In the beginning, God wasn’t omnipotent. Only later in the Bible did he become all powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, and so on. Some of the earliest Bible stories reveal God’s initial limitations.

We read in the book of 2 Kings that after a unified Israel split into Israel and Judah, the kingdom of Moab was a vassal of Israel. One Moabite king tired of paying tribute to Israel and rebelled. To subjugate Moab, Israel and its allies attacked, destroying cities and towns as they went.

When they reached the last stronghold, the king of Moab had one final ploy. He took his son, the future king, and sacrificed him on the city wall to the Moabite god Chemosh. The result: “There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel, so they broke off the attack and returned to their homeland.”

This contradicts the promise from just a few verses earlier, where the prophet Elisha said, “[Yahweh will] hand Moab over to you. You will defeat every fortified city and every important city.” Even worse, in a fight between the tribes of Yahweh and Chemosh, Yahweh lost. Perhaps Yahweh could have won if he had gotten the energy boost from the sacrifice of the future king instead of his rival.

If Chemosh sounds like nothing more than a tribal god made up by primitive ancient people, why does Yahweh look any different?

Let’s examine another wartime situation in the book of Judges. An enemy had harassed Israel for twenty years with 900 chariots “fitted with iron,” but as powerful as this chariot force was, Israel with God’s support was able to defeat it.

Earlier in Judges, another conflict ends very differently. The book begins with the Israelite tribes of Judah and Simeon joining forces to destroy the remaining Canaanite strongholds. The campaign wasn’t universally successful, however. “[Yahweh] was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.”

The verse makes clear that Yahweh was there, supporting his people, but somehow Iron Age weaponry defeated the almighty creator of the universe.

This is easy to understand when we realize that at this point in the Bible, Yahweh had weaknesses and was not the omnipotent being he evolved into later in the Bible. He was more like Hercules—very strong but not invincible, wise but not all-knowing, and moody. The Bible itself records the evolution.

Jesus also had limitations. While preaching in Nazareth, he didn’t get the reception he was expecting. “He could not do any miracles there except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”

The reason for Jesus’s failure isn’t the point, of course; the point is that Jesus failed. If iron is God’s kryptonite, apparently it’s lack of faith for Jesus.

These stories neatly illustrate that God—omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent today—evolved from much humbler literary beginnings.

Continue to chapter 47.

Image credit: Michael Dagonakis via Unsplash

Notes

Burnt offering: How can you convey a gift to God? You use smoke to carry the nourishment of the offering up into the sky where God lives. An “animal sacrifice” was partly burned but then eaten, while a “burnt offering” was completely burned. The Bible refers to the “pleasing aroma” of offerings forty times.

“There was an outburst of divine anger against Israel”: 2 Kings 3:27 (NET).

a city held by giant Nephilim: Numbers 13:33.

“[Yahweh will] hand Moab over to you”: 2 Kings 3:18–19 (NET).

“They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had chariots fitted with iron.”: Judges 1:19.

“He could not do any miracles there”: Mark 6:5–6.