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Part 4: The Psalms and Wisdom Literature

Most people think of the Psalms as the devotional heart of the Bible. Songs of comfort. Poems about God's love. And some of them are exactly that. But if you read the whole book instead of the selected verses that show up in Watchtower publications, you find something very different sitting right alongside those comfort passages.

Psalm 137 is presented in the Bible as a song of longing. Israel is in captivity in Babylon, missing their homeland. The opening verses are genuinely moving. But then it ends. Verse 9 says "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." That is the closing line of the psalm. Not a warning. Not a lament. A blessing pronounced on whoever kills Babylonian babies by smashing them against rocks. And it is sitting in the same book you were handed at the Kingdom Hall and told was God's inspired word.

Nobody puts that verse on a motivational poster. Nobody reads it at the meeting. But it is there. It has always been there.

Then there is Psalm 109, where David spends 31 verses asking God to destroy his enemy in detail. He asks for the man's children to become fatherless beggars. For his wife to become a widow. For his descendants to be cut off. For his mother's sin to never be forgiven. This is not a cry of pain that God corrects. The psalm ends with praise. The request is presented as righteous prayer.

Now let's talk about the Wisdom Literature, because Proverbs and Ecclesiastes create their own problem.

Proverbs 16:7 says when a man's ways please God, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. That sounds clean and straightforward until you read the rest of your Bible. Job pleased God by God's own admission in Job 1:8, and his enemies were not at peace with him. His friends turned on him. He lost everything. The Psalms are full of righteous men crying out to God while surrounded by people trying to destroy them. David, described as a man after God's own heart, spent years running for his life from Saul. The promise in Proverbs 16:7 is not a minor overstatement. It is flatly contradicted by the lived experience of the Bible's own heroes.

Ecclesiastes is the one that should have caused more theological conversations than it did. The entire book argues that life is meaningless, that the dead know nothing, that there is no advantage to wisdom over foolishness in the long run, and that you should eat, drink, and find whatever enjoyment you can because that is all there is. Ecclesiastes 9:5 says the dead know nothing and have no further reward. That is the same book the Watchtower uses to support their teaching that the dead are simply unconscious. But the surrounding context is not a careful doctrinal statement. It is a man concluding that life has no ultimate meaning.

The Psalms contain some of the most honest human writing in the ancient world. But honesty is not the same as inspiration. And the Watchtower asking you to read these texts as the flawless word of a perfect God requires you to skip over the parts where that God is being asked to murder babies and the parts where the wisest book in the collection tells you nothing matters.

Part 5 is coming. We are going into the Prophets. Fulfilled prophecy, unfulfilled prophecy, and the messianic texts that look very different in their original Hebrew context than they do in a Watchtower publication.

If Part 1 established that the God of the Old Testament is a contradictory character, and Part 2 showed that the Law he handed down protected the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable, then Part 3 is where it all gets put into practice. Because the conquest narratives are not metaphor. They are not poetry. They are presented as literal historical events in which God commands, directs, and personally assists in the wholesale destruction of entire populations. These are the same accounts held up at the Kingdom Hall as examples of Jehovah's righteousness and his protection of his people.

Let's go through them honestly.

Joshua 6 is the fall of Jericho. God gives Israel a military strategy involving marching around the city for seven days and blowing trumpets. The walls fall. Then Joshua 6:21 says Israel destroyed everything in the city, men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, and donkeys. The only survivors are Rahab and her household because she hid the Israelite spies. Every other living thing inside the city is killed. The text presents this as a victory given by God and frames it as an act of faithfulness.

Joshua 8 is the destruction of Ai. God tells Joshua to set an ambush. After the city is taken, Joshua 8:25 says twelve thousand people fell that day, all the people of Ai. Verse 28 says Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins. Verse 29 says the king of Ai was hanged on a tree until evening, then his body was thrown at the entrance of the city gate and covered with a pile of rocks. The text records this without a hint of moral tension.

