli king Ahab liked the vineyard of his subject, Naboth, but he refused to sell “the inheritance of his fathers.” Note, do not give away for nothing, but sell at a good price! Ahab was never able to get Naboth to voluntarily agree to a deal. A charge was fabricated against the obstinate man and he was executed, but this crime of Ahab angered the Lord so much that the prophet Elijah told the king: “Thus says the Lord: In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, the dogs will lick your blood also.”(1 Samuel 21:19). By comparison, Ivan the Terrible was confident that he was “free in the belly” of his subjects; As for their property, to this day the state forcibly buys land plots from its citizens in order to build a new road on them, or demolishes an old house to build a new, more expensive one - and no one even thinks of asking for consent owners.

Another important principle that we have already talked about is a person’s personal responsibility for his actions: “Fathers should not be punished with death for their children, and children should not be punished with death for their fathers; everyone must be punished by death for his crime."(Deuteronomy 24:16). Former seminarian Joseph Stalin even quoted these words, although he was very far from fulfilling them.

The third pillar of a legal society, derived in the Old Testament, is the inviolability of the human person. This norm was precisely affirmed by the strict, practically no exceptions, separation of crimes against the person, which were punishable by death, and crimes against property, which were punishable by a fine with compensation for damage. And if today this has become an axiom for us, then we should not forget that this was first said precisely in the Old Testament.

Of course, all this does not mean that the Old Testament Law is perfect and self-sufficient. If this were so, there would be no need for a New Testament. But today we can say that the Old Testament establishes a certain stable foundation of the social structure, a certain minimum, without observing which society can at any moment slide into the swamp of permissiveness and arbitrariness. And the New Testament is addressed to the individual, for to forgive one’s debtor or to turn the other cheek is a decision made by each person individually; society cannot raise this to a legal norm, otherwise it will simply allow the strong to mock the weak.

The Old Testament Law is a solid, earthly foundation; New Testament grace is a soaring upward, towards the heavenly ideal.

Part 2. DOES THE BIBLE CALL FOR GENOCIDE?

In the previous part we discussed the question of whether the Old Testament Law was cruel. But the Law is not the most shocking part of the Holy Scriptures... It is much more difficult for modern people to accept and understand the stories of how the Israelites exterminated the civilian population, as the Bible claims, on the direct orders of God. Is that really true? And how can this be explained?

Joshua, Elijah, Jehu...

It’s worth looking at first - where exactly in the Old Testament do we read about such events? First of all, of course, in the book of Joshua. Probably, if a vote were held among modern Christians about which book to remove from the Bible, it would receive the overwhelming majority of votes. “That same day Jesus took Maked and smote him with the sword... he left no one who would survive and escape; and he dealt with the king of Maceda in the same way as he dealt with the king of Jericho. And Joshua and all the Israelites with him went from Makeda to Libnah and fought against Libnah; and the Lord delivered her also into the hands of Israel, and they took her and her king, and Jesus destroyed her with the sword, and every living thing that was in her: he left no one in her.”(Josh. 10, 28-30).

In modern language this is called genocide, and today it is being tried in international courts. But then, it turns out, Joshua acted in full accordance with God's will: “And in the cities of these nations, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, you shall not leave a single soul alive.”(Deut. 20, 16).

We find something similar on the pages of other books of the Old Testament... The Prophet Elijah competes with the priests of the pagan deity Baal and, after defeating them, kills them all (1 Kings 18). However, there is no doubt that they would have treated him in exactly the same way if they had turned out to be winners. And King Jehu generally gathered all the prophets of Baal and killed them without any competition (2 Kings 10).

Why is there so much blood?

On the one hand, we should not forget that for a typical pagan, the truest god will not be the one who speaks of mercy, but the one who turns out to be stronger. Here is a typical story about the rivalry between paganism and Christianity in Altai, conveyed by a German ethnographer of the 19th century. V.V. Radlov ( "From Siberia. Diary pages". Moscow, 1989, p. 181): “My master told me that he once spent the night in a yurt where a shaman was performing his tricks. Having drawn a magic circle around the yurt, he entered it, but immediately jumped back out, as if drawn by an invisible force; on the street he immediately fell into a frenzy, continuously shouting: “There is a stranger lying in the yurt, and on his chest there is a hot coal, it burned me.” And the narrator wore on his chest an icon given to him by Father Macarius."(we are talking about St. Macarius Glukharev, the enlightener of Altai).

Something very similar sounds in the story of how the Philistines captured the main shrine of the Israelites, the Ark of the Covenant, and took it to the temple of their main deity, Dagon. The next morning they found his statue lying prostrate before the Ark (1 Samuel 5).

The moral superiority of Christianity over shamanism, theological subtleties, liturgical beauties - all this does not seem to the pagan to be any important and significant until he is convinced that a small icon is capable of depriving the power of the shaman, who until now seemed to him the most powerful person in the world. Only such a victory opens the gates of preaching, only it can give weight to words about morality, theology, and liturgy. Rev. Macarius, of course, did not kill the shamans, but in the time of Elijah it was clear to everyone that this theological dispute could only be resolved with the death of one of the parties.

“They only understand force,” the colonialists said about “savages.” Of course this is not true. But something else is true: they really don’t understand powerlessness. Missionaries in New Guinea, for example, had to deal with the fact that the story of the crucified Christ did not evoke any sympathy or respect among the local tribes. He was killed, which means He lost, could not even stand up for Himself - well, how then can He help us?

And in order to be heard, preachers of the One God often have to convince people, first of all, of His power, His unconditional ability to prevail over pagan deities. But... not at the expense of the civilian population, like Joshua - I would like to object here. And so we will have to figure it out further.

