Drunk With Blood Read online

  Copyright

  © 2010 by Steve Wells

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  http://DrunkWithBlood.com

  http://SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com

  http://DwindlingInUnbelief.blogspot.com

  Print Version:

  LCCN: 2010931807

  ISBN 10: 145366291X

  ISBN 13: 9781453662915

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  How many did God kill?

  Who has killed more, Satan or God?

  Estimated totals: Satan and God

  How many more will God kill?

  A note about the title

  God’s Killings in the Bible

  1. The Flood of Noah: All flesh died that moved upon the earth

  2. Abraham’s war to rescue Lot

  3. Sodom and Gomorrah: Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?

  4. Remember Lot’s wife (Forget Jesus)

  5. Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord (so the Lord slew him)

  6. Onan spilled it on the ground (so the Lord killed him too)

  7. God’s seven year, world-wide famine

  8. The seventh plague of Egypt: Hail shall come down upon them and they shall die

  9. The Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt

  10. The Lord took off their chariot wheels

  11. The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation

  12. Who is on the Lord’s side: Forcing friends and family to kill each other

  13. The Lord plagued the people because of the calf that Aaron made

  14. God burns Aaron’s sons to death for offering “strange fire”

  15. A blasphemer is stoned to death

  16. When the people complained, God burned them to death

  17. While the flesh was still between their teeth, the Lord smote them with a very great plague

  18. Ten scouts are killed for their honest report

  19. A man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day

  20. The opposing party is buried alive (along with their families)

  21. God burns 250 people to death for burning incense

  22. God killed 14,700 for complaining about God’s killings

  23. The massacre of the Aradites

  24. God sent fiery serpents to bite the people for complaining about the lack of food and water

  25. Phinehas’ double murder: A killing to end God’s killing

  26. The Midianite massacre: Have you saved all the women alive?

  27. God slowly killed the Israelite army

  28. God the giant killer

  29. God hardens King Sihon’s heart so that all his people can be killed

  30. All the men, women, and children in 60 cities

  31. The Jericho massacre

  32. Achan and his family are stoned and burned to death

  33. The Ai massacre

  34. God stops the sun so that Joshua can get his killing done in the daylight

  35. Five kings are killed and hung on trees

  36. Joshua utterly destroyed all that breathed as the Lord God commanded

  37. The genocide of twenty kingdoms

  38. The Anakim: Some more giant killing

  39. The Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites

  40. The Jerusalem massacre

  41. Five massacres, a wedding, and some God-proof iron chariots

  42. The Lord delivered Chushanrishathaim

  43. Ehud delivers a message from God

  44. God delivers 10,000 lusty Moabites

  45. Shamgar killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad

  46. Barak and God massacre the Canaanites

  47. Jael pounds a tent stake through a sleeping man’s skull

  48. Gideon’s story: The Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow

  49. A city is massacred and 1000 burn to death because of God’s evil spirit

  50. The Ammonite massacre

  51. Jephthah’s daughter

  52. 42,000 killed for failing the “shibboleth” test

  53. The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson and he murdered thirty men for their clothes

  54. The spirit of the Lord came upon Samson and he killed 1000 men with the jawbone of an ass

  55. Samson killed 3000 in a suicide terrorist attack

  56. A holy civil war (It had something to do with rotting, concubine-body part messages)

  57. The end of Judges: Two genocides and 200 stolen virgins

  58. God kills Eli’s sons and 34,000 Israelite soldiers

  59. God smote them with hemorrhoids in their secret parts

  60. 50,070 killed for looking into the ark of the Lord

  61. The Lord thundered great thunder upon the Philistines

  62. Another Ammonite massacre (and another God-inspired, body-part message)

  63. Jonathan’s very first slaughter (not counting the one before)

  64. God forces the Philistines to kill each other

  65. The Amalekite genocide

  66. Samuel hacks Agag to death before the Lord

  67. In the valley of Elah: Goliath

  68. David buys a wife with 200 Philistine foreskins

  69. The Lord said to David, Go and smite the Philistines

  70. God killed Nabal (and David got his wife and other stuff)

