Q&A: Is the Lord a psychopath or a transcendent entity?
Is the Lord a psychopath or a transcendent entity?
Question
Hello.
I am bringing below explicit quotations from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and my question in light of these verses is: is the Lord a psychopath (according to the DSM) or a transcendent entity? And is this someone you are prepared to worship and pray to every day?
1. “And the Lord said to him: Who gives a man a mouth, or who makes one mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” (Exodus 4:11) — the Lord says that He creates the disabled.
2. God regretted making human beings and destroyed all life on the face of the earth except for the ark (Genesis 7:23).
3. “And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not send the children of Israel out of his land” (Exodus 11:10).
4. In the first place, the children of Israel were in Egypt because of the famine in the land — thanks to the Lord. “And the famine was severe in all the earth” (Genesis 42:57).
5. “And the Lord killed every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of man to the firstborn of beast” (Exodus 13:15) — the Lord murders innocent children and harmless animals.
6. “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them” (Exodus 14:4) — the Lord sends Pharaoh’s army against the people of Israel.
7. The Lord commands the children of Israel to kill one another, and they do so (Exodus 32:26–29).
8. “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Let every man put his sword on his thigh; go to and fro from gate to gate in the camp, and kill every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his relative. And about three thousand men of the people fell that day” (Exodus 32:26–29).
9. The Lord says it is permitted to beat slaves as long as they do not die — because they are property (Exodus 21:20–21).
10. “And my anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows and your children orphans” (Exodus 22:23) — the Lord threatens the people of Israel.
11. “And on the seventh day there shall be holiness for you, a Sabbath of complete rest to the Lord; whoever does work on it shall be put to death” (Exodus 35:2).
12. “And a man or a woman in whom there is a ghost or familiar spirit shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones” (Leviticus 20:27).
13. “Then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them with stones” (Deuteronomy 22:24).
14. “And the daughter of a priest, if she profanes herself by prostitution, she profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire” (Leviticus 21:9).
15. “And I will send among you the beasts of the field, and they shall bereave you, destroy your cattle, and make you few in number” (Leviticus 26:22).
16. “And I will chastise you… and you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat. And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your sun-images, and cast your carcasses… and my soul shall abhor you” (Leviticus 26:29–30).
17. “For my angel shall go before you and bring you to the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Canaanite, the Hivite and the Jebusite; and I will wipe them out” (Exodus 23:23) — the Lord orders the people of Israel to carry out genocide.
18. “Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones; and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with a male. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with a male, keep alive for yourselves” (Numbers 31:17–18) — the Lord instructs the people of Israel to commit genocide but keep the virgin girls for themselves.
19. “And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed every city — men, women, and little ones; we left no survivor. Only the cattle we took as spoil” (Deuteronomy 2:33–35) — the people of Israel murder women and children by the Lord’s command.
20. “And the Lord our God gave into our hand Og king of Bashan and all his people; and we struck him until no survivor remained” (Deuteronomy 3:2–4) — the people of Israel murder yet another people by the Lord’s command.
21. “We utterly destroyed every city — men, women, and little ones. And all the cattle and the spoil of the cities, we took for ourselves” (Deuteronomy 3:6–7).
22. “The women and the little ones and the cattle, and whatever is in the city, all its spoil, you may take for yourself; and you shall eat the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you” (Deuteronomy 20:14).
23. “From the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall not let any soul remain alive” (Deuteronomy 20:16).
24. “And they commanded them, saying: Go and strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the edge of the sword, including the women and the little ones” (Judges 21:10).
25. “And they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgin women who had not known a man by lying with a male; and they brought them to the camp” (Judges 21:12).
26. “Thus says the Lord: Now go and strike Amalek, and utterly destroy all that he has; do not spare him, but put to death man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep” (I Samuel 15:2–3).
27. “Strike; let not your eye spare, neither have pity. Old man, young man and maiden, little children and women — kill” (Ezekiel 9:5–6).
28. The Lord says that cursed is he who keeps his sword from bloodshed (Jeremiah 48:10).
29. “And because they looked into the ark of the Lord, He struck among the people seventy men, fifty thousand men; and the people mourned, because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter” (I Samuel 6:19).
30. The Lord kills David’s infant son because of David’s sins (II Samuel 12:11–15).
31. A prophet told a man to strike him, and when the man refused to obey his voice, the Lord sent a lion upon him (I Kings 20:35–36).
