Pawns in Biblical Stories
So many of the stories in the Bible are myths intended to convey an idea but lose track of humanity in the process. The story teller is neither omniscient nor omnibenevolent. From this we can conclude that the Bible was not written by God in any sense of the phrase. Let me illustrate by a few examples.
These characters appear only to serve the arc of the story of the main character. As a story telling device that is quite normal. The evil super-villain (say, Joker in Batman) kills someone arbitrarily to show how evil he is, nobody is thinking of the victim's family.
To claim that these stories are real, and that God wrote them, changes the picture. An infinitely powerful entity can not merely treat a real live person as a plot device. God's commitment is to all people, not just the protagonist.
Job's Family
God makes this wager with the devil that Job's love for God is so great -- how great is it? -- so great that even if he lost every material possession, and every family member, he would continue to love God unquestioningly. The story of Job involves God stripping everything away from Job, and showing that he remains faithful to God without any family or material possessions. It seems that church leaders would want people to love the church even if they have great hardship.
Job's family are just pawns in the story. They are killed in order that Job will have the effect of having his family killed -- but there is no consideration of whether it was just to kill them. If this was a real story, these would be real people killed for no fault of their own, other than being the family of a victim of a wager. The understand the story of the victim, Job, who is the protagonist with the undying love for God, but what do the family members think about this? What does God say to them? "I had to kill you because I needed Job to prove he really did some Me instead of all his material possessions."
Think for more than a moment about that. When would it ever be fair to kill one person, for the benefit or punishment of another? The writers of the bible didn't think too deeply about the consequences of real people being used as props in their stories. For a human writer that is understandable. But not for a God.
A God would never do that.
Abraham and Isaac
Abraham was instructed to kill his son as a test to prove how much Abraham trusted in God. There is, of course a happen end to this story -- yay God! -- but Isaac is another human pawn to the story. How was this experience for Isaac? Being prepped for sacrifice. Was there any PTSD from that? Clearly Isaac was not killed, but using a real live person as a tool or a test of another person is clearly an immoral thing to do.
A God would never do that.
Jephthah's daughter
Jephthah's daughter in Judges 11 is sacrificed because of her father's rash vow. He said: "“If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.”
Of course, his only daughter is the person who comes through the door, and he must then follow through and sacrifice. She's given a brief mourning ritual but no name. What about her position? Why does she need to die in order to teach the father a lesson?
OF course, this is a lesson about Jephthah making rash vows. (And what a stupid one it was because whoever came through his door is likely to be a family member or good friend.) If it was a true story, it would be monstrously unfair to the daughter who did nothing wrong (and died a virgin as well echoing the Jesus story in that way).
A God would never do that.
The Levite's concubine
The Levite's concubine (Judges 19) — raped, abused, and dismembered into twelve pieces to spur the Israelite tribes to war. Why kill the concubine for this part in the story? How is it in any way fair to do this to a person, in order to motivate people to go to war?
Achan's Family
In Joshua 7 we are told that Achan committed a sin, and so for punishment he and his entire family are stoned to death, even though the text doesn't say they participated. The killing of the family is a plot device to make the entire punishment more significant. It says all his sones and daughters were killed.
There is no justice in this. Killing one person for the sins of another is the height of injustice. The point is not whether the action is just or not, but to notice how easy it is for biblical authors to include the death or harming of people who have nothing to do with the crime. Again, it is not hard to imagine people doing these sorts of things.
A God would never do that.
The Egyptian firstborn
In Exodus 11–12 we are told that God killed all the first born in the tenth plague to force Pharaoh's hand. The narrative barely pauses on Egyptian grief before moving to Israel's liberation.
Clear the target was the Pharoah who was apparently not acting the way that God wanted him to act. Instead of punishing the Pharaoh directly, the God in the story goes and kills thousands of other people as a kind of punishment.
Plagues were hard for the primitive bible author to understand. Lots of people just die all of a sudden, so let's make up a reason that might explain why such an "act of God" might occur. As a plot device, the idea that God would kill thousands of innocent children just to teach the Pharaoh a lesson seems designed superficially to express how angry God was, but I can think of a thousands ways to persuade the Pharaoh without killing innocent children. What are the children and the parents of those children supposed to learn from the story: that they are merely pawns without meaning. The Jews however use goat's blood to let the all-knowing God remember who is Jewish and who is not. It seems that having the Jewish first born die with the rest was too much sorrow for the story to be believed.
If this story was true, it would be monstrously unfair and immoral to do.
A God would never do that.
David and Bathsheba
David and Bathsheba was quite a scandal in the old testament. What was his sin by the way? "You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own."
2 Samuel 12:11-12: "Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity on you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will sleep with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel."
So David's wives will be raped in the streets because David sinned. What did they do to deserve this? The wives in this story are nothing more than a plot device to make it seems that David's punishment was severe. Can you imagine God explaining this to the wife: "You had to be raped in the street because David was bad, tough for you, but that is the way it goes." This is not morality or justice for the wives, this is just a mythical story trying to be ferocious.
2 Samuel 12:13-14: "The Lord has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die."
God is punishing David by killing the son. Did anyone ask what the son felt about it? It is NEVER moral or just to kill one person for the sins of another. Can you imagine God saying "Well, sorry son, you can't grow up and have a life because your dad did something bad. Shame, really, but that's the law I made."
A God would never do that.
Us versus Them
Many of the stories in the can be best interpreted when you consider that the writers of the bible felt they were a special race chosen by God to do special things. This allows them to consider other people as being less than human.
Arrogance
Who am I to say what God should or should not do? Christians try to respond an say that anyone questioning anything that God does is being arrogant. You must be humble and just accept that God's will is always right.
The point I am trying to make is not that God is or is not moral, but that the stories in the bible are written like myths where characters play roles without actually considering the full consequences of the part they play. The story is about David, and therefor bad things that happen to David, such as the raping of his wives, or the death of a child. It is a very superficial view that is typical for storyteller to communicate an idea, but not that fits a God of any magnitude.
If the stories were true, it would mean god made an entirely unfair universe where he "plays God" all the time arbitrarily killing people just to make other people sad. It would mean that life and death is meaning for the vast majority of people in order to serve as props in the background of the myths of the bible.