Joshua 10:40 summarizes the broader campaign with one verse that is worth reading slowly. It says Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country, the Negeb, the lowland, and the slopes, and all their kings. He left no survivor, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel commanded. All that breathed. That phrase appears multiple times across the conquest narratives as a measure of complete obedience. The more thoroughly you killed, the more faithful you were.

Now here is something that almost never gets discussed at the Kingdom Hall. Joshua 10:11 says that as the enemy armies fled, God threw large hailstones on them from the sky and more of them died from the hailstones than from the Israelite weapons. Then verses 12 through 14 say Joshua prayed for the sun and moon to stand still, and they did, giving Israel more daylight to finish killing people. So God is personally throwing rocks from the sky and suspending planetary motion to help Israel kill more efficiently. The same God who could not defeat iron chariots in Judges 1:19 is here manipulating the solar system. Nobody asks why those two accounts describe the same God with completely opposite levels of power depending on which chapter you are in.

Judges 11 is one of the most disturbing passages in the entire Bible and one of the least talked about. Jephthah makes a vow to God before going into battle. He says that if God gives him victory he will sacrifice as a burnt offering whatever comes out of his house first when he returns. He wins the battle. He comes home. His daughter runs out to meet him.

What happens next depends on which reading you follow, and the text is genuinely ambiguous. Verse 39 says he carried out the vow, then immediately notes she never had relations with a man. Verse 40 says the young women of Israel went yearly to give her commendation, not to mourn her death. The NWT and several other translations lean toward the reading that she was dedicated to God's service permanently rather than literally killed.

But here is what stays true regardless of which reading you accept. Jephthah made a reckless, impulsive vow that cost his daughter her entire future without her consent. Her marriage. Her children. Her life as she had planned it. And her response in verse 36 is to simply accept it. Her feelings are reduced to two months of weeping in the mountains before she returns and submits. The text presents her compliance as honorable. Nobody in the narrative questions whether Jephthah should have made that vow at all.

God said nothing to stop the vow before it was made. God said nothing after. No correction. No intervention. Compare that to Abraham in Genesis 22, where God stops everything before harm is done and provides an alternative. Here the silence is complete. A young woman loses everything and the narrative just moves on.

Numbers 31 needs its own moment because it is the clearest window into what the conquest narratives are actually about. Israel defeats Midian in battle. Moses comes out to meet the returning army and he is angry. Not because they killed people. Because they let the women live. Moses orders them to kill every Midianite boy and every woman who has slept with a man. Then verse 18 says to keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man. The surviving virgin girls are distributed among the soldiers. The text does not present this as a war crime. It presents it as a correction to an incomplete obedience.

That is the pattern across all of these narratives. Incomplete killing is the sin. Mercy is the failure. The more total the destruction, the more faithful the act. If you grew up in the organization you were taught that Jehovah is a God of justice and love. These are the accounts that teaching is built on.

And then there is Judges 19 through 21, which is the part of the Bible that reads like a horror story and gets almost zero attention in any religious setting. A Levite's concubine is gang raped to death by men from the tribe of Benjamin. The Levite cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them across Israel. Israel goes to war against Benjamin. By the end of chapter 20, Benjamin has lost 25,000 fighting men and their cities have been burned. Then in chapter 21, Israel realizes they have nearly wiped out an entire tribe and they feel bad about it. So they find a city that did not send men to the battle, Jabesh-gilead, kill every man, woman, and child in it except the virgin girls, and give those girls to the surviving Benjaminites as wives. Then they tell Benjamin to go kidnap girls from Shiloh during a festival to get any remaining wives they need.

The moral logic the text is following is impossible to track. Gang rape triggers a war. The war nearly eliminates a tribe. Guilt over the near-elimination triggers a massacre of an unrelated city. The solution to a crime against women is the abduction of more women. And no voice in the narrative calls any of this out as wrong. Not one judge. Not one prophet. Not God.

This is the conquest period. This is the world the Law of Moses was operating in and the world the biblical narrative presents as divinely guided history. The through line across all of it is consistent. Women are assets to be distributed. Complete destruction is obedience. Mercy toward the enemy is sin. And God is not a distant observer in these stories. He is the one giving the orders, throwing the hailstones, and stopping the sun so there is enough light to finish the killing.

