There are certainly times when scripture contains ideas and descriptions of God that make modern readers uncomfortable. God ordering [his] people to slaughter the inhabitants of a land; including women, children, and animals, as an example.

Struggling to make theological leaps in order to let God off the hook for this sort of horror is only necessary when taking the inspiration of scripture to mean that God is revealing God’s own self in this light rather than seeing it as people describing God in ways that fit their wider cultural understanding (tribal deities). However, the power of scripture is that God has let God’s children tell the story in the way that made sense to them.