How they fought in those days

In the time described in the book of Joshua, the destruction of a defeated enemy was the norm, not the exception. The commanders of antiquity would have laughed when reading the Geneva Convention, which required humane treatment of prisoners of war. Here, for example, is how the Assyrian king Ashurnazirpal II described his glorious exploits: “With many of my troops I besieged and conquered the city, killed six hundred fighters with weapons, burned three thousand prisoners in fire, leaving not a single one of them as hostages. I stacked their bodies in towers, and burned their young men and women at the stake. I skinned their chief of the settlement and covered the city wall with his skin. I conquered another settlement in the vicinity, killed fifty of their warriors with weapons, and burned two hundred prisoners in the fire...” And so on ad infinitum; notice that he brags about it.

Maybe he was a maniac? Not at all. Reliefs and drawings of almost all ancient peoples show us kings who raise murder weapons over defeated enemies: bound, unarmed, naked. The winners saw such a murder as a manifestation of their greatness and power.

Looking at these images, reading these chronicles, you begin to understand how much new the book brought, at the very beginning of which a person is called the image and likeness of God (an icon, in modern language), and his murder is declared a crime. And that book was the Bible. The world in which biblical preaching has been heard for centuries has changed beyond recognition. And if Hitler and Stalin committed atrocities comparable in cruelty to the Assyrians, they would never have thought to brag about it.

Moreover, today we see that modern cases of mass murder of civilians (Auschwitz, Gulag, Hiroshima) become a “pain point” only in those countries that grew up on the biblical tradition. Who in Turkey remembers the Armenian genocide in 1915? In Japan - about the brutal murders of the Chinese in the 1930s and 40s? Almost no one. And not because the Turks or Japanese are more callous than the Germans or Russians, but because their traditional culture is not based on the biblical commandment “thou shalt not kill,” on the vision of man as the image of God, which was brought into the world by the Old Testament.

And yet this does not solve the problem... Let’s say that the disgusting custom of dealing with prisoners and civilians was so familiar that the Lord at that time did not consider it necessary to abolish it. But why did He call for him to be followed?

What is “civilian population”?

Let's step back for a moment and look at the recent experience of World War II. Civilians then died not only in fascist concentration camps, but also under Allied bombs. There is still a debate about how justified the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: yes, they led to terrible casualties, but if they had not happened, American military historians say, Japan would not have capitulated, the USA and the USSR would have had to land troops on the Japanese islands , and there would be even more victims.

However, even ordinary bombs dropped on a military factory, train station or warehouse - didn’t they kill civilians? Even a sniper bullet in the trenches of Stalingrad ended the life of a man who, personally, may not have been guilty of the atrocities of the Nazis and who had a wife and children left at home. But we are ready to justify these sacrifices, because we understand: the Nazi war machine had to be broken at any cost. Pity for one particular German would mean death and slavery for thousands of people.

In the war with the indigenous peoples of Palestine, the Israelis, of course, did not use weapons of mass destruction. But they fought not so much with an army, but with an entire civilization that had to be destroyed, like the Third Reich in our time. And here, a military victory could easily lead to religious and cultural defeat, as has happened more than once in history: the victors gradually and somehow imperceptibly adopted the culture, traditions, rituals, even the language of the vanquished...

So what were these rituals? The Bible, archaeological finds, and ancient historians all testify that Canaanite traditions included sacrificing their own children, not to mention sexual orgies associated with fertility cults. The ancient Romans were not at all a sentimental people, but the sacrifices of children among the Carthaginians (a people closely related to the Canaanites) disgusted them; and it was they who became one of the main arguments why “Carthage must be destroyed.” Not just conquered and subjugated, like other cities, but destroyed, destroyed - and when the city was taken, that’s what they did to it. Even its territory was plowed up with a plow to show that such a city should no longer exist in the world.

The ancient Israelites treated the local population of Palestine in exactly the same way. Abraham was also told that his descendants would take possession of this land, but not immediately, because “The measure of the iniquities of the Amorites has not yet been filled.”(Gen. 15, 16). That is, God waited for changes for the better for many centuries. He appointed a certain invisible line, a “measure of lawlessness,” beyond which destruction awaited this entire civilization. And this can hardly be called too cruel: the evil infinity of sin would be much worse.

In relation to the Canaanites, the Israelites in this case acted as the “scourge of God” - later other peoples (Assyrians, Babylonians) would play the same role in relation to Israel itself. But it’s not just a matter of punishment: Israel had to protect itself from all the abominations of the local religion. The nomadic Israeli pastoralists would have simply disappeared into the sophisticated urban civilization of Palestine, which was far superior to them in its cultural level. As a result, the doctrine of One God would be lost by humanity. In a word, if these peoples had not been exterminated, then for many centuries, perhaps to this day, people would have sacrificed their children to idols and would have considered this the highest form of religiosity. Would it be more humane?

Herem, aka anathema

So, when the Israelites destroyed the Canaanite cities, it was not just a matter of displaying “valiant prowess” and not even about punishment, but about something much more important and serious. To understand this, let's look at the story of a man named Achan, told in the 7th chapter of the book of Joshua: he was flattered by part of the spoils of Jericho (fine clothes, gold and silver) and saved them for himself. But the Lord sent military defeat to the Israelites and declared: “the accursed thing is among you, O Israel; therefore you cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the accursed from you.”.

The word “accursed” in Hebrew sounded like “herem” (its Arabic equivalent entered the Russian language as “harem”, that is, something forbidden for all but one person). And in the ancient Greek translation the word “anathema”, which is more familiar to us today, appeared... What is it?

This word means nothing more than sacrifice: something completely, completely and forever given to God. It is removed from everyday use and a person no longer has the right to use it. This could be a piece of land or an animal, which in this case was sacrificed. But in this case we were talking about entire cities. The Israelites were told: nothing of what you conquer belongs to you, it is all given to the Lord. Not a single living soul, not a single object from these cities could remain with the Israelis, as in the case of plague or radioactive contamination. In those harsh times, this meant one thing - total extermination.

Of course, these days, when someone is anathematized by the church, they do not kill him, but they say approximately the same thing: this person has nothing to do with us, let the Lord deal with him as he sees fit (this is how he used this word). Apostle Paul, for example, in 1 Cor. 16:22).

This is strikingly different from what the Assyrian kings did and boasted about.

