Yahweh – Jehovah
Brutal Jewish God of War
“I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create EVIL.
I the LORD do all these things.” – Isaiah 45.7.
All cultures have anthropomorphized their gods into humanoid (if sometimes grotesque) form. Were the Jews the exception? Hardly. We know precisely what the Hebrew god looked like. We are, after all, fashioned in his own likeness! “Yahweh”, in fact, is an abbreviation of the longer name, “Yahweh Sabaoth.” It means, “He who musters armies.” Thus Yahweh’s name identifies the god primarily as the military leader of the tribe. No wonder the God bequeathed to the world by the Jews turned out to be a monster.
A God in Man's Image
“The Lord is a man of war; Yahweh is his name.” – Exodus 15.3.
Yahweh was a man, no doubt looking remarkably like the bearded sage asking us to worship him.
If we believe the Bible, he has body parts: eyes and a face (‘they are not hid from my face, neither is their iniquity hid from mine eyes’ – Jeremiah 16.17); nose and a mouth (Psalms 18.8); lips, tongue and breath (Isaiah 30.27,33); loins (Ezekiel 1.27); even ‘back parts’ (Exodus 33.23). He also has several ‘human’ emotions, manly appetites, and a worrying disposition towards pathological violence.
Yahweh feels regret for his own evil (‘And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.’ – Jonah 3.10); and grief (at the wickedness of men) (‘and it grieved him at his heart’ – (Genesis 6.6). He actually gets down and wrestles with Jacob, dislocating his thigh (Genesis 32.24). He forgets (he goes on calling Jacob ‘Jacob’ even after re-naming him ‘Israel’ – Genesis 35.10, 46.2). He practises favouritism (choosing the Israelites ‘above all people’ – Exodus 19.5; but he just does not like Cain or Esau!). He holds grudges (‘I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation’ – Exodus 20.5).
For an omniscient god he is surprisingly unknowing (‘They have set up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, and I knew it not.’ – Hosea 8.4). And for an omnipotent god he has his limitations (‘The Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron.’ – Judges 1.19).
And after his creation of the world, he even has to rest from his labour (‘And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work’ – Genesis 2.2) – to the endless bemusement of pagan critics, whose own gods didn’t need to rest!
Carnivore
The most disturbing aspect of Yahweh’s humanoid personality, however, is his blood-lust. The smell of burning flesh is a ‘sweet savour unto the lord’ – so sweet, in fact, that the phrase appears in the Old Testament no fewer than twenty-three times. The butchery demanded by god is truly monumental. Believers are required to sacrifice two lambs day-by-day continuously – and that’s just for starters! Just as well Yahweh had several thousand priests to help him trough through the banquet!
Livestock bears the brunt of god’s appetite but humans could so easily get the chop from the big guy. God kills Uzzah for simply steadying the tumbling Ark (1Chronicles 13.9,10). Poor Onan was zapped for using the withdrawal method of birth control (Genesis 38.10). But such isolated vindictiveness palls in comparison with the mass killings of the Lord. When the autocratic Moses faces a rebellion led by Korah, God uses an earthquake and fire to consume two hundred and fifty rebels. When indignant sympathizers protest at the injustice, God wipes out another fourteen thousand seven hundred with a plague (Numbers 16). What a guy!
Natural Born Killers
The story of Isaac is NOT a condemnation of child sacrifice. Isaac was spared not because human sacrifice was seen to be wrong but because Isaac was the “child of promise” and needed to survive. The yarn requires the normality of human sacrifice. Abraham was praised for his willingness to appease Yahweh by killing his own son. The sham murder of Isaac (the ‘Aquedah’) was the prototype for a ‘redemptive sacrificial death’ subsequently re-worked as the crucified Jesus.
It should be noted that in the biblical text, Isaac (like Jesus) is repeatedly called “the only son” of Abraham (Genesis 22.2., 12., 16.) even though Abraham actually has another, older son, Ishmael.
Boy terrified in ritual abuse in the mountains -Yahweh cult’s ‘Test of Fear’
“God put Abraham to the test … Abraham built an altar … bound Isaac hand & foot … took the slaughtering knife to kill his son … But the angel of the Lord began calling … ‘Do not put out your hand against the boy …. for now I know that you fear the Lord …’ (Genesis 22.1,12)
God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.
(Genesis 22.2)
Girl Not So Lucky – Religious Fanatic Sacrifices Virgin Daughter
“I will give to the LORD the first thing coming out of my house to greet me when I return in triumph. I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering … her father kept his vow, and she died a virgin.”
Prostitute’s son Jephthah, in victory vow with God, makes burnt offering of only daughter. (Judges 11.29,39)
Saul loses out:
“You didn’t kill enough,” says the Lord. “You can’t be king!”
“And Saul defeated the Amalekites … and devoted to destruction all the people … But Saul spared Agag and … all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction.
And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” … Then Samuel said, “Bring here to me Agag the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him cheerfully … And Samuel hacked Agag to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal. And the LORD regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.“
– 1 Samuel 15
When the Lord says kill everyone He means EVERYONE!
