When Reading The Hebrew Scriptures, one may wonder why the Jewish storytellers and writers chose to record not only the inspired moments and successes of their ancestors, but also their weaknesses, character flaws, and downright failures. So many of the individuals from whom we draw spiritual inspiration are portrayed in these Scriptures with an unflinching honesty that might be considered rare today.
For instance, in Exodus we're told that Moses, the founder of the Jewish nation, the man fit to receive the Ten Commandments (including, ironically, "Thou shalt not kill") had once killed an Egyptian. And in Second Samuel, David, Israel's greatest king, sent Uriah to the front lines in a battle where he most certainly would be killed so that David could take Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. Even someone as central to Judaism as Jacob has his duplicitous behavior described without reservation, alongside his moments of insight and revelation.
In its unvarnished portrayal of men like Moses, David, and Jacob, the Hebrew text attempts to teach us about the very nature of God—a God who demands obedience to His laws, yet has great mercy and is quick to forgive. The Hebrew people saw God's love (often translated as mercy in the King James version) as a fundamental part of His covenant with His chosen people. This love was not in any sense abstract, but concrete, and visible in the affairs of individuals and the nation as a whole. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Volume 3, pp. 352 and 164 . The qualities of love (mercy) and forgiveness were considered inherent to the divine nature, eternal qualities of God that could be counted on at any time, under any circumstance. Tellingly, each of the 26 verses of Psalm 136 ends with "for his mercy endureth for ever."