The Watchtower will tell you these accounts demonstrate Jehovah's justice against wicked nations. What they will not tell you is that the text never defines what made the children wicked. Or the animals. Or the virgin girls who were kept alive and handed to soldiers.

Part 4 is next. We are going into the Psalms and Wisdom Literature. And yes, we are going to talk about the psalm that asks God to dash enemy babies against rocks. It is in your Bible. It has always been there.

Most people who defend the Bible as a moral document have never actually read Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy straight through. Not because they're dishonest, but because the texts are long, dense, and the parts that get quoted in the Kingdom Hall or church are carefully selected. When you read the whole thing, a very different picture emerges.

Let's start with slavery, because this is where the apologist argument collapses the fastest. The common defense is that biblical slavery was different, more like indentured servitude, not the chattel slavery of the American South. That argument only works if you don't read the actual text.

Exodus 21:20 says that if a master beats his slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the master shall be punished. But verse 21 says if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment, because the slave is the master's property. The slave's life has value only insofar as losing it represents a financial loss to the owner. That is the legal definition of chattel slavery. The text isn't ambiguous about it.

Exodus 21:7 addresses what happens when a man sells his daughter as a slave. Not if. When. The law doesn't prohibit it. It regulates it. It specifies that she cannot go free the way male slaves do, that if she displeases her master he must let her be redeemed, and that if he gives her to his son she must be treated as a daughter. The existence of this law means selling your daughter into slavery was a recognized and legally permitted transaction under the Law of Moses.

Leviticus 25:44 through 46 goes further. It explicitly permits Israelites to purchase slaves from neighboring nations and to pass them down to their children as inherited property forever. The text uses the word "forever." These people have no path to freedom. And God is presented as the one issuing this regulation.

Now let's talk about the purity laws, because they reveal something important about who the Law was actually designed to protect.

Leviticus 15 declares a woman ritually unclean for seven days during her menstrual cycle. Everything she touches is unclean. Anyone who touches her is unclean. Anyone who touches what she sat on is unclean and must wash their clothes and bathe. This isn't a health regulation. It frames a normal biological function as a source of ritual contamination. The woman has done nothing wrong. Her body is simply operating as designed. And the Law treats that as defilement.

Leviticus 12 says a woman who gives birth to a son is unclean for seven days and must wait an additional thirty-three days before touching anything sacred. If she gives birth to a daughter, the unclean period doubles. Fourteen days plus sixty-six days. The act of bringing a female child into the world makes a woman twice as ritually contaminated as bringing a male child into the world. The text offers no explanation for the distinction. It simply legislates it.

Deuteronomy 22 is worth reading in full because it contains some of the most troubling legislation in the entire Bible presented as divine law. Verses 28 and 29 address what happens when a man seizes a virgin who is not engaged and forces himself on her. The law says the man must pay fifty shekels to her father and marry her, and he can never divorce her as long as he lives. Read that carefully. The rape victim is given to her rapist in a legally binding marriage with no exit. The offense is framed primarily as damage to the father's property, not as a crime against the woman. Her voice is entirely absent from the legal remedy.

The same chapter in verses 13 through 21 describes what happens if a man marries a woman and then claims she was not a virgin. Her parents must produce the evidence of her virginity, meaning the wedding night cloth, before the elders. If the cloth is produced, the husband is fined and cannot divorce her. If the cloth cannot be produced, the woman is stoned to death at the entrance of her father's house. There is no equivalent law for men. A man's sexual history before marriage carries no legal consequence whatsoever under the same law.

Now let's talk about the stoning laws, because the list of capital offenses in the Torah is longer than most people realize.

Leviticus 20:10 prescribes death for adultery. Leviticus 20:13 prescribes death for male homosexual intercourse. Deuteronomy 21:18 through 21 prescribes death for a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his parents, specifically by having the entire community stone him. Deuteronomy 22:23 through 24 prescribes death for a woman who is assaulted inside a city and did not cry out for help, reasoning that her silence implied consent. Exodus 31:14 prescribes death for working on the Sabbath. Numbers 15:32 through 36 shows this being carried out when a man is caught gathering sticks on the Sabbath and God instructs Moses to have the entire congregation stone him to death.

