The Bible underneath it

Slavery, Genocide, and the Moral Problem

The Church teaches that Jehovah is Jesus. Then read what the Old Testament says Jehovah ordered, what he did, and who he left outside.

The point in one sentence

The Church teaches that the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, is Jesus Christ, and that he is perfectly merciful and perfectly just. The Old Testament says Jehovah told Israel to buy foreigners as slaves and keep them for ever, to save alive nothing that breathes in seven nations, and to shut a neighboring nation out of his assembly for ten generations. Those two things cannot both be true of one person.

The world these texts came from

Start with what a fair reader should concede, because it is real. The Church’s own manual on this subject says it first: “People in that time endured a more violent existence than many modern people can comprehend.” Slavery, conquest, and gods who ordered both were not an Israelite invention. They were the furniture of the whole region.

Centuries before Israel had kings, Hammurabi, king of Babylon, had a law code carved in stone (c. 1753 BC), and it already regulated slavery. Its law 117 limited debt slavery: “they shall work for three years in the house of the man who bought them, or the proprietor, and in the fourth year they shall be set free.” Its law 199 priced a slave’s eye or bone at half his value: “If he put out the eye of a man’s slave, or break the bone of a man’s slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.” Around 840 BCE a Moabite king carved on stone that his god Chemosh told him which Israelite city to take, and that he devoted its people to the god.

Set beside that background, some Israelite law is milder and some is not. Exodus 21:26-27 frees a servant whose eye or tooth a master destroys, where Hammurabi’s law 199 charges only half the slave’s value. But Hammurabi’s law 14 also makes stealing a man’s son a capital crime, and law 117 frees a Babylonian debtor and his family after three years, where Exodus 21:2 asks six. That is the best case for the context, and it is made in full here.

The way believers have read these same texts also matters. In 1856 a Virginia Baptist pastor, Thornton Stringfellow, published Scriptural and Statistical Views in Favor of Slavery. According to PBS, he argued that slavery had God’s sanction in the Patriarchal Age, that Christ never prohibited it but regulated its duties, and that it brought mercy to the heathens. PBS adds that views like his were “common in many southern churches.” They could point to the verses below. These verses were used to defend owning people.

What the Church says about who gave these commands

Everything below depends on one claim, so here it is in the Church’s own words.

Many other Christians read John 8:58 (“Before Abraham was, I am,” John 8:58) and 1 Corinthians 10:4 (“that Rock was Christ,” said of Israel in the wilderness, 1 Corinthians 10:4) as saying Jesus was already there in the Old Testament. They do not all say the LORD of the Old Testament was the Son alone, but the Church does.

The exhibits

Each verse is the King James text, with the sentences around it. Leviticus 25 opens with the LORD speaking to Moses, and 1 Samuel 15:2 begins “Thus saith the LORD of hosts.” Deuteronomy is Moses speaking to Israel, but it ties its commands to the LORD: “as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee” (20:17), and “from following me” (7:4). Where a command is Moses’s own, the page says so.

Slavery

Killing whole peoples

Deuteronomy 20:17 says “utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.” Destroying whole peoples is what the word genocide means.

What the text says God did himself

These are not commands to an army. The text says God did them, or sent the thing that did.

The chosen and everyone else

The same book draws a line around who is inside.

Ruth, the Moabite

Now read the Bible’s own counterpoint, because it is the best thing on the other side. Ruth 1:4 says the two sons of an Israelite family “took them wives of the women of Moab; the name of the one was Orpah, and the name of the other Ruth.” Ruth tells her widowed mother-in-law, “thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (1:16), and later asks Boaz, “Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?” (2:10). Boaz marries her. The book ends:

The ban was still read as the law after the exile. Nehemiah 13:1 says the people read in the book of Moses “that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever,” and 13:23 records Jews who had “married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab.” In Ezra 10:3 there is a covenant “to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them,” though that verse does not name Moab. In Nehemiah 13:25 the governor reports, “I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair.” Those are men acting on the law, not the LORD speaking, and the text does not call the beatings a divine order.

The New Testament has its own awkward case. A woman of Canaan asks Jesus to heal her daughter. At first “he answered her not a word” (Matthew 15:23). Then he says, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” She worships him and asks again, “Lord, help me,” and he says, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” She answers, “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table,” and he replies, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour” (Matthew 15:24-28). The text never says he was testing her. It says he ignored her, said he was sent only to Israel, and said it was not right to give the children’s bread to dogs. He changed his answer only after she accepted the word “dogs.”

