The love of God in the OT

Rather often do I hear that "I do belive in God, but not the angry and punishing God as we see in the old testament, I ratherbelive in the loving and caring God in the new testament"

I read exactly this kind of thinking in the newspaper today and I just wanted to say that it is not true that God in the old testament is angry and harsh.

We see stories in the old testament like the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah etc, but there is no mention of God being angry!

When it comes to the flood, we’re told that in fact God was sorrowful, grieved at how wicked humanity had become, and that he acted out of moral necessity rather than anger.

With Sodom and Gomorrah, the Bible tells that God judged the cities  because of the massive injustice and perversion taking place there, only after  careful evaluation to determine if judgment was truly necessary, and only on the condition that the overwhelming majority of the population truly deserved it.

The Old Testament is  a love story of a Father and His children. It is a story of the Father teaching His children how to reciprocate so they can have the fulfilling relationship with their creator they were designed to have.

We can read in Exodus 34:6-7 

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Isaiah 54:10

“For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

God want to bless us, not harm us even in the old testament and he does so by helping us with various of things.