This is the third article of the series: “The Foreigner woman in Bible versus Quran”. 

Few quotes from the first article of this series are given here.

In language, the foreigner woman or the stranger woman is the alien woman or the exotic woman or the outsider woman. However, as determined by the Bible (e.g. 1 Kings 11:1), the foreigner woman or the stranger woman is the non-Israelite woman.

Subsequently, all non-Israelite women are foreigner or stranger women.

This indicates that the women in the Bible are but one of two categories; they are either Legitimate or Foreigner.

Moreover, the Bible (Ezra 10:2) states that you break faith with God if you marry foreign women.

Ezra 10:2 (English Standard Version)…We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land…

According to the inspired word of God (1 Kings 11:1-11), the Bible says that

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord God had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines, and his wives led him astray.  As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, He followed the goddess of the Sidonians, and the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord God; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.

King Solomon built a high place for the detestable god of Moab, and for the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

The Lord God became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So the Lord God said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.

Herein, there are some questions:

1) How come that King Solomon had 1000 women. In an old interpretation, it is said that he used to sleep with all of them every night!

2) How come that the Prophet Wise King Solomon did evil, did not follow his Lord, built high places for other gods so that God became angry with him?

On the other hand, the Quran (Verse 38:30) says that Allah bestowed on David, Solomon, his son. What an excellent servant! That is, Solomon. Truly he was a penitent soul, always returning [to Allah] with glorification and remembrance at all times. He was ever turning in repentance (towards Allah) he is ever betaking himself to Allah and engaged in His obedience.

Herein there are two important ethical issues.

1) If the Quran is Anti-Israelite, and since King Solomon is an Israelite king, then the Quran would have exaggerated all the negative attributes of him and would say, this is the behavior of the Israelite kings! But, the truth is the truth.

2) According to the Islamic teachings (Quran and Hadith), anyone says or believes that King Solomon (or any other Prophet) did evil, did not follow his Lord, built high places for other gods etc. is categorized as disbeliever  and he or she will dwell in the Eternal Hell in the Afterlife.

For more details, you can read on the net my series of 25 articles about King Solomon in the Quran; just type on Google search: “Not in Bible But in Quran” + King Solomon + my name.

==================================

The Bible

1 Kings 11:1-11 (American Standard Version)

1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites;

2 of the nations concerning which Jehovah said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.

3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.

4 For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as was the heart of David his father.

5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

6 And Solomon did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and went not fully after Jehovah, as did David his father.

7 Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon.

8 And so did he for all his foreign wives, who burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

9 And Jehovah was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from Jehovah, the God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice,

10 and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods: but he kept not that which Jehovah commanded.

11 Wherefore Jehovah said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.

==================================

The Quran

Verse 38:30 (Pickthal Translation):

And we bestowed on David, Solomon. How excellent a slave! Lo! He was ever turning in repentance (toward Allah).

==================================

Back to my question to the smart and interested reader:

Are the Scholars truthful when they claim that the Quran quoted from the Bible?

This is the third article of the series: “The Foreigner woman in Bible versus Quran”. 

Few quotes from the first article of this series are given here.

In language, the foreigner woman or the stranger woman is the alien woman or the exotic woman or the outsider woman. However, as determined by the Bible (e.g. 1 Kings 11:1), the foreigner woman or the stranger woman is the non-Israelite woman.

Subsequently, all non-Israelite women are foreigner or stranger women.

This indicates that the women in the Bible are but one of two categories; they are either Legitimate or Foreigner.

Moreover, the Bible (Ezra 10:2) states that you break faith with God if you marry foreign women.

Ezra 10:2 (English Standard Version)…We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land…

According to the inspired word of God (1 Kings 11:1-11), the Bible says that

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord God had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines, and his wives led him astray.  As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, He followed the goddess of the Sidonians, and the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord God; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.

King Solomon built a high place for the detestable god of Moab, and for the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.

The Lord God became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command. So the Lord God said to Solomon, “Since this is your attitude and you have not kept my covenant and my decrees, which I commanded you, I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give it to one of your subordinates.

Herein, there are some questions:

1) How come that King Solomon had 1000 women. In an old interpretation, it is said that he used to sleep with all of them every night!

2) How come that the Prophet Wise King Solomon did evil, did not follow his Lord, built high places for other gods so that God became angry with him?

On the other hand, the Quran (Verse 38:30) says that Allah bestowed on David, Solomon, his son. What an excellent servant! That is, Solomon. Truly he was a penitent soul, always returning [to Allah] with glorification and remembrance at all times. He was ever turning in repentance (towards Allah) he is ever betaking himself to Allah and engaged in His obedience.

Herein there are two important ethical issues.

1) If the Quran is Anti-Israelite, and since King Solomon is an Israelite king, then the Quran would have exaggerated all the negative attributes of him and would say, this is the behavior of the Israelite kings! But, the truth is the truth.

