Before Jesus arrived and his divine father chilled out, the Old Testament God was, ironically, kind of a hellraiser. He was not a nice guy. He really liked killing people. And he may have actually been insane, if his willingness to randomly murder devout worshippers like Moses was any indication. Here are the 12 craziest, most awful things God did in the Old Testament, back before that wacked-out hippie Jesus softened him up.
1) Sending Bears to
Murder Children
So a guy named Eliseus was traveling to Bethel when a bunch
of kids popped up and made fun of him for being bald. That had to suck, and you
can’t blame Eliseus for being pissed and cursing them to God. But God had
Eliseus’ back, by which I mean he sent two bears to maul 42 of these kids to
death. For making fun of a bald dude. I have to think Eliseus was looking for
something along the lines of a spanking, or maybe the poetic justice of having
the kids go bald, but nope, God went straight for the bear murder. But on the
plus side, that pile of 40+ children’s corpses never made fun of anybody again. (4 Kings 2:23-24)
2) Turning Lot’s Wife
to Salt
Most folks know about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two
cities of sin God decided to kill everyone in instead of, you know, making them
not full of sin. But this was a town that, when two angels were staying at
Lot’s place, gathered en masse and asked if they could rape them. I repeat: They wanted to rape angels. So they kind
of had their destruction coming. Lot and his family were sent from the city
before things went down, and Lot’s wife looked back, and God turned her into a
pillar of salt. It’s generally understood that Lot’s wife was looking back in a
wistful kind of way at her angel-raping hometown, but the fact is there’s
nothing in the Bible to suggest this. Nor was Lot’s family warned about looking
back. Maybe Lot’s wife wanted to see Sodom and Gomorrah get what was coming to
it. Maybe she was thinking wistfully of the things she had to leave behind.
Maybe she wondered if she left the oven on. We’ll never know, because God turned
her into seasoning for breaking a rule she didn’t know existed. (Genesis 19:26)
3) Hating Ugly People
In what should be good news for intolerant religious conservatives, God really does hate people who are
different from the norm. Of course, God isn’t as worried about skin color or
sexual orientation as he is about whether you’re ugly or not. Because if you’re
ugly, you can just go worship some other god, okay? (Even though God will
punish you if you do and also they don’t exist.) Here’s the people God does not
want coming into his churches: People with blemishes, blind people, the lame, those
with flat noses, dwarves, people with scurvy, people with bad eyes, people with
bad skin, and those that “hath their stones broken.” Given that God is technically responsible for giving people
all of these afflictions in the first place, this is an enormous dick move. (Leviticus 21:17-24)
4) Trying to Kill
Moses
In terms of people who God likes,
you’d think Moses would be pretty high up on the list, right? I mean, God
appointed him to lead the Jews out of Egypt, parted the Red Sea for him, and
even picked him to receive the 10 Commandments, right? Yet this didn’t stop God
from trying to kill Moses when he ran into him at “a lodging place.” There is
literally no explanation given in the Bible for God’s decision to murder one
of his chief supporters. The line is “At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him.” The only sensible
explanation for this is that God was drunk out of his mind and looking for a
bar fight, and you better hope that’s correct because the alternative is that
God’s a psychopath. How was God stopped from murdering his #1 fan? “But [Moses’ wife] Zipporah took a flint
knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it … So the Lord let
him alone.” Either the sight of a very unexpected circumcision sobered God up
quickly, or he didn’t want to touch a dude who just touched a severed foreskin.
Still, it’s Moses’ son who’s the real victim here. (Exodus 4:24-26)
5) Committing So Much Genocide
God has killed so many people, you guys. Okay, I mean
technically, God has killed everyone if you subscribe to Judeo-Christian
thought, but I’m not talking about indirect methods, I’m talking about God
murdering countless people in horrible ways simply because he’s pissed off. God
drowning every single person on the planet besides Noah and his family is
pretty well known, but he also helped the Israelites murder everyone in
Jericho, Heshbon, Bashan and many more, usually killing women, children and
animals at the same time. Hell, God once helped some Israelites kill 500,000
other Israelites. God’s crazy.
6) Ordering His
Underlings to Kill Their Own Children
God is obviously good at big picture dickishness, but he also
took the time to be a dick on a more personal level. Abraham was another devout
man who God decided to fuck with, apparently because he knew he could. God
ordered him to sacrifice his son to God (God was a fan of human sacrifice at
the time). We know Abraham loved his son, so he was probably kind of upset with
this, but hey, God’s God, right? So Abraham tricked his unsuspecting son up a
mountain onto a sacrificial altar and prepared to murder him. This story
actually has a happy ending, in that right before Abraham drove a knife into
his son’s throat, God yelled “Psyche!” and told him it was only a test. And
then Abraham received some blessings after that for being willing to kill his
own child at God’s whim. And all it took was the dread of being forced to kill
his own child on behalf of his angry deity and, presumably, a shit-ton of
awkward family dinners for the rest of his life. Abraham got off better than
Jephthah, who had to follow through with murdering his daughter (burning her
alive, specifically) in order to get on God’s good side before battling the
Ammonites. (Genesis 22:1-12)
7) Killing Egyptian
Babies
Let’s be completely up front: The Egyptians and the Jews did
not get along. According to the Bible, the Egyptians enslaved the Jews, but the
Jews had God on their side, if you kind of ignore God letting his people be
enslaved in the first place. Rather getting his worshippers the hell out of
there, God wanted to show those damned Egyptians what for, releasing 10 plagues
that began with turning the river Nile into pure blood, and ending with the
slaughter of the first-born of every single Egyptian man and animal. Now, I
suppose it’s possible that some, or even most of these first-born were adults
who were shitty to the Israelites. But some of them had to be babies who didn’t even
have the time to persecute the Jews yet. And what the hell did the animals do
to the Jews to get caught up in this nightmare? Were there proto-Nazi cows
running around who needed to be punished for their transgressions against the
chosen people? And you realize there were cats in Egypt, right? Cats who had
first-born? God killed kittens. (Numbers
16:41-49)
8) Killing a Dude for
Not Making More Babies
So you’re a dude named Onan and you have a brother named Er.