The New Testament response to all of this is usually to say Jesus fulfilled the Law and Christians are no longer under it. But that argument creates its own problem. If the Law was given by God, if it was holy and righteous and good as Paul calls it in Romans 7:12, then why does following Jesus mean abandoning laws God himself handed down? Either those laws reflected God's actual moral standard, in which case we should follow them. Or they didn't, in which case God gave humanity a deficient moral code for over a thousand years and then corrected it. Neither option is comfortable.

And Jesus himself addressed this directly in Matthew 5:17 when he said he did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them, and that not the smallest letter would pass from the Law until all things were accomplished. That verse gets used to argue Jesus upheld the Law. But it creates a direct tension with the Pauline letters that tell Gentile Christians they are free from the Law. The New Testament doesn't resolve this tension cleanly. It just leaves it sitting there.

The Law of Moses, read in full and honestly, is a legal code that permitted slavery including the purchase of foreign slaves in perpetuity, permitted the sale of daughters, protected rapists with forced marriage, treated women's biology as ritual contamination, and prescribed death for an enormous range of offenses including working on the wrong day of the week. If a modern government enacted this legal code today, the entire world would recognize it immediately as a system of oppression.

The question worth sitting with is why the same laws look different when God's name is attached to them.

Part 3 is next. We're going into the Conquest narratives. Joshua, Judges, Samuel. The genocide commands, the herem, and the God who punished a king for showing mercy.

Figured I’d start a series because I have soooooo much to say and it’s a lot of pent up observations that I couldn’t even dare call out before.

Let's start from the beginning. Genesis 1:1.

Before we can critique anything the Bible says God commanded or allowed, we have to establish who this God actually is based on what the text itself claims. Because the God of the Old Testament is not a consistent character. And that's not an outside opinion. That's what you find when you read carefully and honestly.

The Bible repeatedly claims God knows everything. Psalm 139:4 says he knows what you're going to say before you say it. Isaiah 46:10 says he declares the end from the beginning. God knows all things, past, present, and future, simultaneously. Now read Genesis 3:9. After Adam and Eve eat the fruit, God walks through the garden and calls out "Where are you?" The all-knowing creator of the universe is asking a location question. Either he didn't know where Adam was, which contradicts omniscience, or he knew perfectly well and was performing a question for effect, which means the entire interaction is theater. Neither option is as clean as the doctrine implies.

It gets sharper. Genesis 6:6 says God "regretted" making humanity and was grieved in his heart before the flood. Regret requires being surprised by an outcome you didn't anticipate. An omniscient being cannot be surprised. Cannot regret. Cannot grieve over something he knew with certainty was going to happen before he created anything.

Then there's Judges 1:19. One of the most quietly devastating verses in the entire Bible. It says God was with the tribe of Judah and they drove out the inhabitants of the hill country, but they "could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had iron chariots." God. Could not. Because of iron chariots. The all-powerful creator of the universe, who split the Red Sea, rained plagues on Egypt, and stopped the sun in the sky according to Joshua 10:13, was apparently neutralized by military technology available in the ancient Near East. The text doesn't explain it. It just states it flatly and moves on.

Malachi 3:6 says "I the Lord do not change." Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man that he should lie or change his mind. But Genesis 6:6 says God regrets creating humans. Exodus 32:14 says "the Lord relented from the disaster he had spoken of bringing on his people" after Moses argued with him. God changed the plan in response to a human argument. And 1 Samuel 15 says God regrets making Saul king in verse 11, has Samuel declare God "does not change his mind" in verse 29, then says God regretted making Saul king again in verse 35. The contradiction isn't spread across different books. It's fifteen verses apart inside the same chapter.

Now look at the justice problem. God describes himself in Exodus 34:7 as one who "visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation." Then Deuteronomy 24:16 says "fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin." Ezekiel 18:20 doubles down: "The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father." So God's own stated character in Exodus directly violates the moral standard laid out elsewhere in the same collection of texts.

