The Hebrew God Yahweh was a very private god, indeed he was a tribal god who had no concern or kindly interest in any nation except the Hebrews. Here is God's promise to the Israel nation. Deut. 7:12-15. "The Lord your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that he swore to your ancestors; he will love you, bless you and multiply you. .... You shall be the most blessed of peoples, with neither sterility nor barrenness among you or your livestock. The Lord will turn away from you; every illness; all the dread diseases of Egypt that you experienced, he will not inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. You shall devour all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity; you shall not serve their gods for that would be a snare to you." No barren people or cattle and no sickness'! And ruthless domination to take the land!!

Look carefully at this promise. Their god promises the Israelites that they shall be a favoured people. The dread diseases of Egypt he will lay on those who hate the Jews. He tells them to devour all the people given over to them. The Jews are to show no pity. This is not a universal God who would love all nations equally and justly. Here we have a tribal god, a partisan god, in opposition to the tribal gods of other nations. All of these gods were political gods who arose from the imagination of the leaders. It was the popular practice of all the surrounding nations to have their own special god. The Hebrew idea of a powerful god grew and grew. It was encouraged by the religious leaders who gained their own power as agent of the supposed supreme power of a god.

A few years of history passed and the god who promised to love the Israelites, now threatens them. The Hebrew prophets were constantly threatening the people with the anger and punishment of their god for disobedience. Here are a few examples. "For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe." Deut. 10:17. "The Lord your God who is present with you, is a jealous God: the anger of the Lord your God would be kindled against you and he would destroy you from off the face of the earth." Deut. 6:15. “The anger of the Lord was kindled against that land bringing on it every curse written in this book: and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, fury and great wrath and cast them into another land." Deut. 29:27. "I will send a curse upon you and I will curse your blessings." Mal. 2:2. "Wait continually for your God, a trader in whose hands are false balances, he loves to oppress." Hosea 12:7. Obedience to their God far outweighed the promised love and blessing they expected. The Old Testament is a cruel book full of the tyranny and injustice of their god.

The story of the conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites is full of brutal massacres of men, women and children as the text shows. ''They did battle against the Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses and they killed every male ...The Israelites took the women of Midian, and their little ones captive and they took all the cattle, their flocks and all their goods as booty. All the towns where they had settled and all their encampments they burned, but they took all the spoil and all the booty both people and animals … Moses said to them have you allowed all the women to live?... .Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves'." Num. Ch. 31. Here we have both a scorched earth policy and heartless ethnic cleansing ordered by the same God who said "You shall not kill and you shall not covert." The above story of conquest without warning, was genocide of the worst kind to be repeated many times by the Hebrews as their God commanded them. Think of the women whose sons are taken and killed. The rest of the women become slaves or worse to the murderers of their families. The lame excuse was that the surrounding people worshipped their own tribal gods who were opposed to the Israelite tribal god. "Israel put him to the sword and took possession of his land from Arnon to the Jabbok." Num. 21:24.

The Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths all worship the same God. Indeed the Christians adopted the Jewish God but abandoned the requirements of the Jewish laws. Islam followed the Jewish idea of monotheism and took from the Jewish and Christian faiths to compile their own doctrines. Islam claims that Muhammad is the last prophet of God and therefore supersedes the earlier ones. Each group has an entirely different idea of the function, character and requirements of their God. Each structured their God in accordance with their own desires and doctrine.