  71. David commits random acts of genocide (as a mercenary for the Philistines)

  72. David spends the day killing Amalekites

  73. God killed Saul (and his sons and soldiers) for not killing all the Amalekites

  74. David killed the messenger

  75. David killed Rechab and Baanah, cut off their hands and feet, and hung their bodies over the pool

  76. God helps David smite the Philistines from the front and the rear

  77. God killed Uzzah for trying to keep the ark from falling

  78. David killed two-thirds of the Moabite POWs and enslaved the rest

  79. The Lord gave David victory wherever he went

  80. David killed every male in Edom

  81. Thus did David unto all the children of Ammon

  82. God slowly kills a baby

  83. Famine and human sacrifice: Seven sons of Saul are hung up before the Lord

  84. David’s mighty men and their amazing killings

  85. God killed 70,000 because David had a census that God (or Satan) told him to do

  86. Solomon carried out the deathbed wish of David by having Joab and Shimei murdered

  87. A tale of two prophets

  88. Jeroboam’s son: God kills another child

  89. Jeroboam’s family

  90. Baasha’s family and friends

  91. Zimri burns to death

  92. The drought of Elijah

  93. Elijah kills 450 religious leaders in a prayer contest

  94. The first God-assisted slaughter of the Syrians

  95. God killed 100,000 Syrians for calling him a god of the hills

  96. God killed 27,000 Syrians by making a wall fall on them

  97. God sent a lion to kill a man for not smiting a prophet

  98. God killed Ahab for not killing a captured king

  99. God burned 102 men to death for asking Elijah to come down from his hill

  100. God killed Ahaziah (of Israel) for asking the wrong God

  101. God sent two bears to rip apart 42 boys for making fun of a prophet’s bald head

  102. The Lord delivered the Moabites

  103. A skeptic is tram
pled to death

  104. God’s seven year famine

  105. Jehoram of Israel

  106. Jezebel

  107. Ahab’s sons: Seventy heads in two heaps

  108. Ahab’s hometown family, friends, and priests

  109. Jehu killed Ahaziah’s family

  110. Jehu and his partner show their zeal for the Lord by killing the rest of Ahab’s family

  111. Jehu assembles the followers of Baal and then slaughters them all

  112. The priest of Baal and Queen Athaliah

  113. God sent lions to eat those that didn’t fear him enough

  114. An angel killed 185,000 sleeping soldiers

  115. God caused King Sennacherib to be killed by his sons

  116. Josiah killed all the priests of the high places

  117. Just another holy war

  118. God killed a half million Israelite soldiers

  119. Jeroboam

  120. God killed a million Ethiopians

  121. Friendly Fire: God forced “a great multitude” to kill each other

  122. God made Jehoram’s bowels fall out

  123. God killed Jehoram’s sons

  124. Ahaziah (of Judah)

  125. Joash, the princes, and army of Judah

  126. God destroyed Amaziah

  127. God smote Ahaz with the king of Syria

  128. God killed 120,000 valiant men for forsaking him

  129. The fall of Jerusalem

  130. God and Satan kill Job’s children and slaves

  131. Hananiah

  132. Ezekiel’s wife

  133. Ananias and Sapphira

  134. Herod Aggripa

  135. Jesus

  Afterword

  A list of God’s killings (with biblical numbers and estimates)

  List of Illustrations

  About the author

  Introduction

  A few years ago, I started to document God’s killings at my blog, Dwindling in Unbelief. I began with Genesis and worked my way through the Bible, writing a post for each killing event and keeping a running count of the number of victims as I went along. I don’t think it’s ever been done before, which is a shame, since God is so proud of his killings.

  You don’t believe me? Well, here, I’ll let him tell you directly.

  I kill … I wound … I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh. Deuteronomy 32.39-42 (NRSV)

  Bible believers, on the other hand, are less proud of God’s killings. Oh, they like a few of them—Noah’s flood, David and Goliath, the walls of Jericho, Job’s daughters—those that can be made (with considerable dishonesty) into cute children’s stories. But the rest are completely ignored by, or completely unknown to, believers.

  I believe that most believers would stop believing in the Bible if they knew what was in it. And this is particularly true of God’s killings. All of the stories are absurd from an historical standpoint; they could not have happened the way they are told in the Bible. But what is even more damning is their unspeakable cruelty and obvious immorality. If the killings described in this book actually happened, then the God of the Bible is not the kind of God that believers pretend him to be.

