page_title: The Bible and violence
section_title: Book of Exodus and Book of Leviticus
hierarchical_section_title: The Bible and violence / In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament / Biblical narrative / Book of Exodus and Book of Leviticus
context_page_description: The Hebrew Bible and the New Testament contain narratives, poetry, and instruction describing, recording, encouraging, commanding, condemning, rewarding, punishing and regulating violent actions by God, individuals, groups, governments, and nation-states. Among the violent acts included are war, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, murder, rape, genocide, and criminal punishment. The texts have a history of interpretation within the Abrahamic religions and Western culture that includes justification and opposition to acts of violence.
context_section_description: A new pharaoh (Exodus 1) sees that the Israelites in Egypt have become many and fears they might aid Egypt's enemies. The Egyptians make the Israelites "serve with rigour" and their lives become "bitter with hard service". Pharaoh orders two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill the newborn sons of Hebrew women, but they disobey him. Pharaoh then orders his people to drown these children.
  Moses, a Hebrew raised by Pharaoh's daughter, one day encounters an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He slays the Egyptian and flees Egypt. God hears the plight of the Israelites and sends Moses back to Egypt to bring them out of that land to Canaan. At one point during the journey back, God intends to kill Moses, but he is saved by his wife Zipporah (Exodus 2-4).
  Moses asks Pharaoh to release the Israelites, but Pharaoh responds by demanding more work from them. Moses repeats his request several times as the Plagues of Egypt afflict the Egyptians, but God makes Pharaoh refuse until the tenth plague, when God kills all firstborn people and cattle in Egypt, apart from those of the Israelites, who are protected. The Israelites are allowed to leave, but God again changes Pharaoh's mind, and an army is sent after them. God saves them from the army by drowning it in the Red Sea.
  At Mount Sinai, God gives the Israelites the Ten Commandments and the Covenant Code (Exodus 20-23). These laws include thou shalt not kill, eye for an eye and laws about slavery and other things. Capital punishment is prescribed for some crimes. Animal sacrifice in the form of burnt offerings is mentioned, and it is prescribed that an ox that kills a person is to be stoned. The Code states that "And a stranger shalt thou not wrong, neither shalt thou oppress him; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." and "Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child." The Israelites promise to follow these laws (Exodus 24:3).
  The Israelites break their promise by worshiping the Golden Calf. God is angered by this and intends to "consume them", but Moses persuades him not to do so. Moses is also angered, and he breaks two stone tablets with God's writing. On Moses' command, the Levites kill about three thousand people (Exodus 32).
  God has Moses make new stone tablets, and gives Moses the Ritual Decalogue, which states in part "Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest they be for a snare in the midst of thee. But ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and ye shall cut down their Asherim" (Exodus 34).
  The Book of Leviticus sets out detailed rules for animal sacrifice. The Holiness code, Leviticus 17-26, sets out a list of prohibitions, and the punishments for breaking them. Punishments include execution, sometimes by stoning or burning.
caption: Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt by Charles Sprague Pearce (1877)
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