[I wrote this in 2021. At that time I was still a Christian in Taiwan. The ideas presented here were the beginning of the cognitive cracks that eventaully led me to re-think my faith]
I am continually on a journey of wrestling with the Scriptures. That is both exciting but also terrifying.
I was raised with an ingrained impulse to make the Biblical texts fit together. The rationale for this impulse was the theological premise that if the Spirit of God inspired the Scriptures, they all must ultimately speak with one unifying voice. God does not lie, nor contradict. This is not a bad impulse to have if it’s true. However, the more I studied the Bible, the more I couldn’t escape the reality that the at various times, the various authors of the biblical texts simply believed and said radically different and contradictory things at times. There appears to be an inspired plurality of perspectives in the Biblical texts. Sometimes, these perspectives are actaully contradictory. I see this phenomenon as differerent “prophetic perspectives” within the Bible.
I will show these differing “prophetic perspectives” most clearly in two examples: (1) Jeremiah’s vs. Ezekiel’s contradictory perspectives on God’s view of child sacrifice and (2) Kings’ vs. Hosea’s differing perspectives on Jehu’s slaughter of the Omride dynasty in the 9th century BCE.
Case Study 1:
Did God command child sacrifice or not? Jeremiah vs. Ezekiel
Did Yahweh command child sacrifice or not?
You might think the answer to that question is blindingly obvious (especially if your theology taught you to view God as a deity who could and would never condone such an action), but it seems that different prophets had very different answers to that question. We shall see this with two contemporary prophets of the 6th century: Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
First, in Jeremiah 7:30-31, we see the prophet aflame with the furry of Yahweh proclaiming:
“For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight…and they go on building the high place of Topheth which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” (Jer 7:30-31)
This prophetic condemnation from Jeremiah’s mouth is pretty standard. But what I observe is how Jeremiah overtly emphasized that Yahweh had never commanded this, nor did it ever come into his mind! This emphasis is so crucial that Jeremiah repeats it in two other oracles:
“…they have gone on building high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire …which I did not command or decree, nor did it enter my mind!” (Jer 19:5)
“They built high places to Baal…to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind…causing Judah to sin.” (Jer 32:35)
Why would Jeremiah have to emphasize that God never commanded child sacrifice so passionately and repeatedly? Simple: he was reacting to a specific situation in 6th century in Judah. The evidence suggests that a sizeable enough group of ancient Judeans shared the assumption that God had commanded Israel to sacrifice their children. For these Judeans and their vision of Judah’s past, child sacrifice wasn’t a perverse Canaanite practice brought in from outside – it was a ritual that Yahweh himself had endorsed.
Jacob Milgrom draws out the same conclusion from the prohibition in Lev 20:2-3 where those who sacrificed their children to Molek “invoked Yahweh’s name, under the erroneous impression that Yahweh sanctions (or even commands) Molek worship.” (Milgrom, Leviticus: A Continental Commentary, pg. 246)
In sum, in the late 7th and early 6th centuries, a sizeable group of Judahites beleived that God had commanded Israel to sacrifice their children. Jeremiah’s response was clear: God had not commanded such a thing. These people were mistaken.
Now things get interesting when we turn to the prophet Ezekiel, because while Ezekiel agrees that child sacrifice was an abominable, defiling practice, he surprisingly says that, contrary to Jeremiah, Yahweh had indeed commanded it!
We see this in Ezekiel 20 where Ezekiel re-tells Israel’s exodus from Egypt. At that time, God “gave Israel statutes and ordinances (the Torah), by which everyone shall live!” (Ezek 20:11). This theme is repeated three times in the text (20:11, 13, 21). But according to Ezekiel, Israel rebelled against these good commandments, and as a result, Yahweh did something radically different: he gave them commandments in order to defile them. These commandments involved child sacrifice.