And then there's the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Exodus 4:21 says God tells Moses in advance that he will harden Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not let the people go. Then God sends ten plagues on Egypt because Pharaoh will not let the people go. The last plague is the death of every firstborn Egyptian child. God pre-determined the outcome. Then punished Egypt for the outcome he pre-determined. Romans 9:17 in the New Testament actually quotes this story and uses it as proof of God's sovereign right to do whatever he wants. That's not a resolution to the problem. That's a restatement of it dressed up as theology.

The God of the Old Testament claims to be omniscient but reacts with surprise and regret. Claims to be omnipotent but is stopped by iron chariots. Claims to not change but demonstrably changes. Claims to not punish children for their parents' sins while explicitly stating that he does exactly that. These aren't interpretive disagreements. They are textual contradictions present in the source material itself.

Part 2 is coming. We're going into the Law of Moses next, and that's where it gets even more specific.

In yesterday’s study, we covered his faith, his endurance, how he never turned his back on Jehovah through everything he lost. And look, that part is real. I'm not disputing that.

But here's what I couldn't shake sitting in that room.

Job never found out why.

The wager between God and the Accuser is only shown to us as readers. It's right there in Job 1:6-12 and Job 2:1-6. God and the Accuser going back and forth, essentially betting on whether Job's integrity would hold under pressure. Job himself died never knowing any of that conversation happened. His first ten children died in Job 1:18-19. Real people. And at the end in Job 42:13 he gets ten new ones like that somehow closes the wound.

Now the explanation I was raised with is that God is allowing things to play out to prove Satan's challenge is illegitimate. That if He intervened too soon it would look like He was silencing the opposition rather than disproving it.

And I want to be clear. I never actually bought that. Not in my heart. I went along with it the way you go along with things when the room isn't built for pushback. But privately? It never sat right.

Because think about it. An omnipotent God already knows the outcome. He doesn't need a proof that runs for thousands of years and costs endless lives to make its point. And calling human beings unwilling participants in a cosmic courtroom drama without their knowledge or consent and then calling that justice... I can't get there. I've tried.

What gets me is that Job himself demanded answers. In Job 13:3 he says straight up "I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God." In Job 23:3-5 he says "If only I knew where to find him, I would go to his court. I would state my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would find out what he would answer me and consider what he would say." That's not a man performing faith. That's a man demanding accountability.

And what did he get back? Job 38:4. God speaks from the whirlwind and says "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?" Which is powerful. I'm not dismissing that. But power and justice are not the same thing. Job asked why and God answered with how big He is. And then in Job 42 everything gets restored but the explanation never comes. Not once.

That silence is intentional. And I think a lot of us have felt it sitting in those chairs and just never said it out loud.

That's what I'm doing now. Saying it out loud.

If you've ever sat through a study and felt that gap between what's being taught and what you actually feel in your gut, you're not spiritually weak. You might just be thinking more honestly than the setting allows for.

Anybody in the NYC area down to chill out? Preferably Southern Queens/South shore Long Island? Even if not in person, we can chat here or text. Just want to start making a new circle

New here. Honestly never thought I’d be posting here, much less joining. Though I’ve never been fully on board with JW teaching I’ve spent the past 40+ years of my life just going with it, so as not to disappoint others. Imagine having to wear a mask without ever being able to take it off. That was me, and I’m sure it’s many of you as well.

My folks were baptized when I was 5 and my dad quickly progressed. Eventually becoming an elder and presiding overseer (now called coordinator). My mom was regular pioneer, we had book study at my house, and weekday service came out of there as well. As a child, I could never really grasp the concept of “god”. An invisible being in heaven watching over us? I could never buy into it. But I couldn’t question that. Wasn’t allowed. Apostates question and oppose.

I learned how to pretend to enjoy the spiritual things. Got baptized in 1995 at 17, and had little privileges here and there but didn’t progress much. So much so that a CO noticed the PIMO in me and said “don’t waste your time here. If this isn’t what you want, leave. Make something of yourself out there if you’re not going to do it here.” Good advice but I knew it wasn’t coming from a good place.

