How should Christians understand the violent passages of the Old Testament without ignoring the difficult questions they raise or settling for easy answers?
On this episode of Sound Truth, Adam Miller talks with Old Testament scholar Matthew Lynch about his book, Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. Together, they examine the Flood, the conquest of Canaan, and the book of Joshua while asking how these troubling stories fit with the goodness, justice, mercy, and peace of God.
Matthew explains why biblical violence cannot be treated as one simple problem. He encourages readers to slow down, consider the literary and historical context, and distinguish between what Scripture describes and what it prescribes. The conversation explores Rahab and the Gibeonites, the danger of using Joshua as a model for modern warfare, the importance of bringing our honest moral questions before God, and the Old Testament’s repeated testimony that the Lord is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and rich in steadfast love.
For anyone who has struggled to reconcile difficult Old Testament passages with the God revealed in Jesus, this thoughtful conversation offers a faithful way forward—not by dismissing the hard texts, but by reading them more deeply and discovering their movement toward mercy, justice, reconciliation, and shalom.
Matthew Lynch’s book likewise centers on the Flood and the Canaanite conquest while encouraging readers to wrestle honestly with biblical violence in light of God’s goodness and mercy