What does the book of Joshua teach?

Of course, this is far from the only possible interpretation of this difficult book. Unfortunately, throughout history, people have easily cited it to justify their own conquests. For example, North American colonists often saw themselves as Israelites reclaiming their “promised land” from the wicked natives. This partly explained their cruelty towards the Indians.

And in the modern state of Israel, Yeshua Ben-Nun (this is the name of Joshua in Hebrew) is often remembered in connection with the issue of state borders: since he conquered this land, it means that it is ours forever, and whoever does not agree with this, let him get out away.

Of course, such a reading is very far from the original meaning of the book. Yes, it draws boundaries - but only for its time; Yes, it prescribes the extermination of peoples - but only these specific peoples that have long disappeared from the face of the earth. And that’s not really what the book is about... What does it teach in the first place?

“Be strong and courageous; For you will give to this people a possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them; just be strong and very courageous, and carefully keep and fulfill all the law that Moses My servant bequeathed to you; do not turn away from it to the right or to the left.", - this is what the Lord says to Jesus (Isa. 1:6-7). This book begins with this call, and not at all with a call to destroy all living things, although today it is this that is most often remembered.

The Israelites - perhaps for the first time in world history - refused to exterminate their enemies on their own initiative, placing the decision in the hands of their God. Yes, they fought bloody wars, but they were “God’s wars,” wars against those who acted as His enemies. If they invaded someone else's land, it was not because they really liked the land, or because its inhabitants offended them in some way, but because the Lord commanded them so.

And those who cite this book to justify their own military campaigns are completely wrong: no one has the right to extend what was said to Joshua in a specific historical situation to other times and other peoples.

From Joshua to Jesus Christ, who gave us the commandment to “turn the other cheek,” there was still a very long way to go, but a very important step along this path had been taken. And in the book of Joshua many times we see the phrase “be strong and courageous.” Modern Christians often forget these words. But at all times there are moments when a believer needs to be not a contemplator, but a warrior. This is what the book of Joshua teaches.

Andrey Sergeevich Desnitsky - historian, consultant at the Institute of Bible Translation,

Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Part 1. TOOTH FOR TOOTH

Executions, fines, compliance with harsh laws - how can the God of Love demand this from a person? But this is precisely how the Old Testament appears to many of our contemporaries, which demands “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Heirs of Marcion

“I personally went through all the stages of hesitation and doubt and one night (in 7th grade), literally one night, I came to a final and irrevocable decision: I reject the animal psychology of the Old Testament, but fully accept Christianity and Orthodoxy. It’s like a mountain has been lifted from your shoulders! I lived with this, and I am ending my life with this.”. This is how a man who can hardly be suspected of softness and pacifism, General A.I., wrote about his religious choice. Denikin. He went through several wars, including a civil one, was a dictator over a vast territory, did not hesitate to take harsh measures to restore order - and considered the Old Testament to be excessively cruel. Why?

The issue of the cruelty of the Old Testament is not new, as is almost everything in this world. Already among the first Christians there were those who argued: the Christian God of Love cannot have anything in common with the cruel, vengeful and capricious “god” as the Old Testament portrays him. And perhaps this “god” is actually none other than Satan. The most consistent exposition of these views was a theologian named Marcion.

The Church condemned his teaching as heresy. Following Christ and the apostles, she asserts that the Old Testament is an integral part of Holy Scripture, and that the God of the patriarchs and prophets is the same as the God of the apostles and evangelists, and that not only the New Testament, but “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for teaching.”(2 Timothy 3:16).

However, Marcion's heirs are still alive today. Even among Christians, many, if they do not reject the Old Testament, then treat it with some suspicion, as a historical monument that does not have much significance today. They are certainly wrong: it is the Old Testament that tells us about the creation of the world, the Fall, the emergence of the chosen people and their relationship with God. He leads the reader to the Gospel Message, which without him would have remained incomprehensible: what prophecies were fulfilled? What kind of sacrifice was made? Why was the crucifixion and resurrection necessary at all?

But what repels the modern reader from the Old Testament? First of all, his “cruelty”. Well, the Bible is a truthful book, and if people always killed and hated each other, if even the greatest righteous people were flawed, it tells about it honestly and openly. She is not a collection of sappy stories, and that is why she can be trusted.

With this, it would seem, everything is clear. But doubters are not reassured: the Old Testament does not just talk about the cruelty of individual people, it attributes this cruelty to God himself. And the main accusation that can be heard here is the harsh Law, which requires giving an eye for an eye and punishing with death for violation of marital fidelity. Let's try to understand this in more detail.

Let’s just first agree: we cannot judge people who lived three thousand years ago as our contemporaries. They differed from us not only in that they had no electricity and had no idea about the existence of America. They had slightly different ideas about the world, and they can only be judged based on the realities of that time. We won’t blame Columbus for not finding it on the school globe before sailing to America, or Field Marshal Kutuzov for not sending aviation and tank divisions against Napoleon? It is unfair to blame the ancients for not having what is accessible and familiar to us today. Moreover, it is worth thinking: did we get all this from them?

Law: source and meaning

Any legal system is built on some foundation. For a law to be valid, it must be sanctioned by someone's authority. Today, as a rule, constitutions refer to the “will of the people,” which, as we know, is often nothing more than skillfully applied political technologies. But in ancient times the law was always understood as a gift from above, and the Old Testament was no exception.

But there was one peculiarity in the Old Testament. The surrounding peoples believed that the gods gave them laws simply to streamline their lives and ensure justice. But on Mount Sinai, Moses was given not just a legal code, there a Covenant was concluded, that is, an agreement between the entire Israeli people and God: “I will be your God, and you will be my people”(Leviticus 26:12). Actually, outside of this Covenant, the Israelites were just runaway Egyptian slaves, but having concluded it, they became a genuine people with their own state, their own territory, their own religion and culture. The covenant looked like an agreement between the king of a great state and the tribe subject to him: he promises them protection and patronage and demands in return complete loyalty and obedience.

