Drunk With Blood (2 page)

You don’t believe me? Well, here, I’ll let him tell you directly.

I kill ... I wound ... I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh. Deuteronomy 32.39-42  (NRSV)

Bible believers, on the other hand, are less proud of God’s killings. Oh, they like a few of them—Noah’s flood, David and Goliath, the walls of Jericho, Job’s daughters—those that can be made (with considerable dishonesty) into cute children’s stories. But the rest are completely ignored by, or completely unknown to, believers.

I believe that most believers would stop believing in the Bible if they knew what was in it. And this is particularly true of God’s killings. All of the stories are absurd from an historical standpoint; they could not have happened the way they are told in the Bible. But what is even more damning is their unspeakable cruelty and obvious immorality. If the killings described in this book actually happened, then the God of the Bible is not the kind of God that believers pretend him to be.

It is my hope that as God’s killings become better known, people will know better than to believe in the Bible. Such belief should be admired by no one and ridiculed by all.

In this book, I’ve tried to count all of God’s killings: those that are numbered in the Bible and those that are not; the ones that God did himself; those that he instructed others to do; and those that, while he may not have taken an active role in, met with his approval.

Of course, some killings are easier to count than others. When God burned to death 250 men for burning incense (
21
) in Numbers 16.35, we know how many were killed. But how many did God drown in the flood (
1
) or burn to death in Sodom and Gomorrah (
3
)? How many first-born Egyptian children did he kill (
9
)? There’s just no way to know for sure.

So I have two tallies: one for the killings in which numbers are given in the Bible, excluding the others; and another that uses both the Biblical numbers and estimates when numbers are absent.

But what about the killings that God apparently approved of, but didn’t take an active role in?

Take the story in 1 Samuel 18.25-28, for example, in which David buys his first wife with 200 Philistine foreskins (
68
). Did God approve of that killing?

Well, yes he did, if you believe the Bible, that is. God approved of everything David did, including all of his killings, with only one exception: the killing of Uriah. How do we know this? Because it says so in the Bible.

David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. 1 Kings 15:5

Drunk with Blood
includes a separate account for each of God’s 135 killings. They are listed in the order that they occur in the Bible, with a note at the top that lists the verses in which the killing occurs, along with the number killed, either the Bible’s number or an estimate, or both. In each account, I’ve made an effort to quote enough of the actual story from the Bible (using the King James Version) to make it unnecessary to refer to the Bible itself. Still, I encourage everyone to read these stories in the Bible. It is nearly impossible to believe in the Bible once you have read them.

Here’s the total, if you use only numbers that are provided in the Bible: 
2,476,636
 

(For a complete list of God’s killings with biblical number and estimate for each killing, see the
list
at the end of this ebook.)

How many did Satan kill in the Bible?

I can only find ten, and even these he shares with God, since God allowed him to do it as a part of a bet. I’m talking about the seven sons and three daughters of Job (
130
).

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job…And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.

And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? Then Satan answered the LORD ... put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.

And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house ... And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. Job 1.1-19

So it seems that both Satan and God share the blame (or the credit) for killing Job’s children. If so, then the tally would be:

When the Bible doesn’t say how many were killed, I try to provide a reasonable estimate.

For example, the Bible says that Job’s ten children were killed in God and Satan’s bet. The Bible also says that all of Job’s slaves were killed, though it doesn’t say how many slaves Job owned. But since he was a wealthy man (“the greatest of all the men of the east”), he must have owned many slaves. So I guessed that fifty slaves were killed, and I gave both Satan and God credit for their killings.

I made similar estimates for the other killings when a number was not provided in the Bible. I tried to give an idea of my thinking for each estimate at the end of each killing account.

When there was no clear way to get a number directly from the Bible itself, I used estimates from Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones’
Atlas of World Population History
(Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1978).

Using these estimates, I came up with the following grand totals for the number killed by God and Satan in the Bible:

God: 24,634,205

Satan: 60

What about God’s future plans? Does the Bible tell us anything about that?

Well, yes it does. But it’s hard to take any of it seriously, especially if you’re a believer.

Take the great winepress of the wrath of God, for example. You know, the one featured in the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

The story is told in the 14th chapter of the book of Revelation, which begins with Jesus (or “someone like unto the Son of man”) sitting on a white cloud with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.

I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. Revelation 14.14

Then an angel stops by to tell Jesus that it’s time to start swinging his sickle.

Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. 14.15

So Jesus thrusts his sickle on the earth, while still sitting on his cloud.

He that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped. 14.16

Another angel came out of the temple in heaven and joined Jesus on his cloud. He also has a sharp sickle with him, and together they begin to reap the harvest on earth.

Another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. 14.17

They swing their sickles and pour the resulting blood into a huge winepress. There is so much blood that it flows out of the winepress and covers the ground up to the horses’ bridles in a space of 1600 furlongs.

The winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs. 14:20

And from that we can estimate how many people will be killed by Jesus and his angel sidekick.

It’s a simple calculation. A furlong is 202 meters, so 1600 furlongs is about 320 kilometers, and a horse’s bridle is 1.5 m high or so. If we take the bloodbath to be circular with a diameter of 320 kilometers, then the total volume is 1.2 x 10
¹⁴
liters. And since an adult has about 5 liters of blood, that gives us 2.4 x 10
¹³
(24 trillion) people.

Which could be a problem, even for God. Where will he find so many people to kill? His overflowing winepress requires the blood from nearly 4,000 times the number of people on earth.

Does this mean that Armageddon won’t occur until the human population reaches 24 trillion? Perhaps.

Or maybe God will just create more people when the time comes just to kill them.

Or it could just be hyperbole. God doesn’t really plan on killing trillions of people; he’s just trying to scare the hell out of everyone.

I’ll leave it for the believers to figure out.

But there are many other verses that say similar (batshit crazy) things in the Bible, and they’re not all in Revelation either.

God will kill so many people that the land will be soaked, the rivers flooded, and the mountains melted in blood. The ground will be covered with dead bodies, which will stink to high heaven. The whole earth will be destroyed. So I guess that means that everybody on earth will be killed by God.

Here are the verses:

Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. Isaiah 34.3

The unicorns shall come down with them … and their land shall be soaked with blood. Isaiah 34.7

The slain of the LORD shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground. Jeremiah 25.33

I will also water with thy blood the land … even to the mountains; and the rivers shall be full of thee. Ezekiel 32.6

I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. Ezekiel 35.8

Saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place. Amos 8.3

I will slay the last of them with the sword. Amos 9.1

I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good. Amos 9.4

There is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses. Nahum 3.3

I will utterly consume all things from off the land, saith the LORD. Zephaniah 1.2

I will bring distress upon men … their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their flesh as the dung. Zephaniah 1.17

The earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy. Zephaniah 3.8

I will kill her children with death. Revelation 2.23

The third part of the sea became blood. Revelation 8.8

They … shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. Revelation 11.9