How do we handle “harsh” passages in Scripture?
Question 1115
Every honest reader of Scripture encounters passages that make us uncomfortable. Commands that seem severe, judgements that appear disproportionate, language that strikes modern ears as offensive. Whether it is the destruction of the Canaanites, the curses of the imprecatory psalms, or Paul’s instructions about slavery, these “harsh” texts challenge our sensibilities and raise difficult questions. How should believers approach these passages without either abandoning them or pretending the difficulties do not exist?
Acknowledging the Challenge
We do ourselves no favours by minimising the difficulty. When Psalm 137 expresses the sentiment “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” (Psalm 137:9), that is a shocking statement. When God commands the complete destruction of Amalekite men, women, children, and animals (1 Samuel 15:3), that is hard to reconcile with our usual picture of divine love. When Jesus speaks of eternal conscious torment for the wicked (Matthew 25:41, 46), that troubles many hearts.
These are not problems created by critics trying to undermine faith. They are real tensions within the text that thoughtful believers have wrestled with throughout history. The church fathers, the Reformers, and countless Christians since have grappled with these passages. We are not the first generation to find them challenging, nor will we be the last.
Fundamental Principles
Several foundational convictions guide our approach:
God is good: This is the bedrock. Whatever we make of difficult passages, we cannot conclude that God is evil or arbitrary. “The LORD is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made” (Psalm 145:9). “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). Any interpretation that makes God into a moral monster has gone wrong somewhere.
We are not the measure: Our moral intuitions, shaped as they are by our culture, upbringing, and sin, are not the ultimate standard. God is the standard. When Scripture confronts our sensibilities, the first question should not be “How can I make this acceptable to modern readers?” but “What am I failing to understand about God, humanity, or sin that makes this seem wrong to me?”
Context matters enormously: Many difficulties dissolve when we understand the historical, literary, and canonical context. What seems gratuitously violent in isolation may make sense within the covenant framework of ancient Israel. What appears misogynistic may actually be protective or even progressive in its original setting.
Progressive revelation unfolds truth: Not everything in Scripture represents God’s ideal. Jesus explicitly said that Moses permitted divorce “because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). Some Old Testament regulations represent accommodations to fallen humanity, not models for all time. The trajectory of Scripture matters as much as any individual text.
Specific Strategies
When faced with a harsh passage, several approaches help:
Ask what problem it was addressing: Many difficult commands responded to specific situations that no longer exist. The severity of certain punishments in the Mosaic Law made sense in a theocratic nation without prisons, where exile or death were the only options for serious offenders. Understanding what the text was preventing often illuminates why it seems severe.
Compare with the alternatives: Ancient Near Eastern law codes provide valuable comparison. When we set Israel’s laws beside those of Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, we often find that Israel’s standards were remarkably humane. Slavery regulations in the Mosaic Law, for instance, provided protections unknown elsewhere. What seems harsh to us may have been merciful in its context.
Consider the whole counsel of God: Individual verses must be read within the entire Bible. Isolated texts can be made to prove almost anything. But Scripture as a whole presents a coherent picture of God’s character and purposes. The harsh passages exist alongside the tender ones, the judgement alongside the mercy. Both are true, and they interpret each other.
Allow genre to guide: Poetry speaks differently than history, prophecy differently than law. The imprecatory psalms are prayers of people in desperate situations, not models for how we should always feel. Their inclusion in Scripture validates the expression of raw emotion to God without necessarily endorsing every sentiment expressed.
Embrace mystery where necessary: Some passages may remain difficult despite our best efforts. We do not need to have all the answers. Faith trusts that what we cannot explain, God can. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
The Heart Behind the Hardness
Often, what seems harsh reveals something important about reality that we would rather avoid. The severe judgements in Scripture testify to the seriousness of sin. If we think divine punishment is disproportionate, perhaps our view of sin is too small. The same God who judges without pity is the God who sent His Son to bear that judgement for us. The cross makes sense only if the judgement it averts is real and terrible.
In a therapeutic culture that minimises sin and maximises self-esteem, Scripture’s harsh passages are a corrective. They remind us that we are dealing with a holy God, not a cosmic therapist. They prepare us for the gospel by showing us what we are saved from. They call us to reverent fear as well as loving trust.
Conclusion
The harsh passages of Scripture are not problems to be solved and forgotten but realities to be wrestled with and learned from. They challenge our comfortable assumptions about God, ourselves, and the world. They drive us to deeper study, more fervent prayer, and greater dependence on the Spirit’s illumination. Rightly understood, they do not undermine our faith but deepen it, revealing dimensions of God’s character that a domesticated deity would never possess. The God of the Bible is not safe, but He is good.
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” Proverbs 9:10
Bibliography
- Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011.
- Copan, Paul and Matthew Flannagan. Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2014.
- Lamb, David T. God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist? Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011.
- Longman, Tremper III and Daniel G. Reid. God Is a Warrior. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.
- Seibert, Eric A. Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009.
- Wenham, Gordon J. Story as Torah: Reading Old Testament Narrative Ethically. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000.
- Wright, Christopher J.H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2004.