Therefore, the most terrible crimes in the Old Testament were considered those that meant betrayal of God: idolatry and witchcraft. The punishment for them was immediate death, just as in modern states they kill terrorists who take up arms against the legitimate government.

Actually, relations within the Israeli community were regulated based on the same principle: "Be holy because I am holy"(Leviticus 11:45) - the Lord demands this from the Israelis, and if so, then injustice, oppression, and robbery become impossible and unacceptable. Therefore, the norms of criminal law receive in the Old Testament the same sacred status as the norms of worship: they, in fact, become inseparable.

Community Justice

So, in the Old Testament law we find many punishments for crimes against one’s neighbor, which seem to us to be excessively cruel. Why punish adultery with death? Why gouge out the eye of someone who has gouged out someone else's eye - perhaps by accident? However, even in our legislation, many things would seem cruel to ancient man - for example, imprisonment, which the Old Testament Law did not know. How can you tear a person away from his home for many years? If he is guilty of theft, let him pay double, and if he is a murderer, then we will kill him. Moreover, it will not be a professional executioner who will do this, but the community itself will throw stones at him. Remember how Jesus saved a woman caught in adultery from execution? He did not acquit her, but appealed to the conscience of the judges: “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”(Gospel of John 8:7) - and they separated, not wanting to fulfill the obvious requirement of the Law. Yes, it would be fair to execute her, everyone thought, but personally I cannot take on such responsibility.

After all, justice was not an impersonal machine then; it was carried out by society itself. It is one thing to file an application in court and hear the verdict passed on someone, and quite another to take a heavy stone in your hand and throw it at a living person. Here you really think three times before making an accusation.

In addition, those who committed manslaughter were completely freed from criminal liability. Such a person could take refuge in special “cities of refuge,” and if he managed to prove to the elders there that there was no enmity between him and the murdered man, that it was an accident, then he could remain in the city until the death of the high priest, and then was returning home. The only restriction is that such a person should not leave the “cities of refuge.” But still, it cannot be compared with prison or camp imprisonment.

Another of our norms, which would have seemed cruel to the ancient Israelites, is the conscript army. Men could only be drafted into the army during war, and then only those who had recently gotten married, built a house, or planted a vineyard were exempt from conscription. War is war, and a person has the right to live his private life, and he cannot be taken away from his young wife, new home and first fruits.

And in general, against the background of those laws that existed in many Christian countries quite recently, the Old Testament will seem very soft. He, for example, prescribes corporal punishment in some cases - but strictly limits it to forty blows, so as not to mutilate the person. Let’s compare this to the famous “running through the gauntlet,” which was practiced in Russia until the mid-19th century. The Old Testament generally does not know punishments that would mutilate a person (tearing out the nostrils, cutting out the tongue, and so on), although a few centuries ago they were completely common in “civilized countries.”

What does “tit for tat” mean?

If we compare the Old Testament with other legal texts of the ancient Near East, we see even more differences. Yes, they were all based on the notorious principle of talion: “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” that is, the criminal must suffer the same damage as he inflicted on the victim.

In fact, this is not a bad principle at all, it does not require revenge at all, but limits it: if your eye is knocked out, then you have the right to do the same, but nothing more. I wish we could adhere to this principle, at least in personal relationships.

But, of course, it can also be used in different ways. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi prescribes: if someone took the son of his debtor as collateral and treated him so badly that he died, then he must give up his own son to die. And if the builder built the house so poorly that it collapsed and buried the customer’s family under the rubble, then he should be killed - no, not the builder, but his family. The builder himself is free from punishment if the customer is not harmed. In contrast to these laws, the Old Testament proclaims the principle of personal responsibility. For all crimes, only the criminal himself is punished; he cannot be replaced by anyone.

But the differences are especially great when it comes to crimes against other people’s property. Babylonian legislation (as, by the way, the recent Soviet one) punished certain types of theft with death: for example, in Babylon, a criminal who broke the wall of someone else's house had to be hanged against that very wall. Old Testament legislation prescribes that a thief should be punished with a double fine; True, the owner of the house has the right to kill the robber on the spot in self-defense, but only at night, when it is difficult to assess the degree of the threat. And no property crime is punishable by death - only by fine.

Crimes against the individual (that is, against God and against one’s neighbor) according to the Law of Moses, on the contrary, are punished very severely. Almost all ancient codes of law, including the Koran, establish the right of redemption, but the Old Testament clearly states: “Take no ransom for the soul of a murderer, but he must be put to death, for blood defiles the earth.”(Numbers 35:31-33). And that's why: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, his blood will be shed by the hand of man: for man was created in the image of God.”(Genesis 9:6). At the same time, for other rulers of the ancient Near East, as well as subsequently for many Christian countries, and even for the Soviet Union, a person was more of a national economic unit, so it was not difficult for him to set a price: to take a fine for his murder and, conversely, to take him away life in payment for the damage caused. In general, human life is considered in the same Code of Hammurabi as a certain sum of money, and not such a huge one.

For example, the Code of Hammurabi insists: “If the robber was not captured, then the robbed person can show before God all his missing things, and the community and the headman, on whose land and territory the robbery was committed, must compensate him for all his missing things. If a life was lost in this case, then the community and the elder must weigh one mina of silver to his relatives.”. That is, obviously innocent people pay in order to maintain a “balance.” And the Old Testament instructs the local community, in the case of an unsolved murder, to simply perform a cleansing sacrifice.

Or another rule of Hammurabi: “If a person stole either an ox, or a sheep, or a donkey, or a pig, or a boat, then if it belongs to a god or a palace, he must pay thirty times the amount, and if it belongs to a muskenum(to a peasant tenant), he must repay tenfold. If a thief has nothing to pay with, he must be killed.". What does the Old Testament require in such a case? “The one who steals must pay; and if there is nothing, then let him be sold to pay for what he stole; if he is caught and the stolen property is found alive in his hands, whether it be an ox, or a donkey, or a sheep, let him pay double for them.”(Exodus 22:3-4). The difference, as we see, is huge.