32. Forty-two children laughed at a bald prophet, and the Lord sent bears out of the forest that tore them to pieces (II Kings 2:23–24).
33. “Will You destroy all the remnant of Israel in pouring out Your wrath upon Jerusalem?… and the city is full of injustice, for they say: The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see” (Ezekiel 9:8–9).
34. The Lord gives Satan permission to abuse Job, the most righteous man in the world (Job 1:7ff.).
35. God gives him financial compensation later, but does not bring back the family members who died.
36. The Lord admits that He gave the people of Israel laws that were not good (Ezekiel 20:25).
37. The Lord commands parents to kill their children if they prophesy falsely (Zechariah 13:3).
38. “Because she has rebelled against her God, they shall fall by the sword; their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open” (Hosea 13:16).
39. “To pour upon them my indignation, all the heat of my anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed” (Zephaniah 3:8).
40. “Behold, the great and terrible day of the Lord comes… lest I come and strike the earth with utter destruction” (Malachi 3:23–24 / 4:5–6).
41. “Smoke went up from His nostrils, and fire from His mouth devoured; coals burned from Him” (Psalms 18:9).
42. “His flesh shall rot while he is standing on his feet, and his eyes shall rot in their sockets, and his tongue shall rot in his mouth” (Zechariah 14:12).
43. “And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples” (Zechariah 14:12).
44. “He is a jealous God; He will turn and do you harm and consume you” (Joshua 24:20).
45. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24).
46. “And the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and He will quickly destroy you” (Deuteronomy 7:4).
47. “Forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).
Thank you.
Answer
Since this is the five-hundredth time you’ve asked the same question, and it has already been answered 499 times, you’ll surely forgive me if I don’t answer it (and you’ll surely bless me in your heart for not deleting it).
Discussion on Answer
My turn soon?
A., where did you copy all those quotations from?
I wrote them out one by one.
God as a mirror. Everyone sees in God the peak of his own personality.
What a pity,
he spent hours over the whole Hebrew Bible just to “win for the 500th time”…
Can the Rabbi give a link to the answer he gave on this subject in the past?
A’, may I seriously ask you something?
Could you copy out from the Hebrew Bible all the good things too — that the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, forgiving and pardoning and abundant in doing good?
Then we can set this against that. And then we won’t need to answer your question anymore, because apparently the answer will be self-evident???
Or do you prefer to stay with your 500th victory? (And team up with Benjamin…)
Is there a link to an answer where the Rabbi responded at length etc.? I’d be interested to hear.
No, you can’t. Don’t believe psychopaths; they always present themselves as good and compassionate — that’s the secret of their charm. You should study the diagnosis of them; it fits the Lord exactly. And me personally.
V, search the site for the problem of evil (you can also arrange all the links on the site in one big list and then choose three at random. If there is no intervention by a higher power, then at least two of them will deal with the topic).
With A. himself, for example, here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D
There is no answer; this is the Rabbi’s way of trying to wear people down when the question is phrased with sources.
Suppose you’re standing behind a glass wall and all you can do is see, not hear.
And then you see two people grabbing a small child, forcibly seating him in a chair, and starting to push various instruments into his mouth.
Behind the glass it seems to you that these are psychopaths. But after you enter the room you discover that it’s the child’s father and the dentist, who had to do a somewhat painful treatment that would help the poor child.
Maybe you’re behind the glass and seeing things incorrectly?
And maybe you’re insisting on staying behind the glass because it’s comfortable for you to entrench yourself in your opinions?
Tam. Hand on heart and the other hand rubbing your chin, you’re running some sophisticated psycho-anthropological experiment here and everyone here is your lab rat, right?
By the way, for many years of my life I was around megalomaniacs and psychopaths. I was close to my yeshiva head, and he was one too. There was one person I knew who so admired and was so connected to the Hebrew Bible, with all its philology and every verse quoted together with his own interpretations and so on, and in the end I discovered why. He was a pure megalomaniac and so identified with the Lord, and that too probably created the intense connection to the Hebrew Bible that I recognized in him. Nietzsche too was a megalomaniac, and he wrote that attaching the New Testament is, in every respect, a kind of rococo of taste compared to the Old Testament.
