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God Behaving Badly By Lamb

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In his book God Behaving Badly David Lamb examines difficult texts in the Old Testament and tries to answer the hard questions that arise from those readings. In my own examination of Lamb’s God Behaving Badly I will look at a few of the- questions and difficult texts that I found most interesting. Specifically, I will examine Lamb’s response to God 's anger, apparent lack of concern for race and genocide, and violence in the Old Testament, and I will offer my own response.
The first question that Lamb raises is if God’s anger in the Old Testament is justifiable. In other words, can God be concerned with Love and still kill people in his anger? Lamb argues that God 's anger, although sometimes extreme is justified and necessary. To prove his point, Lamb uses the story of Uzzah (2 Sam. 6:1-8). In this story, King David recovered the Ark of The Covenant and paraded it throughout Israel in the back of an ox cart. In front of a large crowd of Israelites the Ark became unstable and Uzzah reached out to steady it, because of this God killed Uzzah instantly. At first this seems completely unjustified, it looks as though Uzzah was just protecting the Ark. But, the more we look into God’s motives, the more it makes sense. First, God commanded the Israelites to carry the Ark by two long poles that attach to the side of the Ark, and he was very clear about this. Second, by killing Uzzah in front of all of these people, God sent a message that said his laws shall not be disobeyed. It

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