Biblical Principles of Modern Law

However, the point is not even that the Old Testament turns out to be in many cases fundamentally softer than the Code of Hammurabi and other sets of laws of that time. Most importantly, he puts forward some general principles of a legal society that seem self-evident to us today, but at that time they were revolutionary. And although we are accustomed to looking down on the Old Testament, believing that Christian legal consciousness is much superior to it, if we look more closely, we will see that only now the ideas of the rule of law, already laid down in the Old Testament, are becoming the generally accepted norm.

Firstly, the Old Testament proclaims the equality of people before the law, making an exception only for foreign slaves. And the medieval codes of Christian states contain all sorts of gradations: for the murder of a nobleman there is one punishment, for the murder of a peasant - another. Even the status of the criminal influenced the severity of the punishment: for what an ordinary person was executed, for a noble person a fine was imposed. The Mosaic Law does not know this.

The consequences this led to can be seen in one example described in the Bible. The Israeli king Ahab liked the vineyard of his subject, Naboth, but he refused to sell “the inheritance of his fathers.” Note, do not give away for nothing, but sell at a good price! Ahab was never able to get Naboth to voluntarily agree to a deal. A charge was fabricated against the obstinate man and he was executed, but this crime of Ahab angered the Lord so much that the prophet Elijah told the king: “Thus says the Lord: In the place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth, the dogs will lick your blood also.”(1 Samuel 21:19). By comparison, Ivan the Terrible was confident that he was “free in the belly” of his subjects; As for their property, to this day the state forcibly buys land plots from its citizens in order to build a new road on them, or demolishes an old house to build a new, more expensive one - and no one even thinks of asking for consent owners.

Another important principle that we have already talked about is a person’s personal responsibility for his actions: “Fathers should not be punished with death for their children, and children should not be punished with death for their fathers; everyone must be punished by death for his crime."(Deuteronomy 24:16). Former seminarian Joseph Stalin even quoted these words, although he was very far from fulfilling them.

The third pillar of a legal society, derived in the Old Testament, is the inviolability of the human person. This norm was precisely affirmed by the strict, practically no exceptions, separation of crimes against the person, which were punishable by death, and crimes against property, which were punishable by a fine with compensation for damage. And if today this has become an axiom for us, then we should not forget that this was first said precisely in the Old Testament.

Of course, all this does not mean that the Old Testament Law is perfect and self-sufficient. If this were so, there would be no need for a New Testament. But today we can say that the Old Testament establishes a certain stable foundation of the social structure, a certain minimum, without observing which society can at any moment slide into the swamp of permissiveness and arbitrariness. And the New Testament is addressed to the individual, for to forgive one’s debtor or to turn the other cheek is a decision made by each person individually; society cannot raise this to a legal norm, otherwise it will simply allow the strong to mock the weak.

The Old Testament Law is a solid, earthly foundation; New Testament grace is a soaring upward, to the heavenly ideal.

Part 2. DOES THE BIBLE CALL FOR GENOCIDE?

In the previous part we discussed the question of whether the Old Testament Law was cruel. But the Law is not yet the most shocking part of the Holy Scriptures... It is much more difficult for modern people to accept and understand the stories of how the Israelites exterminated the civilian population, as the Bible claims, on the direct orders of God. Is that really true? And how can this be explained?

Joshua, Elijah, Jehu...

It’s worth looking at first - where exactly in the Old Testament do we read about such events? First of all, of course, in the book of Joshua. Probably, if a vote were held among modern Christians about which book to remove from the Bible, it would receive the overwhelming majority of votes. “That same day Jesus took Maked and smote him with the sword... he left no one who would survive and escape; and he dealt with the king of Maceda in the same way as he dealt with the king of Jericho. And Joshua and all the Israelites with him went from Makeda to Libnah and fought against Libnah; and the Lord delivered her also into the hands of Israel, and they took her and her king, and Jesus destroyed her with the sword, and every living thing that was in her: he left no one in her.”(Josh. 10, 28-30).

In modern language this is called genocide, and today it is being tried in international courts. But then, it turns out, Joshua acted in full accordance with God's will: “And in the cities of these nations, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, you shall not leave a single soul alive.”(Deut. 20, 16).

We find something similar on the pages of other books of the Old Testament... The Prophet Elijah competes with the priests of the pagan deity Baal and, after defeating them, kills them all (1 Kings 18). However, there is no doubt that they would have treated him in exactly the same way if they had turned out to be winners. And King Jehu generally gathered all the prophets of Baal and killed them without any competition (2 Kings 10).

Why is there so much blood?

On the one hand, we should not forget that for a typical pagan, the truest god will not be the one who speaks of mercy, but the one who turns out to be stronger. Here is a typical story about the rivalry between paganism and Christianity in Altai, conveyed by a German ethnographer of the 19th century. V.V. Radlov ( "From Siberia. Diary pages". Moscow, 1989, p. 181): “My master told me that he once spent the night in a yurt where a shaman was performing his tricks. Having drawn a magic circle around the yurt, he entered it, but immediately jumped back out, as if drawn by an invisible force; on the street he immediately fell into a frenzy, continuously shouting: “There is a stranger lying in the yurt, and on his chest there is a hot coal, it burned me.” And the narrator wore on his chest an icon given to him by Father Macarius."(we are talking about St. Macarius Glukharev, the enlightener of Altai).

Something very similar sounds in the story of how the Philistines captured the main shrine of the Israelites, the Ark of the Covenant, and took it to the temple of their main deity, Dagon. The next morning they found his statue lying prostrate before the Ark (1 Samuel 5).

The moral superiority of Christianity over shamanism, theological subtleties, liturgical beauties - all this does not seem to the pagan to be any important and significant until he is convinced that a small icon is capable of depriving the power of the shaman, who until now seemed to him the most powerful person in the world. Only such a victory opens the gates of preaching, only it can give weight to words about morality, theology, and liturgy. Rev. Macarius, of course, did not kill the shamans, but in the time of Elijah it was clear to everyone that this theological dispute could only be resolved with the death of one of the parties.

