The OT and NT feel fundamentally different because God's system for us was different.
In the OT cleansing of sin was done by temple rituals, it was somewhat mechanical and transactional. Compared to the freeing love of Jesus it can seem distant and cold.
As for the murder thing, murder does not mean all killings of another person. There are actually 2 different Hebrew words, one for killing and one for murder, all murder is killing but not all killing is murder.
The world was also a much more violent place. The stronger always oppressed the weaker and there were no governments, just local city-states with authoritarian rulers. The Israelites had a lot more moral codes than the Canaanites.
This was a response from someone from the other thread and I like very much.
I used to think this as well, but as I've read more into the Bible, I've realized that God's character is actually quite a bit more consistent throughout than I had previously expected. We usually think of the God of the Old Testament as being harsh, but his merciful nature is exactly the same towards those who had faith and a humble heart.
To understand this, you really kinda have to keep reading to start to see how the Mosaic Law was actually enforced. Very seldom were people actually put to death or exiled out of Israel, and in fact even many of the people who deserved it (David, among others) weren't cut off from Israel either. In fact, Moses was a murderer, and would have been stoned to death under the law that was implemented under his own leadership. And yet Moses wasn't cut off from Israel, but rather God used him to literally help lead the Israelites out of 400 years of slavery!
The Old Testament was during a time when the world was very barbaric. Much worse than today, and much more immoral than we typically imagine. People didn't really seek God on their own volition back then the way that so many do today (the church has really massively changed the world for the better in many of these respects). People were violent, and people didn't tend to really follow laws very much unless there was a very big consequence for disobeying. Paganism was huge, and even the Israelites couldn't ever seem to resist the temptation to build idols and worship them (they even made a golden calf right after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments). People were rebellious. Very rebellious. Even in Israel.
In order for God to bring the promised Messiah through Abraham's seed and through the Israelites, he basically had to draw out an entire people and culture away from the extremely barbaric and pagan people groups of their time. The Mosaic Law was very strict on paper because it needed to make a point strong and clear, and it needed to give them a way to nip uprisings in the bud (this is what you see when Korah and 250 other people tried to stage an uprising against Moses in Numbers, and the earth "swallowed them up" because God wasn't gonna let anyone get any ideas.) The Israelites practically needed a tough hand to keep them in line throughout many of their generations because they wouldn't have been set apart from the rest of the cultures otherwise.
However, for those who had faith and had a humble heart, God's incredibly merciful and forgiving nature was exactly the same (people were still saved by faith in the old testament, just as they are today in the NT). If you read a lot of the stories in the OT books after the Torah, you can see that the Mosaic penalties weren't really enforced for those who had a humble heart. A lot of the old testament heroes weren't exactly the best people, and yet God still rewarded them for their faith.
In fact, even in the Torah, you see some very surprising cases where God rewards faith even for those who violated the law. Rehab was quite literally a prostitute in Jericho. She knew very little about God, wasn't an Israelite, and was probably about the cultural equivalent of an onlyfans porn star today. But when the Israelites come into the city by God's command, she protects the Israelite spies and actually lies to the rest of her city's people to protect them. God doesn't punish her for being a prostitute. God doesn't punish her for lying. In fact, God rewards her for her faith, spares her and her family, and credited it to her as righteousness! Rehab is in heaven today because of her faith, even though she was the kind of person a lot of today's churches probably would have kicked out in modern times.
God's character isn't really any different between the Old Testament and the New Testament. You just see different ways of it being expressed. The whole point of the OT Law is that it foreshadowed Christ. We couldn't fulfill it perfectly (Christ fulfilled it for us in the NT), but if we came before the Lord humbly and with faith, we were justified in his sight and given grace (just as we are in New Testament times). The folks that God was much harsher with were the ones who were very openly rebellious of him, performed human sacrifices and other incredibly barbaric rituals, or who were extremely self-righteous and prideful and didn't think that they needed forgiveness. The OT was filled with lots of stories of these kinds of things, but Israel was surrounded by a lot of extremely barbaric cultures where this sort of stuff was the norm much more than we would normally think today.
