Is God Good?

To ask if God was acting morally in the OT is to question how ancient man saw God. Rather than defining God by inward thinking of good and evil he saw the gods or God in a exterior relationship with man. In fact, early man had little interest in knowing how God thought only how God acted in his benefit. J.Bottero states In “Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia”., “…our insistence on isolated propositions somewhat deadens, in fact deforms, the thought of those people who had neither the need for logic nor our demands for clarity.”
Therefore, the question was not whether God acted justly, but did he administer justice for those on Earth? In other words what has God done for me? In Job we are confronted with this conundrum. Job is a good man, but God agrees to the adversary to his torture. What was God’s motivation? Job didn’t consider it. He only saw the exterior results around him. Had he sinned? Disobeyed God in some way? It didn’t matter: ““NakedI came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there.The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.May the name of the Lordbe blessed!” In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety.”
And finally he acknowledges God with “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that as the lasthe will stand upon the earth.And after my skin has been destroyed,yet in my flesh I will see God”
Did God act in anger or was he unjust? Job never answer this, but to admit that life is unfair, but in the end we will know that God lives, He is our redeemer and we will see Him face to face.
God or the gods were praised for their power and strength, I Chronicles 16, but not for their goodness. Except for a few scriptures such as 2 Chronicles 30:18:
“The majority of the many people from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun were ceremonially unclean, yet they ate the Passover in violation of what is prescribed in the law. For Hezekiah prayed for them, saying: “May the Lord, who is good, forgive.”
and Psalms 136:1 :
“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loyal love endures.”
God was seen as possessing strength, power and majesty.
In 1 Chronicles 16:4-7 Asaph is chosen to give thanks to God in which he sees God initially in Psalms 72 where good is simply the absence of pin and suffering, but in the end he can delare that , “Certainly God is good to Israel,and to those whose motives are pure!” God is good to those who serve Him: Verse 28 , “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, That I may tell of all Thy works.”
Man wasn’t interested in God’s inner motivation only his outward demonstrations.
“For Yahweh the standard is the Yahweh own character, therefore making it impossible for him to do evil_good is defined by what he does.”
Finally evil itself was not the purview of God, but of demons. God himself was interested only that human act towards each other in a just manner as long as they maintained their cultic devotions to God and maintained a social order. Amongst themselves the Heavenly Council could act in any manner they felt justified.

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