Women in the law

You were probably taught that Jesus lifted up women. He did: Mary “sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word,” and he said she “hath chosen that good part” (Luke 10:39, 42). A woman was first to see him risen, and he sent her to tell the others (John 20:16-18). The Church teaches that this Jesus is the Jehovah who gave the laws below.

First, who speaks. Leviticus 12 and Numbers 5 open “the LORD spake unto Moses” (12:1, 5:11). Numbers 30 is Moses relaying “the thing which the LORD hath commanded” (30:1, 30:16). Deuteronomy is Moses speaking “according unto all that the LORD had given him in commandment” (1:1, 1:3), so Moses is the speaker of 21:10-14 and 22:28-29.

The believing answers are real. Numbers 5 frees an innocent wife (5:28). Deuteronomy 21:14 bans selling the captive, and 22:25-26 spares the victim and kills the attacker. Many believers read 22:29 as protection: the father is paid and the man cannot divorce her. All of it sits in an ancient world, and Jesus plainly treated women as people.

What they leave standing. They explain why the laws look as they do. They do not make them a perfect God’s. A girl’s birth counts as twice the uncleanness of a boy’s. A man’s vow stands; a woman’s can be cancelled by a man. Numbers 5 has no ordeal for a husband. The Church says Jesus gave these laws, and Hebrews 13:8 says he is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Either his own law valued women below men, or the law was not his.

The command and the sermon, side by side

Matthew 5:43 is the saying Jesus sets aside, not his own teaching. It is also not Deuteronomy 7:2, which is a rule about war with seven named nations, not about personal enemies. What the Church’s teaching adds is that the speaker in the left column and the speaker in the right column are one person, and Hebrews 13:8 says of him: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

The visual breakdown: the command, the verse, the usual answer

Every row is a command or an act the text gives to God’s voice or hand, except where marked. The right-hand column is what believers most often say about it.

What is true on the other side

This is the believing position as believers hold it, at full strength, with where each one stops.

“God revealed himself gradually, and Jesus is the fuller revelation.” Jesus himself says something like this about divorce: “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8). The Church’s manual makes a version of it for violence: “While the Lord sometimes commanded the Israelites to go to battle, this was the exception rather than the rule.” If some of the Old Testament’s laws were concessions, then the harsher verses are the weaker ones. Where this stops working: the teaching that Jehovah is Jesus. If the speaker was Jesus and the laws were concessions to hardness of heart, then slavery “for ever” and the destruction of infants were what he allowed, and Hebrews 13:8 says he does not change. The text also does not mark which verses are wishes and which are concessions; that sorting is done afterward by the reader.

“It was the ancient world, and God met people where they were.” The Hammurabi and Mesha comparisons are real, and Exodus 21:26-27 really is milder than Hammurabi’s law 199. Where it stops working: this shows why the laws look the way they do. It does not show they came from a perfectly good God. The Church’s claim is not that Israel was a bit better than Babylon but that its God is perfect.

“The giver of life may take it.” If God creates and sustains every life, the word “murder” may not apply to him, and the Church’s manual takes this line when it quotes President Oaks: “God’s anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love.” Where it stops working: it is an argument that he has the right, and the claim in question is that he is perfectly good. If any killing is allowed because he gave life, then nothing he does could ever count against him, and his goodness is just something we are told.

“The Canaanites had rejected every word of God, and God waited for centuries.” This is the Church’s strongest specific reply, from Genesis 15:16 (“the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full”), 1 Nephi 17:35 (“this people had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity”), and the manual: the conquest was “a response to generations of rebellion against God.” The manual says this about the people of Noah’s day, who “had the opportunity to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ” in the spirit world. Where it stops working: the commands name infants and livestock. Deuteronomy 24:16 sets a rule for punishment: “neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” The Bible then tells Saul to kill Amalek’s infants for what Amalek’s ancestors did on the road (1 Samuel 15:2-3). An afterlife answers what the dead lose. It does not answer what the soldiers were told to do.

“Ruth and the prophets correct the harsh laws.” Ruth, Acts 10:34 (“God is no respecter of persons”), and Galatians 3:28 (“there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free”) are real movement. The Book of Mormon goes further: “he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female... and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile” (2 Nephi 26:33). Where it stops working: people grow in how they treat others. A book written by many people over many centuries would also show that growth. But a perfect God who never changes should not need to grow.