2) According to the Islamic teachings (Quran and Hadith), anyone says or believes that King Solomon (or any other Prophet) did evil, did not follow his Lord, built high places for other gods etc. is categorized as disbeliever  and he or she will dwell in the Eternal Hell in the Afterlife.

For more details, you can read on the net my series of 25 articles about King Solomon in the Quran; just type on Google search: “Not in Bible But in Quran” + King Solomon + my name.

==================================

The Bible

1 Kings 11:1-11 (American Standard Version)

1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites;

2 of the nations concerning which Jehovah said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go among them, neither shall they come among you; for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love.

3 And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.

4 For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not perfect with Jehovah his God, as was the heart of David his father.

5 For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

6 And Solomon did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, and went not fully after Jehovah, as did David his father.

7 Then did Solomon build a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, in the mount that is before Jerusalem and for Molech the abomination of the children of Ammon.

8 And so did he for all his foreign wives, who burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

9 And Jehovah was angry with Solomon, because his heart was turned away from Jehovah, the God of Israel, who had appeared unto him twice,

10 and had commanded him concerning this thing that he should not go after other gods: but he kept not that which Jehovah commanded.

11 Wherefore Jehovah said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.

==================================

The Quran

Verse 38:30 (Pickthal Translation):

And we bestowed on David, Solomon. How excellent a slave! Lo! He was ever turning in repentance (toward Allah).

==================================

Back to my question to the smart and interested reader:

Are the Scholars truthful when they claim that the Quran quoted from the Bible?

This particular cliché is actually more biblically accurate than the six I previously listed, because it attempts to affirm God’s love for sinners while at the same time upholding His holiness. Yet like the six clichés I listed last month, this one also falls short of the full truth, and it can thus be misleading to people and damaging to Christ’s cause. Why do I say this? One reason is because Scripture not only teaches that God loves sinners, but also that He hates them. Surprised? Read for yourself:

The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity. You destroy those who speak falsehood; the Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit (Ps. 5:5-6, emphasis added).

The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence His soul hates (Ps. 11:5, emphasis added).

I have forsaken My house, I have abandoned My inheritance; I have given the beloved of My soul [God’s people Israel] into the hand of her enemies. My inheritance has become to Me like a lion in the forest; she has roared against Me; therefore I have come to hate her (Jer. 12:7-8, emphasis added).

All their evil is at Gilgal; indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; all their princes are rebels (Hos. 9:15, emphasis added).

These verses of scripture are all in your Bible as well as mine! Your Bible declares that God hates “all who do iniquity” (Ps. 5:5). Since all unregenerate people “do iniquity,” we can conclude that God hates them all. (Incidentally, this verse among many others leads us to believe that God’s “free gift of righteousness” is more than just a legal standing of righteousness that results in no practical righteousness, otherwise God would hate His own children.)

But how can it be true that God both loves and hates sinners? The only way to reconcile this apparent contradiction is to once again recognize that not all love is the same. As I stated in last month’s e-teaching, some love is conditional, what I referred to as “approving love,” and some love is unconditional, what I referred to as “merciful love.” From the standpoint of His merciful love, God loves sinners (see Eph. 2:4-6; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet. 1:3, and look for the word mercy). But from the standpoint of his approving love, God utterly hates them—they are in fact abhorrent to Him. Can you imagine how you would feel if you had created a race of people who inwardly knew just how to please you yet who ignored and disobeyed you continually, even using your name as a curse word? Might you not be somewhat upset with them?

Note that all of the above-quoted scriptures do not say that God only hates what people do—they say He hates them.We cannot separate a person from what he does.What a person does reveals his character—who he is. Thus if God disapproves of sin He of course must disapprove of sinners. God is so pure that His disapproval is very strong, and the word hate describes it well.To separate the sin from the sinner by saying “God loves the sinner but hates the sin” is potentially misleading.

Other scriptures declare that certain people—not just what those people do—are an abomination to God.See, for example, Deut. 22:5, 16; Lev. 26:29-30; Ps. 5:5-6; Prov. 3:32, 11:20, 16:5, 17:15. Beyond that, there are many other expressions of God’s hatred of certain people in Scripture. For example, when we read, “the Lord did not turn from the fierceness of His great wrath with which His anger burned against Judah” (2 Kin. 23:26), we don’t get the impression that we are reading about God’s love for sinners.

Regrettably,very little is said of God’s hatred or abhorrence of sinners among modern Christians. Most preachers, it seems, emphasize God’s love for sinners, and their audiences consequently are often misled into thinking that God approves of them in spite of their sin, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that God utterly hates them, but He is mercifully giving them time to repent and gain His approval before they die, and only in that sense does He love them. When they die His mercy ends, and they will then experience the fullness of His hatred. The people in hell do not think that God loves them. They all know that He utterly hates them. And the truth is that when they were alive He hated them just as thoroughly, but then He showed them mercy, or merciful love. If unrepentant people who are still alive knew how much God hates them, they would be astounded at His merciful love towards them.

