Bad Theology

Text for today: Deuteronomy 7 i-xii

Speaking through Moses before the invasion of Canaan, God orders the Hebrews to destroy the inhabitants utterly, to make no pacts and show no mercy, and not to permit their children any intermarriage with the natives, lest the sons of the master race should be turned towards other gods and thereby inconvenience their Father by obliging Him to destroy His chosen people. God reminds the Hebrews that they are His favourite toy, though not because they went forth and multiplied more efficiently than anyone else. He also reminds them of the exodus from Egypt, and repeatedly states that He will destroy those who hate Him.

As in many cases less divine and meritorious than His own, the Father's concern with racial purity is shown to be rooted in His personal insecurities. The only way in which He can hope to maintain control over His wayward children is by denying them all knowledge of other cultures and other gods; and as befits the god of empires He seems particularly worried that such forbidden wisdom will be transmitted through the wiles of exotic foreign females. Immediately afterwards, God invokes with paternal insouciance the presumably privileged status of the Hebrews as His "treasured possession," despite their chronic dearth of offspring. Not for the first time, God makes mention of the exodus from Egypt, which He personally delayed in order to demonstrate His own power. It is doubtless in a similar spirit that He speaks of His steadfast love, while in the same breath thrice proclaiming that He will break any toy that displeases Him.