Looking for answers, I returned to where I had first learned my respect for the Jews: in the Holy Bible. I went back and reread the Old Testament, paying close attention to the relations between Jews and non-Jews. In contrast to the universalism of the New Testament, the Old Testament is extremely ethnocentric. It goes to great pains to identify the Israelites as a "special people," or a "Chosen People," and it painstakingly traces the genealogical descent of the Children of Israel. Many thought-provoking passages forbid the intermarriage of Jews and other tribes. In the book of Exodus, Moses responds to Israelites who had sexual relations with Moabite women by ordering their execution. In Ezra, God commanded those who married non-Israelites to cast off the wives and even the children of such unions.¹ Some of the bloodiest writings I had ever read detailed the Jewish people's annihilation of its tribal enemies.

The massacres of Canaanites, Jacobites, Philistines, Egyptians, and dozens of other peoples are gruesomely recorded in the Bible. In today's terminology, we describe the slaughter of entire peoples as genocide. Old Testament Jews spared neither men, women, children or even the animals and pets of their enemies.² The following are just a few among dozens of similar passages found in the Old Testament:

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword . . . (Joshua 6:21)³

Then Horam, king of Gezer, came to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and all his people, until he had left him none remaining.⁴

And they took Eglon, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein. (Joshua 10:32-34)⁵

And they took Hebron, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and the souls that were therein; he left none remaining. (Joshua 10:37)

For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and His fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, He hath delivered them to the slaughter.

Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted in their blood. (Isaiah 34:2-3)⁶

But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, (Deuteronomy 20:16)⁷

As a Christian, I could not explain what appeared to be celebrations of genocide. I acknowledged that God is unfathomable and unknowable. However, I could not help but have sympathy for those massacred, including thousands of innocent men, women, and children. It is easy to imagine how the few who survived those massacres felt about the "Jews." Of course, the Jews were not unique in their pursuit of ethnic cleansing; many other early peoples had visited genocide on their enemies.

With the coming of Jesus Christ and his advocacy of love and kindness as recorded in the New Testament, the Old Testament advocacy and record of genocide is little recollected by modern churches. When by chance a modern Christian stumbles across passages of the Old Testament condoning genocide, he dismisses them as the sad happenings of a remote biblical era - one now mitigated with the New Covenant of love that Christ brought.

The Israelite record on racial integrity and supremacy is quite clear:

Neither shall thou make marriages with them; their daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. (Deuteronomy 7:2-3)⁸

. . .For thou art a holy people unto the Lord Thy God: the Lord Thy God has chosen thee to a special people unto himself, above all people that are on the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 7:6)⁹

Now therefore give not your daughters unto their sons, neither take their daughters unto your sons, nor seek their peace or their wealth for ever, that ye may be strong and eat of the good of the land, and leave it for an inheritance to your children for ever. (Ezra 9:12)¹⁰