This also indicates to us that God’s holy hatred of sinners and His merciful love toward them are not contradictory aspects of His character. Rather, they perfectly blend together. God’s mercy is magnified even more by His holy hatred, and vice versa. Preachers who want to emphasize God’s true love for sinners must first emphasize His holy hatred for them.

If the history of revival teaches us anything, it teaches us that revival occurs when people are awakened, not to some false concept of a grandfather God who “loves everyone unconditionally,” but when they realize their present precarious condition before a holy and wrathful God. For example,Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards, whom God used as a instrument of revival during America’s Great Awakening in the 1740s, certainly didn’t mislead his congregation about their slippery state before God. In his classic sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards simply affirmed biblical truth about God’s attitude toward the unrepentant:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment….O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder…

What a picture of God’s anger and His mercy! Although Jonathan Edwards witnessed wonderful revival in his church and community, he was ultimately dismissed from his pastorate for holding to his biblical convictions. Only preachers who truly love their audiences and who aren’t afraid of losing popularity and money can possibly preach such truth. Of course, Jesus was one of those kinds of preachers. Never once did He tell an unsaved audience that God loved them, and there is only one record of His telling one unregenerate individual one time about God’s love for the world (and that is found in John 3:16). Rather, Jesus regularly warned sinners of God’s wrath and called them to repentance (see, for example, Matt. 4:17; 5:22, 29-30, 8:11-12; 10:28; 11:20-23; 13:41-42, 49-50; 18:19; 22:13; 23:33; 24:50-51; 25:30). What Jesus told one person one time we have made our universal theme to the unsaved, and what He constantly emphasized to them we have kept a secret! Are we really being seeker-sensitive with our non-offensive evangelistic sermons, or are we actually ashamed of Jesus and His words? (See Luke 9:26.) Why are so many pastors afraid to tell the biblical truth even to professing Christians in the church? What does that reveal about those pastors? What does that reveal about their congregations?

John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest man who ever lived (Matt. 11:11), never mentioned God’s love when he preached the gospel (see Matt. 3:1-12; Luke 3:1-18). He sounded much like Jonathan Edwards, warning his audiences of God’s coming wrath. Likewise, there is not a single case in the book of Acts where anyone preaching the gospel told an unsaved audience that God loved them. Rather, the biblical preachers warned their audiences that God did not approve of them, that they were in danger, and that they needed to make dramatic changes in their lives. Had they only told their audiences that God loved them and all they need to do was “accept Christ as Savior” (as do so many modern ministers), they may have misled them into thinking that God approved of them, that they were in no danger, were not storing up wrath for themselves, and had no need to repent. This is of vital importance, because salvation cannot occur without repentance. Jesus told His apostles to “preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47). We may be filling churches with evangelistic messages about God’s love, but are we filling heaven?

God’s love is greatly distorted when modern preachers, under the influence of pop psychology (whether they realize it or not) tell their unsaved audiences how Christ’s death proves their value before God. “You were worth dying for” they say. Even the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price is perverted to show supposedly that Christ gave up everything to gain what was of inestimable value—us! (Wasn’t God blessed to get YOU?) Paul, however, stood amazed, not at how the cross proved the alleged value of a race of rebels, but how it displayed God’s amazing merciful love, because Jesus wasn’t dying for good people, but for ungodly sinners(see Rom. 5:6-10). His death saved us, not from underestimating our true worth, but from God’s righteous wrath that we all fully deserve(see Rom. 5:6-10). Apart from God’s holy hatred of sinners, His love for them is essentially meaningless.

Why don’t we follow the example of Jesus and John the Baptist, telling the unrepentant the truth found in Scripture?:

God is a righteous judge,

And a God who has indignation every day.

If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;

He has bent His bow and made it ready (Psalm 7:11-12).

This is the biblical picture of God’s love toward the unrepentant. His merciful love restrains Him from releasing the arrow that He has already drawn in His bow, the arrow that is tenuously aimed in righteous indignation at every sinner. This is a biblical example that would have fit right into Jonathan Edward’s sermons, or John the Baptist’s.

The unsaved inside and outside the church are under a huge delusion as they mistake God’s mercy for His approval. They will be shocked at their judgment, just like the goats Jesus described in Matthew 25:31-46. They don’t understand that God is very kind to His enemies, so they imagine that they are at peace with Him. What a tragedy it is when the church reinforces this delusion. I’m afraid that the bumper sticker that says, “Smile, God Loves You!” speaks volumes about modern theology and evangelistic preaching. Should we really be encouraging hell-bound rebels whom God utterly abhors, to smile

“God’s Love/Hate Relationship with the World”, the 2nd article on the conditional love of God ©2007 David Servant and ShepherdServe.org. You are welcome to repost this article as long as the article is unaltered and kept in its entirety (with all links and credits attached), and is not sold for profit.