“I (Yahweh) swore that I would scatter Israel because…they had rejected my statutes. Moreover, I gave them statues that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD.” (Ezek 20:23-26)
This is a profoundly difficult verse, but it appears Ezekiel was actively confirming the shared Judean assumption that God had indeed commanded Israel to sacrifice their children. While some Christian scholars have given some explanatory interpretations for this passage [see footnote 1, 2], I find the more straightforward interpretation of other sachoalrs more convincing: According to Ezekiel, the Judeans were correct–God had commanded them to sacrifice their sons to him, but he did so as a means of defiling them to the point of justifying divine judgment.
No matter what you do with that theologically, my main point is this: Jeremiah and Ezekiel fundamentally disagree on something rather important! Both prophets were ablaze with the Spirit of Yahweh, but both had radically different prophetic perspectives on something.
Can these prophets be harmonized? I don’t think so. They appear to just have different prophetic perspectives.
Case Study 2:
Jehu’s Slaughter of the Omride Dynasty, Good or Bad? Kings vs. Hosea
This next case study involves how the author(s) of Kings and the prophet Hosea) had two radically different assessments of the same past event: the general Jehu’s slaughter of the Omride dynasty.
So first, let’s talk Omrides.
The Omride Dynasty was a powerful and prosperous dynasty in northern Israel that reigned from c. 885-841 BC. Their forty year dynastic rule was abruptly ended when an Israelite general named Jehu rode into the city of Jezreel (remember this city name!) and slaughtered the reigning Omride king (2 Kgs 9:24) and all reminaing dynastic descendants (2 Kgs 10:7, 17) in 841 BCE. Jehu subseuqnetly established the Nimshide Dynasty which held power in the North from 841-752 BC.
Slaughtering a whole dynasty is a messy business, but the pressing question that prophets sought to answer was whether this slaugther was good or bad? Was it blessed by Yahweh or deserving of his judgment? Well, it depends on what prophet you ask.
Let’s turn to the prophetic community who wrote 1 and 2 Kings that details this event in detail.
Scholars have long recognized that the book of Kings wasn’t just a natural history, but a prophetic perspective on history. Thus, the author(s) of Kings gave God’s point of view on Juhu slaughter of the Omride Dynasty. In Kings, the slaughter was God-ordained and blessed by Yahweh. The book of Kings already had a bias aginst the Omrides from the outset.
In the narrative, when Elisha anointed the general Jehu he said:
“Elisha said, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, I anoint you, Jehu, king … and you shall strike down the house of Ahab (the Omride dynasty), so that I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets…the whole house of Ahab (the Omrides) shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel.’” (2 Kgs 9:6-8)
So, for Kings, the slaughter of the Omrides was God-ordained. In fact, the slaughter was God’s righteous judgment on the Omrides for murdering the prophets.
But when we turn to the prophet Hosea, the perspective is completely opposite. In the 8th century, Hosea was commanded to give names to his children that were laden with prophetic meaning. The first of these children was named Jezreel (the name of the city Jehu slaughtered the Omrides in). God explains the meaning as follows:
“And Yahweh said to him, ‘Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu (the Nimshides) for the blood of Jezreel…and on that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.” (Hosea 1:4-5)
Wait a second, if you only had Kings in front of you, you’d assum God had instructed Jehu to slaughter the Omrides. Why is God now judging the Nimshide dynasty for their forefather Jehu doing exactly this? Some commentators suggest God wasn’t judging Jehu for slaughtering the Omrides, but for going too far with his bloody rampage. As nice as this sounds, I udon’t think it’s the most natural reading of the text [see footnote 3], and speaks more to an apologetical impulse to soften the edges of uncomfortable contradictions.
It simply appears prophets and different perspectives on the same event: for Kings, the slaughter was God-ordained, for Hosea, it was deserving of God’s judgment. I struggle to harmonize these two perspectives. To do so would dishonor both texts and force them to fit my theological a priori. I suggest we see here again two different prophetic perspectives.