“They only understand force,” the colonialists said about “savages.” Of course this is not true. But something else is true: they really don’t understand powerlessness. Missionaries in New Guinea, for example, had to deal with the fact that the story of the crucified Christ did not evoke any sympathy or respect among the local tribes. He was killed, which means He lost, could not even stand up for Himself - well, how then can He help us?

And in order to be heard, preachers of the One God often have to convince people, first of all, of His power, His unconditional ability to prevail over pagan deities. But... not at the expense of the civilian population, like Joshua - I would like to object here. And so we will have to figure it out further.

How they fought in those days

In the time described in the book of Joshua, the destruction of a defeated enemy was the norm, not the exception. The commanders of antiquity would have laughed when reading the Geneva Convention, which required humane treatment of prisoners of war. Here, for example, is how the Assyrian king Ashurnazirpal II described his glorious exploits: “With many of my troops I besieged and conquered the city, killed six hundred fighters with weapons, burned three thousand prisoners in fire, leaving not a single one of them as hostages. I stacked their bodies in towers, and burned their young men and women at the stake. I skinned their chief of the settlement and covered the city wall with his skin. I conquered another settlement in the vicinity, killed fifty of their warriors with weapons, and burned two hundred prisoners in the fire...” And so on ad infinitum; notice that he brags about it.

Maybe he was a maniac? Not at all. Reliefs and drawings of almost all ancient peoples show us kings who raise murder weapons over defeated enemies: bound, unarmed, naked. The winners saw such a murder as a manifestation of their greatness and power.

Looking at these images, reading these chronicles, you begin to understand how much new the book brought, at the very beginning of which a person is called the image and likeness of God (an icon, in modern language), and his murder is declared a crime. And that book was the Bible. The world in which biblical preaching has been heard for centuries has changed beyond recognition. And if Hitler and Stalin committed atrocities comparable in cruelty to the Assyrians, they would never have thought to brag about it.

Moreover, today we see that modern cases of mass murder of civilians (Auschwitz, Gulag, Hiroshima) become a “pain point” only in those countries that grew up on the biblical tradition. Who in Turkey remembers the Armenian genocide in 1915? In Japan - about the brutal murders of the Chinese in the 1930s and 40s? Almost no one. And not because the Turks or Japanese are more callous than the Germans or Russians, but because their traditional culture is not based on the biblical commandment “thou shalt not kill,” on the vision of man as the image of God, which was brought into the world by the Old Testament.

And yet this does not solve the problem... Let’s say that the disgusting custom of dealing with prisoners and civilians was so familiar that the Lord at that time did not consider it necessary to abolish it. But why did He call for him to be followed?

What is “civilian population”?

Let's step back for a moment and look at the recent experience of World War II. Civilians then died not only in fascist concentration camps, but also under Allied bombs. There is still a debate about how justified the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: yes, they led to terrible casualties, but if they had not happened, American military historians say, Japan would not have capitulated, the USA and the USSR would have had to land troops on the Japanese islands , and there would be even more victims.

However, even ordinary bombs dropped on a military factory, train station or warehouse - didn’t they kill civilians? Even a sniper bullet in the trenches of Stalingrad ended the life of a man who, personally, may not have been guilty of the atrocities of the Nazis and who had a wife and children left at home. But we are ready to justify these sacrifices, because we understand: the Nazi war machine had to be broken at any cost. Pity for one particular German would mean death and slavery for thousands of people.

In the war with the indigenous peoples of Palestine, the Israelis, of course, did not use weapons of mass destruction. But they fought not so much with an army, but with an entire civilization that had to be destroyed, like the Third Reich in our time. And here, a military victory could easily lead to religious and cultural defeat, as has happened more than once in history: the victors gradually and somehow imperceptibly adopted the culture, traditions, rituals, even the language of the vanquished...

So what were these rituals? The Bible, archaeological finds, and ancient historians all testify that Canaanite traditions included sacrificing their own children, not to mention sexual orgies associated with fertility cults. The ancient Romans were not at all a sentimental people, but the sacrifices of children among the Carthaginians (a people closely related to the Canaanites) disgusted them; and it was they who became one of the main arguments why “Carthage must be destroyed.” Not just conquered and subjugated, like other cities, but destroyed, destroyed - and when the city was taken, that’s what they did to it. Even its territory was plowed up with a plow to show that such a city should no longer exist in the world.

The ancient Israelites treated the local population of Palestine in exactly the same way. Abraham was also told that his descendants would take possession of this land, but not immediately, because “The measure of the iniquities of the Amorites has not yet been filled.”(Gen. 15, 16). That is, God waited for changes for the better for many centuries. He appointed a certain invisible line, a “measure of lawlessness,” beyond which destruction awaited this entire civilization. And this can hardly be called too cruel: the evil infinity of sin would be much worse.

In relation to the Canaanites, the Israelites in this case acted as the “scourge of God” - later other peoples (Assyrians, Babylonians) would play the same role in relation to Israel itself. But it’s not just a matter of punishment: Israel had to protect itself from all the abominations of the local religion. The nomadic Israeli pastoralists would have simply disappeared into the sophisticated urban civilization of Palestine, which was far superior to them in its cultural level. As a result, the doctrine of One God would be lost by humanity. In a word, if these peoples had not been exterminated, then for many centuries, perhaps to this day, people would have sacrificed their children to idols and would have considered this the highest form of religiosity. Would it be more humane?

Herem, aka anathema

So, when the Israelites destroyed the Canaanite cities, it was not just a matter of displaying “valiant prowess” and not even about punishment, but about something much more important and serious. To understand this, let's look at the story of a man named Achan, told in the 7th chapter of the book of Joshua: he was flattered by part of the spoils of Jericho (fine clothes, gold and silver) and saved them for himself. But the Lord sent military defeat to the Israelites and declared: “the accursed thing is among you, O Israel; therefore you cannot stand before your enemies until you have removed the accursed from you.”.