Girl Not So Lucky – Religious Fanatic Sacrifices Virgin Daughter
“And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand … Then Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they killed ten thousand men at Bezek.”
– Judges 1.2-4.
The LORD delivers 10,000 Canaanites and Perizzites for slaughter in Bezek. As part of the fun 71 kings have their thumbs and big toes cut off.
(Judges 1.2,7)
“And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said … fear not … she covered him with a mantle … and gave him drink, and covered him … Then Jael took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.”
Female fan of Yahweh drives tent peg into head of sleeping Canaanite general.
(Judges 4.21)
Elisha orders the assassination of Jezebel.
(2 Kings 9,5,37)
Joshua Slaughters 31 kings
(Joshua 12.1,24)
Elijah Murders 450 Priests of Baal.
(1 Kings 18.40)
Samson Slays 1000 Philistines (with an ass’s jawbone! )
(Judges 15.16)
King Amaziah of Judah (c. 801–783 BC) throws 10,000 captive Edomites from the top of a rock.
(2 Chronicles 25.12)
“Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, slay them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword; and the guard and the captains cast them out, and went to the city of the house of Baal. And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them.” (2 Kings 10,26)
Usurper Jehu tricks all the priests of Baal into temple slaughter.
(2 Kings 10.19.30)
God was delighted with the massacre:
“And the LORD said unto Jehu, Because thou hast done well in executing right in mine eyes, hast done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the 4th generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.”
In Joshua’s (supposed) wars of conquest, God gets right in there. He throws down ‘great stones from heaven’ (Joshua 10.11) and scores a better body-count than his Israelites with mere swords. When the Lord gets up a real head of steam the slaughter reaches a truly epic scale. For merely looking into his Ark, Yahweh wipes out fifty thousand and seventy unfortunate men of Bethshemesh (1 Samuel 6.19). When King David slips up and orders a national census, an enraged God zaps seventy thousand.
Quite apart from the celestial superman’s own killing, he animates his favourites into wiping out whole cities and nations. Jericho, Sodom, Gomorrah, Ai, Makkedah, Libnah etc., etc., are ‘smote and consumed’ – men, women, young, old, ox, sheep and ass!
‘You shall annihilate them – Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites – as Yahweh your God commanded you.’
– Deuteronomy 20.11,18.
In the largest single god-inspired massacre in the Bible, one million Ethiopians are slaughtered! (2 Chronicles 14).
But then we have been warned!
Terrorism
All this carnage, of course, is allegorical, albeit that certain stories may have a tenuous link with an ancient skirmish somewhere. The point is to terrify people into obedience of the priesthood.
‘Moses’ is an archetypal ‘wise priest’, who rules with a rod of iron and brooks no opposition.
‘Take heed’ is the warning. ‘Look what happens when you disobey the word of the Lord!’
10 Commandments? Intolerance writ large
Despite the apparent early date for Moses and his commandments, it is really only in the post-Babylonian period that we can speak of ‘Mosaic’ Judaism, when a priestly caste and a fantasy history of race origins are in place. It is only after the Babylonian experience that the Jews adopted a monotheistic religion, with Yahweh as sole god, not merely as chief god. And with this single ‘jealous’ god, the priests imposed a rigid liturgical year, a regimen in which readings from the Torah (Genesis through to Deuteronomy) were to be read successively and completed within the year.
By the closing years of the 6th century BC the priesthood had codified their tribal rules, and were writing with all the authority of their singular deity.
The famed ‘Ten Commandments’ – even today erroneously accepted in the popular mind as absolute and universal rules to live by – are nothing other than a codification of Jewish male property rights.
In their original full versions, two of the commandments endorse slavery; the taboo on adultery was an attempt to stop polygamous Jewish males taking each others wives (‘foreign’ concubines and wives had no rights); the ‘honour’ to be accorded parents merely endorsed a draconian patriarchal social structure; even the taboo on murder was open to interpretation, since the slaying of enemies and wrong-doers would not be ‘murder’ but the Lord’s will!
Here was intolerance writ large. No spirit of ‘live and let live.’ In essentials, these barbarous ‘Laws’ ratified the correctness of annihilating enemies, the subjugation of women, the enslavement of conquered tribes, the suppression of dissent and the curtailment of any liberality, especially relating to the body or sexuality.
The priests of other cults were to be murdered; their ‘altars, images and groves’ to be destroyed (Exodus 34.13).
Libidinous ‘foreign’ women were a particular cause for concern (just look how Delilah had brought Samson down by cutting his strength-giving hair!) – and ‘foreign’ in this context meant from a town a whole 25 miles from Jerusalem!
Captured war-brides were to have their head shaved (Deuteronomy 21.14) but otherwise could ‘give delight.’ However Jewishness could only be inherited from a Jewish female. The stress was upon racial purity and in the real politic of the 6th century, even the original Jewish ‘people of the land’ were summarily excluded from ‘the Jewish race.’
Subsequently, Jewish numbers grew rapidly. Neighbouring tribes were conquered and forcibly converted to the Yahweh cult! They were made part of the ‘Jewish race’ – and were circumcised accordingly – giving the lie to the latter-day notion that circumcision had something to do with ‘health’!