Conclusion: Letting the Bible be the Bible in its inherent plurality?
I am not always certain where to go from here, but I really can’t get away from these two examples that I’ve shared above. I observe other examples of similar contraditions between different authors, such as inherent plurality working itself out in the post-exilic Jewish community in Palestine wrestled with what to do with the Gentiles (non-Jews). One group, epitomized in figures like Ezra and Nehemiah and the author of their histories, pushed for greater ethnocentrism away from including the Gentiles (e.g. Ezra commanding a mass divorce from foreign wives, Ezra 10). Another group of Jews pushed for a greater inclusion of foreigners (see Ruth and Jonah, and prophets like Zechariah, see Zech 8:23).
And both groups had their prophetic support: the “exclusive group” likely leaned back on Ezekiel’s vision of the Zadokite priesthood being those exclusively permited to serve in the new temple (Ezekiel 44:15-16), while the “inclusive group” likely found inspriation in Isaiah’s vision of far-off foreigners(!) coming from distant lands to serve as priests (Is 66:18-21). Two different prophetic visions of the future–different “prophetic perspectives” on Yahweh’s plan for the temple and the foreigner.
So, where does this leave me?
These days, I feel comfortable allowing a plurality of perspectives to be part of the symphony of revelation which the church has inherited in the Scriptures – a plurality of perspectives that should lead us to Jesus. I take comfort that the Jesus we know comes to us preserved not in one unified story, but in a pluralistic tradition of four gospels that don’t always agree (did Jesus heal the blind man before entering Jericho, Luke 18:35, or after leaving Jericho, Marl 10:46? Well depends on which gospel you read, and both can’t be right historically.)
Plurality of perspectives is inherent within the church’s presentation of Jesus. I don’t think that should scare us.
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[Footnote 1] Christians in history have had different ways of trying to mitigate this problematic verse: For some, Yahweh gave Torah as a punishment. Irenaeus suggested Torah was given to bring Israel into slavery. For Old Testament scholar, John Walton, the “statutes that were not good” were “God’s judicial decisions regarding Israel [in response to rebellion to the covenant], which were not favorable to the unfaithful Israelites and were not done for their good” (Walton, The Lost World of Torah, 137-8).
[Footnote 2] Other scholars interpret the passage as not God giving the commandments, but as God “giving them over to” statutes that were not good. They write that God giving Israel “statutes that were not good” means “that Israel would choose to live according to the world’s ordinances that brought misery and death.” (IVP Bible Commentary: Ezekiel, pg. 171)
[Footnote 3] One commentary states: “although Jehu had done well in carrying out God’s directive, he had sinned in killing more people than God had intended. Jehu had probably done this more out of a desire for personal advancement than obedience to God.” (IVP Commentary: Hosea, pg. 61). I used to believe this, but I find it unconvincing in favor of a more straightforward reading of the text. While it is true that Jehu killed others in his rampage, most notably the Judean king Ahaziah (2 Kgs 9:27), he didn’t kill Ahaziah in Jezreel, but on the way to Beth-haggan at the ascent of Gur (2 Kgs 9:27). If not the Omrides but just Ahaziah was in view, why would Hosea specify the “blood of Jezreel” if it should really be “the blood of Gur”? Also, we should remember that Hosea was speaking to Israel, not Judah! For these Northern Israelites Hosea was speaking to, if they heard about Jehu’s dynasty being judged for “the blood of Jezreel,” the most natural conclusion would have been the slaughter of the Omrides, not the killing of another nation’s king (Ahaziah). If Hosea was wanting to make that obscure connection clear (negate from the most obvious conclusion to the more obscure one), he really should have specified more detail, especially since the Israelites didn’t have the book of 1-2 Kings to help them realize God had blessed Jehu in this. Therefore, I think it most natural to assume Hosea is referring to Jehu’s slaughter of the Omrides, not King Ahaziah of Judah.
Theological Musings of a Thirty-Something 
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