The word “accursed” in Hebrew sounded like “herem” (its Arabic equivalent entered the Russian language as “harem”, that is, something forbidden for all but one person). And in the ancient Greek translation the word “anathema”, which is more familiar to us today, appeared... What is it?

This word means nothing more than sacrifice: something completely, completely and forever given to God. It is removed from everyday use and a person no longer has the right to use it. This could be a piece of land or an animal, which in this case was sacrificed. But in this case we were talking about entire cities. The Israelites were told: nothing of what you conquer belongs to you, it is all given to the Lord. Not a single living soul, not a single object from these cities could remain with the Israelis, as in the case of plague or radioactive contamination. In those harsh times, this meant one thing - total extermination.

Of course, these days, when someone is anathematized by the church, they do not kill him, but they say approximately the same thing: this person has nothing to do with us, let the Lord deal with him as he sees fit (this is how he used this word). Apostle Paul, for example, in 1 Cor. 16:22).

This is strikingly different from what the Assyrian kings did and boasted about.

What does the book of Joshua teach?

Of course, this is far from the only possible interpretation of this difficult book. Unfortunately, throughout history, people have easily cited it to justify their own conquests. For example, North American colonists often saw themselves as Israelites reclaiming their “promised land” from the wicked natives. This partly explained their cruelty towards the Indians.

And in the modern state of Israel, Yeshua Ben-Nun (this is the name of Joshua in Hebrew) is often remembered in connection with the issue of state borders: since he conquered this land, it means that it is ours forever, and whoever does not agree with this, let him get out away.

Of course, such a reading is very far from the original meaning of the book. Yes, it draws boundaries - but only for its time; Yes, it prescribes the extermination of peoples - but only these specific peoples that have long disappeared from the face of the earth. And that’s not really what the book is about... What does it teach in the first place?

“Be strong and courageous; For you will give to this people a possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them; just be strong and very courageous, and carefully keep and fulfill all the law that Moses My servant bequeathed to you; do not turn away from it to the right or to the left.", - this is what the Lord says to Jesus (Joshua 1:6-7). This book begins with this call, and not at all with a call to destroy all living things, although today it is this that is most often remembered.

The Israelites - perhaps for the first time in world history - refused to exterminate their enemies on their own initiative, placing the decision in the hands of their God. Yes, they fought bloody wars, but they were “God’s wars,” wars against those who acted as His enemies. If they invaded someone else's land, it was not because they really liked the land, or because its inhabitants offended them in some way, but because the Lord commanded them so.

And those who cite this book to justify their own military campaigns are completely wrong: no one has the right to extend what was said to Joshua in a specific historical situation to other times and other peoples.

From Joshua to Jesus Christ, who gave us the commandment to “turn the other cheek,” there was still a very long way to go, but a very important step along this path had been taken. And in the book of Joshua many times we see the phrase “be strong and courageous.” Modern Christians often forget these words. But at all times there are moments when a believer needs to be not a contemplator, but a warrior. This is what the book of Joshua teaches.

What is human life?

God's gift. God is the only source and giver of life.

What is death and murder?

The death of the body and the complete destruction of a person should not be confused. Physical death is only a temporary separation of the soul and body of a person until universal resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment.
The word “murder” is usually used with a negative connotation, meaning the ungodly, violent taking of someone’s life. In a number of cases, the cessation of earthly life is allowed by God for good providential purposes to suppress evil (the global flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).

Why is killing a person by a person a sin?

One of God's commandments is thou shalt not kill.
The verb used in it “רְצָח” “to kill” denotes immoral premeditated murder, as opposed to any killing in general as a result of an accident, in self-defense, during war or by court order (similarly in English language- kill - any murder and murder - illegal). Since the Bible itself prescribes the death penalty by court order (in over 30 cases), this verb cannot mean murder at all, under any circumstances. Those. the watershed is the motive for the murder, its goal.
That. By the sixth commandment, God forbids taking the lives of other people, guided by personal motives for evil or selfish intent, and killing oneself out of despair.

Why does God have the right to kill, but man, being the image of God, has no right?

God, being All-Good and All-Wise, always acts from good motives. His actions towards people are always measured against moral benefit. Here we should be amazed not at His severity, but at His long-suffering.
God is sometimes forced to act like a surgeon - to amputate the infected place so that the infection does not go further.
As for a person who kills against the will of God, taking the life of his neighbor, he takes away what does not belong to him. In some cases, murders deprive those killed of the opportunity to repent and perform good deeds in the future, which may affect their fate in the afterlife.
If we own a hotel, the residents of one of the rooms of which behave inappropriately, then don’t we have the right to evict them, so as not to make the life of their neighbors hell?

What was God's purpose in commanding, in Old Testament times, the extermination of entire nations?

God's goal in relation to man is to lead him to salvation, freeing him from the power of sin. Salvation implies the introduction of a person to God, and, as a result, his inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, eternal bliss. As you know, all people without exception are called to salvation.
When, in the times of the Old Testament, God commanded Israel to destroy its enemies, among other things, He meant helping the Jewish people fulfill the mission entrusted to them - to be the custodian of the true faith. Let us note that the Savior was to be born among precisely this people. Thus, the mission of Israel, according to God's plan, was to have a beneficial effect on all nations in general.
It is worthy of note that the Palestinian tribes of that time were distinguished by extreme wickedness (child sacrifices, “sacred prostitution”) and had long ago exceeded the measure of lawlessness, which means they were worthy of severe Divine punishments (we emphasize that the purpose of Holy Scripture is not detailed description all the abominations of the pagan peoples, a thorough disclosure of how dehumanized they were, how bestial their image was Everyday life; but if this had been described in detail, there would have been less doubt that these people deservedly suffered punishment).
You may not notice the tactics, but it is obvious that the strategic actions of the Creator always lead to good. For example, you can be indignant at how one person mercilessly cut the body of another, or you can pay attention to a recovered person who underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor.
Can we consider that the mass extermination of the Palestinian aborigines had any benefit to them? If human life were limited to the boundaries of earthly existence, such a question would seem thorough. However, life continues beyond the grave; the afterlife fate of each person depends on the degree of his personal sinfulness (or righteousness).
The killings of the wicked, carried out with the blessing of God, did not allow them to fall into even greater lawlessness.
Many who read the Old Testament account of murder become uneasy. Let us repeat that spiritual evil is much more harmful than physical evil, because it deprives a person of happiness in eternity (in our time, terrorists are killed, and “no one” is indignant against this; spiritual terrorism, which threatens eternal torment both for the terrorists themselves and for those whom they will tear you away from communication with God, much more terrible).