My inability to show real enthusiasm began to show more and more, but I still couldn’t find it in me to leave. The organization does a good job at instilling fear in “the world”. “There’s nothing out there. Happiness and satisfaction is short lived” they would say. So I’d stay put, out of fear and in hopes that something would click and I’d finally find joy in being a part of the organization. But I just couldn’t make sense of so much that they taught from the bible. Especially when you look at it from a logical and scientific standpoint.

I’d eventually move out and moved to a different congregation in the new neighborhood. I lasted one year before I’d go inactive. Lasted 7 years. Made some friends, worked in marketing, got involved in community activities, social activism, etc., but at some point, I started developing some anxiety and I thought maybe going back would help. Being a part of a community with tight bonds was appealing to me. But that desire clouded what I had known since I was a young boy. That sense of community, the love, the brotherhood…it’s not unconditional. You have to fall in line, accept it all as truth, and never question any of it. My desperation for some type of belonging made me forget about that.

So back I go. The prodigal son. Walking in to the hall, a lot of familiar faces, outnumbered by new ones, but all of them welcoming me back. Lots of hugs and kisses, even some tears. I don’t doubt that it was genuine. I just know that if I hadn’t gone back, and they saw me out in the street, the vibe would be much different. But again, that euphoric feeling of being the center of this outpouring of love was unbearable. I was almost convinced that this was in fact the truth. God’s people. I was home. For the next year or two, I was active. Going to service weeknights, early Saturday morning, and group afterwards. Giving parts, helping out at the hall with sound, mics, stage. Leading the group in service, etc.

During all that, I met my wife. I had just left a toxic relationship. I should have given myself more time but my mom and a lot of the sisters I considered mother figures all tried to play match maker. She was attractive. Kind, very independent, and spiritual. After the memorial in 2018, we all went out to eat and she sat next to me. We talked, and talked, and talked some more. The following January we were married.

A year later, I was recommended as servant. I accepted. This was a turning point. This was when my doubts became assurance. Assurance that god (as I was taught) is not real. You see, in the entire time that I came back, and made all this progress, I was still leading a double life. I’d flirt with some of the women at work, id hook up with this one girl I met at the gym I frequented, I’d watch porn, masturbate, you name it.

How could a group of elders, under prayer and led by the Holy Spirit choose me to serve the congregation in any capacity? Still, in an effort to keep up appearances for the congregation, my family, and my wife, I accepted. Eventually, I started giving public talks. Going to other congregations as well.

In that time I reconnected with an old flame from my late teens. We’d have phone sex, FaceTime where she’d strip for me and we’d masturbate together, she’d send lewd pics from the bathroom at work, and I’d reciprocate. Eventually, her husband found out, confronted me, I confessed, a week later I was an MS no longer and publicly reproved.

I still go to meetings. I’m commenting and giving parts again. Still not helping out in any capacity, but the act of being that active and enthusiastic member of the congregation is wearing thin.

In September I had a mental health crisis where I just wanted to disappear. Checked in at the hospital, and a week later was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. 2 months later with ADHD (with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria as one of the dominant traits). As I continued with my weekly visits with the psychiatrist we’ve come to one conclusion in that 40+ years of masking. Being a part of something I don’t believe in, being intellectually, socially, and sexually repressed, making decisions based on what others thought was best for me as opposed to making decisions based on what I thought was best for me (including marrying someone who, while being a great person, I just could never develop the deep feelings you should have for a spouse), all have taken a severe psychological toll on me. And if I continue, it could lead to irreversible consequences.

Which leads me to a crossroads. Do I rip the bandaid off and just walk away knowing that in doing so, will mean starting over from zero. If I was in my 20s, it’d be a lot easier. As a middle aged man, not so.

I’m not even sure why I’m writing all of this. Maybe it’s to finally let out what I’ve only discussed with my therapist? Or find other people who have gone through the same or still are? Maybe someone will have the answers I’m looking for. Whatever it is, the PIMO life is not meant to be a long term thing. If you’re in the process of checking out, don’t wait until your life is turned upside down because of it.