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God Is The Old Testament?

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Brent DeShields
Dr. Harper
Old Testament
6, April 2015
How is God Represented in the Old Testament? In this essay I will discuss how God is represented from early on, to later in the Old Testament. Throughout the Old Testament, God acts many different ways. Each author shows us their own take on God and his actions, leaving him looking both good and bad. Compared to the New Testament, this God seems to be much worse. There are many examples of God being shown in both positive and negative light, but overall I think God is represented as a caring and loving, yet also harsh.
In the Old Testament, God is shown as a positively, other times he is shown negatively. In Deuteronomy, God is portrayed very negatively. In instances of war, he says …show more content…

This shows God being insecure about his creations about whether they truly love him or not. Also, it shows how much God is willing to put his creations that he supposedly loves so dearly through so much pain and suffering on a whim. Job goes through extreme suffering with mental and physical pain for God’s bet with Satan. If anything, this shows us that God expects undying love and loyalty even if terrible things happen to you when you have done nothing to warrant God punishing you like so. Another time involving a “bet” and God is in Judges 14:19. God helped Samson kill 30 people to satisfy losing a bet he made with his wife’s people. (Judges 14:19) In Samuel, god commands the death of all the Amalekites. He commanded the death of all of their women, children, men, and even animals. He is again commanding genocide, as revenge for what they did to Israel. Why does he keep asking his followers to kill all these people? It is to protect them. He wishes to protect his followers from the evil ways of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, and so on, or to protect them from the wrath of the Amalekites who end up regaining their numbers, raiding the Negeb and Ziklag, burning Ziklag to the ground and taking everyone. (Samuel 30:1-2) The genocide against the Amalekites could have prevented this. However, that still does not excuse that God has advocated genocide of multiple groups of people. In

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