Why God is "Angry" in the Old Testament

You don’t have to agree with me at all. I only ask that you seriously consider what I’m saying here. I didn’t start to think of this until I was reading through Exodus v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

This is about the Moses/Yahweh relationship. And I am presenting it to you basically how it came to me.

There’s a part in the “Nightmare Before Christmas” where, after trying to explain the wonder and magic of Christmas to his people, Jack Skellington gives up and gives them what they want. Essentially the same thing happened to Moses. When he tried to introduce Yahweh to the Israelites they did not want to know “him” so “he” became a personification of karma to them.

In light of my own experiences with God, and the Jesus thing, I wonder if the anger and vengeance assigned to God in the text really was “him”. I’m tempted to read that the angry vengeful harsh voice was actually Moses and that the voice of reason was God in Moses.

We only know what got reported. Could it be that the way Yahweh interacted with Moses went more like this:

God: I will tell you all these horrible things you are thinking in your stress and anger. (Wipe out the nation, etc...) 

Moses: Oh, God! Don’t do that!

God: Exactly, you “convinced” me, not because I needed you to convince me but because by “convincing” me you now understand why I won’t do all of this.

When this was presented to the people they did not understand it as Moses did because they had refused to personally know Yahweh. What they got out of it was, “Yahweh is angry and scary and Moses is protecting us from HIM.” Interestingly this was “good politics” Moses had become the gatekeeper to Yahweh. This flawed vision of God was out of Moses’ control, it would take too much energy to correct. In fact, if he did try to correct it he could have died.

So it is not that there are two Gods, one old and cranky, and one loving, or that God (Yahweh) changed it’s that human understanding began to see in a new light. What had been merged in the desert could now be separated. Yahweh became distinct from karma most strongly through the teaching of the Christ. The dawning of this new light was always present in the story it just needed a teacher who could be the light because we could not accept an abstract. We could not understand a God without skin.

In correcting our flawed vision Jesus the Christ died. Moses couldn’t do it. Moses knew he was flawed.

After Moses the only people who had a direct dialogue with Yahweh were the prophets. Not even Joshua spoke directly with “him,” he had to go through the urim and thummim thing (Num27:21). And the kings went through priests and prophets.

The prophets were receiving messages that the people didn’t want to hear. Force was the only way they knew to motivate change and so they come out sounding extreme. In a lot of ways what the prophets heard was not fully understood, not even by the prophet himself. They had been raised to believe that Yahweh was karma. Whatever learned in childhood usually remains deep and unconscious unless brought to light and the light had not come yet.

And that is why the Old Testament is the way it is.
You're welcome.