Did the concept of personal responsibility exist at that time?

The concept of individual moral responsibility was common even to the first man, Adam. Moreover, both Adam himself and his wife, Eve, experienced the bitterness of responsibility for sin.
During the time of Moses, the concept of personal responsibility was written into the Law of Sinai. As for the representatives of the pagan tribes who then inhabited Palestine, the idea of ​​personal moral responsibility was often overshadowed by the ideas of collective, tribal. The man vividly felt like a member of the community. In his moral (immoral) actions and deeds, he tried not to go beyond the general tribal norms of behavior and morality. Many sins practiced within certain tribes were not private, but widespread. Therefore, the curse that fell on the Canaanites, in view of their monstrous atrocities, fell on entire tribes (note that the pagan codes themselves implied the appropriateness of collective responsibility; for example, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi prescribes: if the builder built a house so poorly that it collapsed and was buried under the rubble the customer’s family, then it is necessary to kill – not the builder, but his family).

Why were these particular tribes destroyed?

Considering the destroyed tribes innocent is a superficial view and ignorance of historical realities. The purpose of the Holy Scriptures is not to describe the abominations of the pagan peoples, how they became dehumanized and led an animal lifestyle. If this had been described in detail, no one would have had any doubt that these people were mired in evil and were already incorrigible.

Why didn't God spare babies?

God wiped out those nations that were spiritually dead from the face of the earth. A few additional years of lawlessness would only worsen the moral condition of these people.
What would the murdered babies become in a couple of decades? The same lawless people as their mothers and fathers, who themselves were recently babies. The environment influences a person's upbringing.

Did God punish the chosen people of Israel?

In relation to the Canaanites, the Israelites acted as the “scourge of God” - later other peoples (Assyrians, Babylonians) played the same role in relation to Israel, who had departed from God.

As far as we can judge, did the destruction of the pagan tribes produce the expected results?

God's providence during the Old Testament was aimed at preparing the human race for the Coming of the Savior. Humanism was unknown to the primitive pagan tribes, but by the time of the Coming of the Messiah the situation in the world had changed. As you know, in the first centuries it grew with many (former) pagans.
People who criticize the Bible often fall into contradiction - first they see atrocities (the same human sacrifices) and are indignant “how did the Lord allow this!” Then, when they read about stopping evil in the bud, they are again indignant: “How cruelly they treated the poor Canaanites!”
The cruelty of the Old Testament towards the inhabitants of Canaan, which was conquered by the Jews, of course, seems terrifying. But the very fact that such an impression is created among a wide readership indicates that the extreme measure of influence on dehumanized peoples had its effect. Indeed, for many Old Testament people, wars and murders were considered the norm, taken for granted.

For giraffes like me. I just can’t understand why there is so much cruelty in the Old Testament, one of the main books of Christianity.
Here, for example, are the most frequently mentioned:

"23 And he went from there to Bethel. As he went along the way, the little children
came out of the city and mocked him and said to him: Go,
bald! go, baldhead!
24 He looked back and saw them and cursed them in the name of the Lord. AND
two she-bears came out of the forest and tore apart forty-two of them
child."

"15 And Moses said to them, [why] have you left everyone alive?
women?
17 Therefore kill all the male children and all the women,
kill those who know the husband on a man's bed;
18 And all the female children who have not known male
lodge, leave it alive for yourself;"

If this is an allegory, then it is not clear what exactly it is an allegory of. I don't want to take it literally either.
Independent surfing on the Internet did not give a satisfactory answer. Here are some of the results:
http://kuraev.ru/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=63&topic=90217.0 - discussion of the issue on A. Kuraev’s forum.

http://www.foma.ru/article/index.php?news=1458 - an interesting article in Thomas about the place of the Old Testament in life Orthodox man, violent places are not discussed there.

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/answers/6427.htm - the hieromonk’s answer, meaning - God was cruel for the good of the Jews, like a cruel father. But it’s somehow too cruel in some places, firstly, and secondly, cruelty does not seem to me the best method of education, if we use the parental analogy.

http://www.xrampg.obninsk.ru/Otveti_na_voprosi/Svyaschennoe_pisanie_i_predaniya/Vethiy%20zavet.htm - answer from the archpriest. The main meaning is that God is cruel in order to show the destructiveness of sin. It is also not clear why such authoritarian negativistic pedagogy is used, because it is much better to educate with positive examples and reinforcements.

http://vsekh.livejournal.com/24316.html?thread=341244 - this is the answer of the Protestants, “debunking the myth of the cruel Elisha.” The author’s logic is completely incomprehensible to me; in short, this is what he writes - these pagan children still had to be sacrificed, what difference does it make if God killed them a little earlier?

http://lib.eparhia-saratov.ru/books/10k/kuraev/anathema/14.html - article by A. Kuraev, the most convincing of all, but still does not explain the horrific cruelty of the above quotes, the meaning is that the Jews were cruel towards the pagans, because the pagans were even more cruel (by the way, not towards the Jews, but towards their own people, judging by the text of Father Andrew). And the article does not explain the cruelty of the Old Testament in everyday life towards the Jews themselves: - Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death;
- If anyone commits adultery with his married wife... - both the adulterer and the adulteress will be put to death.
“Whoever lies with his father’s wife has revealed his father’s nakedness: they both shall be put to death.”
“If anyone lies with his daughter-in-law, then both of them will be put to death.”