A. I don’t know anyone I was around who was a psychopath, but megalomaniacal tendencies are, in my opinion, actually a very positive thing. Someone who believes he can crack heavy problems sits down and works on them and maybe succeeds. Someone who knows himself exactly may despair because the odds are low. Suppose the objective chance of So-and-so succeeding in proving a complicated mathematical conjecture within ten years is 3%. If he’s a megalomaniac, he thinks the chance is, say, 60%, and then he tries — and maybe the 3% will fall to his lot. Someone aware of the truth that it’s 3% may give up, and then nothing will come of it. So yes, from the person’s own perspective it may be better for him in terms of expected value to really know the truth and weigh what is more worthwhile for him, but from the standpoint of benefit to the world I think megalomaniacs are an asset. Like Maimonides’ madmen.
Not running an experiment, just presenting facts. I’m convinced the Rabbi is a wise and highly intelligent person, but in his own words he isn’t autistic because no one is perfect. I see him as Goliath, immunized and protected against almost every argument except for one tiny hole in his armor — if you hit it with a small stone, you bring him crashing to the ground. He apparently denies the science of psychology, but psychology is a factual matter that cannot be proven in a laboratory, so the laws of logic, which for him are everything in a fundamentalist way, don’t work there. And so his emotions against this person or that person receive no answer, but are pushed somewhere into that hole in the armor, and anyone who makes sure to throw stones there encounters various methods that try to conceal the breach in the armor.
His renewed views create conflicts, so A. definitely has a field day with them, and justifiably; while on the other hand his open-mindedness and tolerance cost him in dealing with the trauma of leaving Haredi society, and he is forced to swallow all their emotional frustrations too, even at the price of lowering the level of the site.
And of course he is also challenged by Haredim who feel his hatred toward them (even if he roars a thousand times that he likes them, and that it’s all substantive criticism, yeah right), totally out of proportion to any other human phenomenon, and he belittles and slanders everything holy and precious to them. This of course stems from his contrarian impulse, but mainly from an agenda or envy toward Haredi society.
A Serious Request from A’, I’ll burn you in Gehenna and fling you into the eternal slingshot — but all out of love. How wonderful that I have such a dentist; any minute now I’ll be dancing samba.
Vezach, so what if their success rates are high? What an “asset.” We’ve seen what an asset they were to humanity throughout its history.
Tam, for the first time I can say that your diagnosis interests me.
The opinion of the insulted has become Torah wisdom!
Tam, in my opinion it really is a shame there isn’t a ‘deputy administrator’ here or someone else to deal with you, and here all petitions go straight to the High Court. But that’s not really my place either. I’ll only tell you that as far as I’m concerned, either you’re running an experiment here or you’re a wondrous natural phenomenon that should be examined in a laboratory.
And that means, you won!
Don’t forget that before you (not you personally) get burned in Gehenna and flung into the slingshot, you receive strength from the Holy One, blessed be He.
The Holy One, blessed be He, keeps you alive, gives you breath, makes your heart work, makes your brain work, your 248 limbs and 365 sinews that you’re supposed to use to do His service,
and instead you go and do the opposite of His will and commit transgressions. And the Holy One, blessed be He, is slow to anger and in His mercy continues to give you strength. And you??
You keep doing whatever your heart desires.
And the Holy One, blessed be He? In His mercy He is slow to anger and continues to bestow every good thing upon you.
And you? Ah sure, you’re just playing around. And saying, “I shall walk in the stubbornness of my heart, thereby adding the watered to the thirsty.”
So what’s the complaint? So much mercy. And they dug for you a tunnel beneath the Throne of Glory. But even at the entrance of Gehenna you did not repent.
What did you want? There is judgment and there is a Judge.
But it seems to me that you (and now I mean you personally) are mixing up reward and punishment in the world to come with the Creator’s present mode of conduct.
In the parable I gave you, I meant to say that sometimes things happen that look bad, and we have no idea what good stands behind them.
If a person tries to stop a bus and the driver intentionally doesn’t stop for him, and in the end it turns out that the bus blew up in a terror attack,
then he understands that what at first appeared bad was actually the absolute good for him.
But someone standing behind the glass and only shouting, “It’s bad for me, it’s bad for me,” will remain forever with the evil. And that’s a shame.
It’s good for me! It’s good for me!
Yesss. I won 500 times.