God does not care for Er, and kills him. Standard God operating procedure. Then
things gets weird. Onan’s dad orders Onan to have sex with Er’s wife — not
marry, by the way, just have sex with. This is actually pretty awkward for
Onan, sleeping with his sister-in-law, and rather than give her any more kids
(she had two with Er already) he pulls out. God is so infuriated that Onan did
not fuck his sister-in-law to completion that he kills him, too. Now, you could
argue that God demands that intercourse be used specifically for procreation,
but given how much God loves killing babies and children, I don’t think his motives here are exceptionally pure. (Genesis 38:1-10)
9) Helping Samson
Murder People to Pay Off a Bet
More evidence that God is possibly a low-level mobster: When
his pal Samson got married, he was given 30 friends, and he posed them (a
completely insane) riddle. Then he made a bet that if they could solve it in a week, Samson would give them all new clothes, but if they couldn’t they would give
Samson 30 pairs of new clothes. Well, Samson’s wife wheedled the answer out of
him and then told these dudes, at which point an angry Samson had to pay up. And
here’s where God comes in — literally, into Samson, giving him the power to
murder 30 random people for their clothes. Only a true friend would help you
commit mass murder to settle a completely stupid bet. (Judges 14:1-19)
10) Trying to Wrestle
a Guy, Cheating, and Still Losing
And here’s more evidence that God is a drunk maniac: Jacob
was traveling with his two wives, his 11 kids, and all his earthly possessions
and had sent them across a river. At that moment, a guy essentially leapt out
of the bushes and started wrestling. It’s God! They wrestle all night, and God
cannot beat Jacob, so he uses his magic God powers to wrench Jacob’s hip out of
its socket. But Jacob still won’t let him out of a headlock until God blesses him,
because Jacob has figured out who this bizarre man is. God blesses him and wanders
off, presumably to go get in a bar fight somewhere. (Genesis 32: 22-31)
11) Killing People
for Complaining About God Killing Them
To be fair, after God freed the Israelites from Egyptian
slavery, they were extraordinarily bitchy about not instantly being in a land
of milk and honey. It got so bad that God was ready to kill all of them and let
Moses start the Jews over, although Moses managed to talk him out of it. But
one of their more sensible complaints was that Moses was lording himself over the rest
of them, which was probably true, seeing as God had given him the 10
Commandments and all that. So Moses summoned the three tribal elders who had made the
complaint to a Monday morning staff meeting, but two of them didn’t come.
Neither Moses nor God cared for that, and God opened up the grounds beneath
their people’s tents, killing both tribes (God also set fire to 250 Israelite princes
who’d made the same complaint). Having been well admonished that Moses was putting
himself above the rest of the people with God’s permission, a number of
surviving Israelites were kind of pissed that Moses and God had killed so many of their fellow people to prove a point. God responded by killing another
14,700 of them with a plague. The complaints stopped. (Numbers 16:1-49)
12) Everything He Did
to Job
Oh, Job. Other than a shit-ton of babies, no one had it
worse in the Bible than Job, who was a righteous, good-hearted man who believed in God with every fiber in his being — which is when God decides to see how
miserable he can make this dude before he gets upset. Note: This
is a result of a bet between God and Satan. Also note: The bet is God’s idea.
He’s literally just hanging out with Satan — which is kinda weird when you
think about it — when he starting bragging about how awesome Job is. Satan
points out that Job’s pretty blessed — he’s rich, he’s got a lot of kids, etc.,
and he probably wouldn’t be quite so thrilled with God if he didn’t have that
stuff. God downs his bourbon, presumably, and tells Satan he can fuck with Job
all he wants. Satan does. He kills all of Job’s children and animals, burns down
his house, destroys his wealth, and then covers him in boils. Job doesn’t not
curse God, but he does wish he’d never been born (literally) and begs God to
kill him, but no dice. This lasts a long time until finally Job wonders why a just
God would be so shitty. This is when God pops up and basically tells him.”Shut
up, I don’t have to explain anything to you.” Job, having finally done
something wrong, pleads for mercy, and God eventually gives him back animals
and children — new ones, because the old ones are still dead. Because of a bet.
That God made with Satan. For kicks. (Job 1)
