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Samenvatting

This essay responds critically to the fourth issue of Theologia Reformata volume 68, 2015, in which the Old Testament concept of God was discussed by Old and New Testament scholars as well as systematic theologians. Without denying that the authors dealt with the subject professionally, this essay contends that the discussion suffers from the serious defects of intellectualism and the failure to value sufficiently the many ‘uncomfortable’ texts critics of the Bible understand to depict God as an immoral being. Because all the contributors of the issue sympathize with the views which were defended in 2007 by Professor Eric Peels in his  God en geweld in het Oude Testament (God and Violence in the Old Testament), this study was chosen as the starting-point of some observations on the validity of the position of Peels and his colleagues. Against Peel and his colleagues this essay argues for the vulnerabilty of the Bible, a position which includes the position that believers don’t have ‘the Word of God’ at their disposal, but that they are in search of it. This search connects believers with their fellow believers of the past, and with all the faithful within Scripture