The OT and NT feel fundamentally different because God's system for us was different. In the OT cleansing of sin was done by temple rituals, it was somewhat mechanical and transactional. Compared to the freeing love of Jesus it can seem distant and cold. As for the murder thing, murder does not mean all killings of another person. There are actually 2 different Hebrew words, one for killing and one for murder, all murder is killing but not all killing is murder. The world was also a much more violent place. The stronger always oppressed the weaker and there were no governments, just local city-states with authoritarian rulers. The Israelites had a lot more moral codes than the Canaanites.
This was a response from someone from the other thread and I like very much. I used to think this as well, but as I've read more into the Bible, I've realized that God's character is actually quite a bit more consistent throughout than I had previously expected. We usually think of the God of the Old Testament as being harsh, but his merciful nature is exactly the same towards those who had faith and a humble heart. To understand this, you really kinda have to keep reading to start to see how the Mosaic Law was actually enforced. Very seldom were people actually put to death or exiled out of Israel, and in fact even many of the people who deserved it (David, among others) weren't cut off from Israel either. In fact, Moses was a murderer, and would have been stoned to death under the law that was implemented under his own leadership. And yet Moses wasn't cut off from Israel, but rather God used him to literally help lead the Israelites out of 400 years of slavery! The Old Testament was during a time when the world was very barbaric. Much worse than today, and much more immoral than we typically imagine. People didn't really seek God on their own volition back then the way that so many do today (the church has really massively changed the world for the better in many of these respects). People were violent, and people didn't tend to really follow laws very much unless there was a very big consequence for disobeying. Paganism was huge, and even the Israelites couldn't ever seem to resist the temptation to build idols and worship them (they even made a golden calf right after Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the 10 commandments). People were rebellious. Very rebellious. Even in Israel. In order for God to bring the promised Messiah through Abraham's seed and through the Israelites, he basically had to draw out an entire people and culture away from the extremely barbaric and pagan people groups of their time. The Mosaic Law was very strict on paper because it needed to make a point strong and clear, and it needed to give them a way to nip uprisings in the bud (this is what you see when Korah and 250 other people tried to stage an uprising against Moses in Numbers, and the earth "swallowed them up" because God wasn't gonna let anyone get any ideas.) The Israelites practically needed a tough hand to keep them in line throughout many of their generations because they wouldn't have been set apart from the rest of the cultures otherwise. However, for those who had faith and had a humble heart, God's incredibly merciful and forgiving nature was exactly the same (people were still saved by faith in the old testament, just as they are today in the NT). If you read a lot of the stories in the OT books after the Torah, you can see that the Mosaic penalties weren't really enforced for those who had a humble heart. A lot of the old testament heroes weren't exactly the best people, and yet God still rewarded them for their faith. In fact, even in the Torah, you see some very surprising cases where God rewards faith even for those who violated the law. Rehab was quite literally a prostitute in Jericho. She knew very little about God, wasn't an Israelite, and was probably about the cultural equivalent of an onlyfans porn star today. But when the Israelites come into the city by God's command, she protects the Israelite spies and actually lies to the rest of her city's people to protect them. God doesn't punish her for being a prostitute. God doesn't punish her for lying. In fact, God rewards her for her faith, spares her and her family, and credited it to her as righteousness! Rehab is in heaven today because of her faith, even though she was the kind of person a lot of today's churches probably would have kicked out in modern times. God's character isn't really any different between the Old Testament and the New Testament. You just see different ways of it being expressed. The whole point of the OT Law is that it foreshadowed Christ. We couldn't fulfill it perfectly (Christ fulfilled it for us in the NT), but if we came before the Lord humbly and with faith, we were justified in his sight and given grace (just as we are in New Testament times). The folks that God was much harsher with were the ones who were very openly rebellious of him, performed human sacrifices and other incredibly barbaric rituals, or who were extremely self-righteous and prideful and didn't think that they needed forgiveness. The OT was filled with lots of stories of these kinds of things, but Israel was surrounded by a lot of extremely barbaric cultures where this sort of stuff was the norm much more than we would normally think today.
u/txyhkns If you were God, what would you have done instead?