In fact, the Bible tells us that circumcision is purely symbolic and that the obligation extended to purchased slaves. We are led to believe that ‘the LORD appeared to Abram’ (who was ninety nine years old at the time!) and (of all possibilities) told him:
“And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you … He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.“
– Genesis 17.11,14.
Thus, for the Jews, ‘race’ was determined by one’s mother and/or forced genital mutilation, unless that is, political expediency stepped in and required otherwise!
Having thus ‘defined’ their race in a conveniently flexible way, Jewish hostility to marriage outside the cult, fussy dietary laws, and generations of inter-breeding, protected the Jewish gene-pool. Certain physiological traits may have become pronounced, though hardly unique. By the time Greek civilization advanced across the eastern Mediterranean, the Jews were an in-bred cult of several generations, a ‘pseudo-race’, possessors of a sacred text of racial superiority.
Where Did They Get Their Ideas From?
Of Coming Forth by Light
(aka Egyptian “Book of the Dead”)
(aka Egyptian “Book of the Dead”)
On Transformation (Chapter 125)
Greetings to you, High God, Master of the two Maats! I came to you, my Master, to see your perfection. I know you and I know the name of the two Maats. Here I have now come to you and have brought what is just and have chased iniquity away.
– I have not committed iniquity against men,
– I have not mistreated people,
– I committed no sins in the Place of Truth,
– I have done no harm,
– I did not “blaspheme” God,
– I did not impoverish the poor in their belongings,
– I did not do what is abominable to the gods,
– I have not afflicted and made the people weep,
– I have not starved anyone (but have fed instead),
– I did not kill or order killings,
– I have harmed no one,
– I did not soil the gods’ bread,
– I did not steal the holy wafers belonging to the fortunate ones (of the sky),
– I was not a pederast,
– I did not Reduce my bushel, (my scales were fair),
– I did not add to the weight of my scales,
– I did not cheat on the measurement of lands,
– I did not steal milk from the mouths of small children,
– I did not deprive cattle of its pasture,
– I did not steal the gods’ birds and fish,
– I did not divert water when there was a flood,
– I did not put out a fire which burned brightly,
– I did not forget the days for offering meat,
– I did not oppose a god during a procession,
I am pure, I am pure, I am pure! My purity is that of the Grand Phoenix at Heracleopolis, as I am the nose of the Master of the winds who makes all men live in this, the day of the Filling of the Eye at Heliopolis.
16th-24th century BC (Trans. E. A. Wallis Budge)
Sources:
- Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (Phoenix Grant, 1987)
- Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew (Harper Collins,1992)
- Henry Hart Milman, The History of the Jews (Everyman, 1939)
- Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion (Pluto, 1994)
- Josephus, The Jewish War (Penguin, 1959)
- Leslie Houlden (Ed.), Judaism & Christianity (Routledge, 1988)
- Karen Armstrong, A History of Jerusalem (Harper Collins, 1999)
- Jonathan N. Tubb, Canaanites (British Museum Press, 1998)
- Norman Cantor, The Sacred Chain – A History of the Jews (HarperCollins, 1994)
- Thomas L. Thompson, The Bible in History (Pimlico, 2000)
Related Articles:
Virgins saved for later use
“Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.”
Numbers 31.17,18
Moses flies into a rage because his returning Israelite war party has slaughtered only the adult male Midianites!
Uzzah learns the hard way to keep his hands to himself
“At that Jehovah’s anger blazed against Uzzah so that he struck him down because he had thrust his hand upon the ark, and he died there before God.”
(1Chronicles 13.9,10)
Korah finds no democracy in Israel – Rebels consumed by earth, fire, plague
“But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD.
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment …” (Numbers 16.41,45)
Run for Your lives!
“And as the ark set out Moses would say, Arise, O Yahweh, may your enemies be scattered and those who hate you run for their lives before you!’ “
– Numbers 10:35,36.
Gross
”The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals.
It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths.”
–Steve Allen (Bible Religion & Morality)
Who Jew?
According to Israeli law a person is considered ‘Jewish’ if his/her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother were Jewesses by religion; or if the person has converted to Judaism in a way satisfactory to the Israeli authorities.
According to post-Talmudic rabbinic law the conversion of a non-Jew to Judaism requires that conversion is performed by authorised rabbis in a ‘proper manner’ – which entails for females, their inspection by three rabbis while ‘naked in a bath of purification’!
Eye-full of purity
Racial Purity
“We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and Jewish race…
For only he who honors his own breed and his own blood can have an attitude of honor towards the national will of other nations.”
Dr Joachim Prinz, vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress (Wir Juden, 1934, pp 150-1) quoted by Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion)
The Bible: A Manual for Genocide?
A Good Book? ” Happy the one who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock! “
— Psalm 137.9.
God’s work?
Charred remains of baby girl, partially eaten by dogs.
A victim of the Israeli assault on Gaza
A loving God?
“I Yahweh will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the distress with which their enemies and those who seek their life will distress them.”
– Jeremiah 19.9.
Is God hung up on sex or just barking mad?
“If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”
– Deuteronomy 25.11-12.
