October 23 – Seeming Contradiction in the Bible?

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Will you speak wickedly for God, and talk deceitfully for Him?” Job 13:7

“Your word is truth.” John 17:17

When Moses saw an Egyptian and an Israelite striving together, he killed the Egyptian and saved the Israelite (Exodus 2:12). But when he saw two Israelites striving together, he labored to reconcile them, saying, “You are brethren; why do you strive?” So when we meet, in the volumes of heathenism or of anti-Christian superstition, with sentiments hostile to those of the Bible, let us (to borrow the language just cited) “kill the Egyptian but save the Israelite.” But when we notice a seeming contradiction in the Bible, let us avail ourselves, as much as possible, of those aids by which we may be able to trace a real agreement. While we remember the solemn language of inspiration, “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should repent” (Numbers 23:19); and yet read, “The Lord was sorry that He had made man, and He was grieved in His heart” (Genesis 6:6); and again, “God tested [tempted] Abraham” (Genesis 22:1); yet it is also said, God tempts no one (James 1:13). Here and in many other places, we must be reconcilers and distinguish between a change of mind and a change of dispensation, and a temptation of trial and a temptation of seducement; thus, these two apparently differing friends will appear to be brethren and agree well.

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)