  It is my hope that as God’s killings become better known, people will know better than to believe in the Bible. Such belief should be admired by no one and ridiculed by all.

  In this book, I’ve tried to count all of God’s killings: those that are numbered in the Bible and those that are not; the ones that God did himself; those that he instructed others to do; and those that, while he may not have taken an active role in, met with his approval.

  Of course, some killings are easier to count than others. When God burned to death 250 men for burning incense (21) in Numbers 16.35, we know how many were killed. But how many did God drown in the flood (1) or burn to death in Sodom and Gomorrah (3)? How many firstborn Egyptian children did he kill (9)? There’s just no way to know for sure.

  So I have two tallies: one for the killings in which numbers are given in the Bible, excluding the others; and another that uses both the Biblical numbers and estimates when numbers are absent.

  But what about the killings that God apparently approved of, but didn’t take an active role in?

  Take the story in 1 Samuel 18.25-28, for example, in which David buys his first wife with 200 Philistine foreskins (68). Did God approve of that killing?

  Well, yes he did, if you believe the Bible, that is. God approved of everything David did, including all of his killings, with only one exception: the killing of Uriah. How do we know this? Because it says so in the Bible.

  David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. 1 Kings 15:5

  Drunk with Blood includes a separate account for each of God’s 135 killings. They are listed in the order that they occur in the Bible, with a note at the top that lists the verses in which the killing occurs, along with the number killed, either the Bible’s number or an estimate, or both. In each account, I’ve made an effort to quote enough of the actual story from the Bible (using the King James Version) to make it unnecessary to refer to the Bible itself. Still, I encourage everyone to read these stories in the Bible. It is nearly impossible to believe in the Bible once you have read them.

  *

  How many did God kill?

  Here’s the total, if you use only numbers that are provided in the Bible: 2,476,636

  (For a complete list of God’s killings with biblical number and estimate for each killing, see the list at the end of this ebook.)

  *

  Who has killed more, Satan or God?

  How many did Satan kill in the Bible?

  I can only find ten, and even these he shares with God, since God allowed him to do it as a part of a bet. I’m talking about the seven sons and three daughters of Job (130).

  There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job…And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.

  And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the LORD … put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

  And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house … And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Job 1.1-19

  So it seems that both Satan and God share the blame (or the credit) for killing Job’s children. If so, then the tally would be:

  God: 2,476,636

  Satan: 10

  *

  Estimated totals: Satan and God

  When the Bible doesn’t say how many were killed, I try to provide a reasonable estimate.

  For example, the Bible says that Job’s ten children were killed in God and Satan’s bet. The Bible also says that all of Job’s slaves were killed, though it doesn’t say how many slaves Job owned. But since he was a wealthy man (“the greatest of all the men of the east”), he must have owned many slaves. So I guessed that fifty slaves were killed, and I gave both Satan and God credit for their killings.

  I made similar estimates for the other killings when a number was not provided in the Bible. I tried to give an idea of my thinking for each estimate at the end of each killing account.

  When there was no clear way to get a number directly from the Bible itself, I used estimates from Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones’ Atlas of World Population History (Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1978).

  Using these estimates, I came up with the following grand totals
for the number killed by God and Satan in the Bible:

  God: 24,634,205

  Satan: 60

  *

  How many more will God kill?

  What about God’s future plans? Does the Bible tell us anything about that?

  Well, yes it does. But it’s hard to take any of it seriously, especially if you’re a believer.

  Take the great winepress of the wrath of God, for example. You know, the one featured in the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  The story is told in the 14th chapter of the book of Revelation, which begins with Jesus (or “someone like unto the Son of man”) sitting on a white cloud with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.

  I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. Revelation 14.14

  Then an angel stops by to tell Jesus that it’s time to start swinging his sickle.

  Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. 14.15

  So Jesus thrusts his sickle on the earth, while still sitting on his cloud.

  He that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped. 14.16

  Another angel came out of the temple in heaven and joined Jesus on his cloud. He also has a sharp sickle with him, and together they begin to reap the harvest on earth.