A god from Hell

The God from Hell raged, vowing to obliterate life on Earth:

I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the LORD. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth, says the LORD. (Zephaniah, 1:2-3)

He yearned for that bloodbath:

 in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed; for a full, a terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth… because they have sinned against the LORD, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. (Zeph 17,18)

His chosen followers get to drink the blood!

The LORD of hosts will protect them, and they shall devour and tread down the slingers; and they shall drink their blood like wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar. (Zecharaiah, 9:15)

As a vampire-predator He enjoyed visions of children being dashed to bits:

 “her little ones were dashed in pieces at the head of every street”; (Nahum, 3:10)

 – this time it’s the children of Nineveh: in case His followers got tired of entertaining stories about basketfuls of children’s heads (Kings 2 10:7) on display at the entrance of another city.

His culminating vision has Jerusalem plundering the wealth of the nations around it:

And the wealth of all the nations round about shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance. (Zech 14:14)

Yahweh’s messages never hint at any legitimate means whereby His Chosen People acquire wealth, viz. honest labour. This repeats His message of the previous book:

 and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the LORD of hosts. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says the LORD of hosts. (Haggai, 2:7)

God wants to set up Israel as a predator-nation to soak up the wealth of other nations, so He (i.e. His priests, who are presumably writing this text) can get it. In return, the God from Hell will send to the neighbouring nations, - thus relieved of their gold and silver - the plague:

And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the asses, and whatever beasts may be in those camps. (Zech 14:15)

He speaks tenderly of His own Chosen People: ‘for he who touches you touches the apple of His eye’, Zech 2:8, but doesn’t give a toss about anyone else. They would understand:

 Thus says the LORD of hosts: In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, `Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.'"  (Zech 8:23)

But eventually, it came to pass that the God from Hell felt nausea even towards His chosen people, breaking His vows to them with His usual foul curses:

I will not be your shepherd. What is to die, let it die; what is to be destroyed, let it be destroyed; and let those that are left devour the flesh of one another. And I took my staff Grace, and I broke it, annulling the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. [They] knew that it was the word of the LORD…Then I broke my second staff Union, annulling the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.  Zech 11:9-14)

Instead, He yearns for a prophet of Nietzchean toughness:

For lo, I am raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for the perishing, or seek the wandering, or heal the maimed, or nourish the sound, but devours the flesh of the fat ones, tearing off even their hoofs. (11:16)

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Books  O'Brien, Christian, The Genius of the Few The story of those who founded the garden in Eden,  1999.  Richard Dawkins, The God delusion Tiffany, John  Fountain of Fairytales, a Scholarly romp through the Old Testament,  2013 Douglas Reed, The Controversy of Zion (online) Merlin Stone, The Paradise Papers When God was a Woman, 1976. Karen Armstrong The Bible The Biography   2007