“The Fall and agency: God let us choose, and the choices are ours.” This is the Latter-day Saint answer, and it explains why human beings do terrible things. The manual quotes Elder Neal A. Maxwell that “corruption had reached [such] an agency-destroying point that spirits could not, in justice, be sent here.” Where it stops working: agency explains why people choose evil. It does not explain a command to kill, because that comes from God, not from a person’s choice.

“Our own scriptures say the Lord does not do evil.” The Book of Mormon says “the Lord God hath commanded that men should not murder” and “none of these iniquities come of the Lord” (2 Nephi 26:32-33). Doctrine and Covenants 101:79 says “it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.” Those are the Church’s strongest lines against slavery and murder. Where it stops working: the same Book of Mormon has the Lord say “Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands; Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief” (1 Nephi 4:12-13), and Leviticus 25:46, in the Bible the Church also holds, says “they shall be your bondmen for ever.” The Church’s own scripture holds both.

The other side of the ledger

Many members picture the Old Testament as a fight between God and Satan, with Satan doing the harm. Look at who the text says did the killing. In Job 1, God tells Satan “all that he hath is in thy power” (1:12), and the messengers name Sabeans, Chaldeans, “the fire of God,” and a wind. In 1 Chronicles 21:1 Satan provokes a census, and 21:14 says the LORD sent the plague. Other verses call the devil “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44), say he had “the power of death” (Hebrews 2:14), and place Antipas’s death “where Satan dwelleth” (Revelation 2:13), but none narrates a killing. Even in Job the terms are God’s: God says Satan “movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause” (2:3). Job says “the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away” (1:21), and the last chapter calls it “all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him” (42:11).

The common rebuttals

“That was the Father, not Jesus.”

The Church’s own sentences close this. The 1916 exposition says “Jehovah, who is Jesus Christ the Son of Elohim,” and The Living Christ says “He was the Great Jehovah of the Old Testament.” In the Church’s teaching, the LORD giving these commands is Jesus, not the Father.

“God did not make Satan evil. Satan chose.”

This is the Latter-day Saint answer: Satan chose. Doctrine and Covenants 76:25 calls him “an angel of God who was in authority in the presence of God,” and 29:36 says “a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency.” That puts the blame on the choice. It does not remove “knew”: D&C 38:2 says God “knoweth all things, for all things are present before mine eyes,” and 29:39 says “it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves.” A God who knew and built a world that needed a tempter is part of the story, even if he did not make the tempter. And none of it touches Leviticus 25 or 1 Samuel 15, where Satan is not in the verse.

“You are judging the Old Testament by modern standards.”

Mostly yes, and the context section above grants it. But the standard is not modern. It is the Church’s own: “perfectly merciful and perfectly just,” the same Jesus who said “love your enemies.” A claim of perfection is a claim that can be tested against any standard, including the teacher’s own sermon.

“The conquest language is ancient war rhetoric, not a literal body count.”

This is the best reply, and the Bible partly backs it: Joshua 10:40 says Joshua left none remaining, and Judges 1:21 says the Jebusites still lived in Jerusalem. Joshua 6:21 reports Jericho in the same terms (“both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword”). But the sentence in the book is still a command to kill infants (1 Samuel 15:3), and Joshua 10:40 says he destroyed all that breathed “as the LORD God of Israel commanded.” Calling it exaggeration does not change what the LORD is said to have commanded. The Church’s manual does not call it rhetoric. It says “accounts of violence in the Old Testament tell us what did happen,” and that some passages describe violence “permitted or caused by the Lord.”

What this means

You have now read the verses and the sentences around them. Leviticus 25 makes foreign slaves inherited property “for ever.” Exodus 21 lets a master off if the servant lingers a day or two. Deuteronomy 20 says to save alive nothing that breathes in seven nations, and 1 Samuel 15 names the infants. Deuteronomy 7 bars treaty, mercy, and marriage, and Deuteronomy 23 bars Moabites for ten generations. The text also has God, in its own account, drown the world, kill Egypt’s firstborn, strike down a man who steadied the ark, and send seventy thousand to their deaths after a census. In 1856 those same verses were used to defend owning people. The context shows that Israel’s law was milder than Babylon’s in some places and no milder in others, and Ruth and the New Testament show movement toward the outsider. Neither changes who the book says gave the commands.

The Church does not say these verses are the work of a harsher, earlier God. It says the speaker is Jesus Christ and that he has always been perfectly merciful and perfectly just.

The question was never whether ancient wars were brutal. They were. The question is whether the one who said “Love your enemies” is the same one the book says commanded “save alive nothing that breatheth.” The Church says he is. A being who did both is not perfectly merciful, and the Church says he always was.