The Relationship between God and Humans in the Old Testament

How will these resources help you?

Students often struggle to reconcile the idea of an omnibenevolent God with the seemingly violent and capricious deity of the Old Testament. This is understandable – one only has to study stories such as the Flood, the plagues of Egypt and the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah to gain an insight into the power and destruction God is capable of. In fact, over the entirety of the Old Testament, God is either directly responsible for or endorses over two million deaths. Therefore, the relationship between humanity and God seems tumultuous. The resources below help to set out the journey clearly – particularly if teaching from a Christian perspective – as the God of the Old Testament should not be dismissed as simply ‘vengeful’ or less compassionate than God in the form of Jesus. Rather, there are themes to be revisited and questions of how to interpret these Old Testament stories that encourage us to constantly question our own ideals and how we would expect God to relate to His creation.