This is not a dodge. As one who's faithful and truthful, we must expect God to be consistent and not arbitrary -- IOW, unchanging. No, he does not play tricks on men. to "play tricks" is to assume that men enjoy sovereignty in their own right, without respect to God, and that man has some sort of right to be unmolested by God. I know this is probably the vierw you favor. But once again -- if that's what God is -- one who holds less than absolute sovereignty -- who needs him? OTOH, if God is an absolute sovereign, with ALL the rights, who nevertheless wishes man over time to acquire an intimate knowledge and relationship with him, who are we to question the means by which he chooses to make himself known?
Please consider that your model of a legalistic, moralizing god may be primitive and inadequate. All the easier to shoot down, no doubt, if that is your purpose, but unworthy of you.
I simply want to understand what I see as clear rational inconsistencies and irreconcilable paradoxes in the God described by the Old Testament.
I know it causes some people discomfort. And I know that the response to discomfort is all too often a "lashing out" at the source of the discomfort. But the inconsistencies and the paradoxes remain despite the lashing out.
God specifies and defines morality. And yet the actions attributed to God in the Old Testament are often in diametric opposition to the moral code specified. So either God is immoral (a paradoxical impossibility)... Or those who scribed the Bible attributed actions to God, which were not God's.
To be honest, I favor the latter explanation. If God exists, I can scarcely imagine that such a benevolent, wondrous, and loving omnipotent being, would be at all concerned with humans groveling in fear at his almighty feet. And under no circumstances would such a God be prone to insane fits of destructive jealous rage.
These are human qualities (and not exactly admirable ones at that).