What does the Bible have to say about prejudice and discrimination and equality and stuff? Quite a bit, but most of the time the views it promotes are absurdly immoral. Supposedly, God doesn’t show any partiality, and the Bible says people shouldn’t show partiality or favoritism, either. But when the Bible teaches equality, it’s usually only to say that everyone should be treated equally badly.

I’ve written blog posts cataloging everything the Bible has to say about how people were, or should be, treated differently based on their…

• Nationality (Mostly it’s insanely anti-Gentile.)
• Sex (Mostly it’s unbelievably anti-woman.)
• Kinship (How you get treated in the Bible too often depends on who you’re related to, instead of being determined by anything about you. God occasionally claims to be against this, but he clearly isn’t.)
• Sexual orientation (The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about this, but what it does say is extremely anti-gay.)
• Species (God doesn’t seem to think much of animals, and sometimes he wants people to be treated that badly too.)
• Age (Biased against younger people most of the time.)
• Religion (Mostly it demonizes anyone who isn’t Jewish or Christian. And then Paul demonizes the Jews too. Since religions are beliefs, religions can be wrong, so “religious intolerance” isn’t always a bad thing. But the kind in the Bible is generally the bad kind.)
• Occupation (The Bible has lots of different opinions and rules, most of them pretty awful, about what rights rulers, slaves, prostitutes, priests, and people of other professions should or shouldn’t have.)
• Class (No consistency on whether being rich or poor is worse.)
• Tribe (The Levites are a special tribe that God wants everybody else to give free food and money to, according to Moses the Levite.)

Now, what other forms of discrimination does the Bible mention?

Merit?

“Discriminating”¹ isn’t always a bad thing. What about just repaying people according to how good or bad they’ve been, giving them the treatment they’ve earned? If you’re going to discriminate between people, that sounds like a pretty good way to do it. So does that ever happen in the Bible? Eh, sort of. Let’s see how many ways the Bible can come up with to pervert that idea…

Instead of doing anything to protect the first murder victim, God decided to protect the first murderer and make sure no one would kill him.² Predictably, what God did here led to other people thinking it was okay to murder.

Eliphaz absurdly claims that good people never die, and that God makes sure bad people always get what they deserve. Of course, God says Eliphaz did not speak the truth about him.

Moses says you’ll be cursed if you accept a bribe to kill an innocent person, but maybe not if you accept a bribe to kill a guilty person. The women of Israel admired men who had killed more people more than they admired men who had killed fewer people.

Saul destroyed all the no-good animals the Amalekites had, but he kept the “good” ones, planning to sacrifice them to God later. God didn’t approve, though. He wanted Saul to kill everything and everyone right away. God also seems to think vegetarians are inferior to meat-eaters.

God’s law says you shouldn’t refuse to help someone just because he’s your enemy who hates you. Saul said his enemy David was righteous to treat him well (by not killing him) when he had treated David badly. David generally did not love his enemies, though. He was an evildoer and a hypocrite, but he refused to associate with other evildoers and hypocrites.

The Bible says evil men said only the people who had done the work (of slaughtering and plundering the Amalekites) should get any plunder. But David said the plunder had to be shared among all his men, including the ones who hadn’t participated in the battle. (It didn’t occur to anyone to give the plunder back to the people the Amalekites had stolen it from to begin with.)

Solomon says being biased in favor of the wicked isn’t good! He also claims that murderers always decide to kill themselves too, so you just need to leave them alone and they’ll take care of themselves. And the idiot who wrote Proverbs 30 says one of the few things that the earth just can’t stand is when a woman gets married even though she’s “contemptible”.

Proverbs says nobody should make friends with a hot-tempered person. So if you’re considering forming a relationship with God, remember that the Bible says you should not associate with someone who is easily angered.

God singled out a boy named Abijah, the only good person in his family, to be the first to die when God destroyed his family. Then when King Azariah did what was right, God made sure that king suffered from leprosy until the day he died. After good King Jehoshaphat tried to influence evil King Ahab by getting him to listen to God’s prophet, God got mad at Jehoshaphat for “helping the wicked”.

Isaiah suggests that God is planning to build a highway that wicked people aren’t allowed to use. Ezekiel says God had his angels kill everyone in Jerusalem (men, women, and children) who wasn’t sad about the things people were doing in Jerusalem.

Jesus claims that God gives good things to the righteous and the unrighteous alike. And he says you too should love your enemies who persecute you, because if you only love those who love you, you won’t get a reward. Jesus told a parable suggesting that God is going to indiscriminately let people into his kingdom, regardless of whether they’re good or bad. Jesus also seems to think that people who do more work don’t necessarily deserve to be paid more.

Jesus preferred to hang out with sinners, because good people don’t need Jesus. He claims that God isn’t willing to let a single wayward person die, and that God even cares more about those people than he cares about good people. Paul was faultless when it came to following God’s law, but he considered that a loss.

Situation

How are people treated in the Bible based on how good or bad the circumstances they’re already experiencing are?

In Job’s opinion, miserable people shouldn’t be kept alive. And people who don’t give poor/widowed/fatherless people everything they want should have their arms broken off.

When God noticed that Jacob loved Rachel but not her sister Leah, God made sure only Leah was able to have children at first. Jacob, on the other hand, didn’t even care about the safety of the wives who weren’t his first choice. When he thought his estranged brother Esau and his men were coming to attack him and his family, he took his family with him and went to confront Esau. But he put his servant-wives and their children in front, and his favorite wife Rachel and her son safely in back.

God’s law says not to take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. God loves and defends those people, and foreigners as well, and provides them with food and clothing. God tells his people not to treat those people unjustly, or they’ll be cursed. He also says they have to give a portion of their produce to those people. And also to the Levites, because God decided not to give them their own land, so now all the other tribes have to provide for them.

God didn’t want too many of his people to go to war. He commanded that the men who had recently acquired houses, vineyards, or women should stay home and enjoy them instead. God says a man has to treat his actual firstborn as his firstborn, even if his firstborn is the son of a wife he doesn’t love.

Anyone who is executed by being hung on a pole is under God’s curse. (I’m not sure why that would even matter at that point.)

“Good” king Hezekiah didn’t care what happened to people who lived after his own lifetime.

In Jerusalem, foreign/fatherless/widowed people were oppressed. And God says he will “testify against” the people who oppress them, at least if the oppressors don’t fear him. The way he worded it, it sounds like he would rather they oppress those people while also fearing him. Anyway, when God destroys the world, it won’t matter what position you had in the world. It will be the same for everyone when they’re destroyed. Equality!

According to Jesus, God likes inequality so much that he actively reinforces it, giving more to the haves and taking away from the have-nots. But apparently only people who suffer like Jesus can reign with him in his kingdom. In fact, according to one of Jesus’s parables, only people who experience bad lives in this world go to heaven, while people who have good lives go to hell.

Paul says Christians should not be too proud to associate with people in low positions. And he says the church should not have to waste its resources helping a widow who is already in the care of a Christian woman.

Ability

God is willing to honor eunuchs, as long as they follow his laws. He has laws against being mean to people with certain disabilities. He also has laws that ban people with certain other disabilities (including eunuchs) from entering his assembly or making offerings to him. And banning animals with disabilities and defects from being offered to him.

Saul didn’t want David to try to fight Goliath because he thought David wasn’t able to do it, until David convinced him he did have the skill to do it. Skilled people get to work for kings.

The Jebusites were confident that even the blind and lame among them could keep David out of their city. David heard that, and started talking about the Jebusites like they were all blind and lame. And that’s how “The blind and lame will not enter the palace” became a saying, somehow. Even though nobody was talking about the Jebusites entering anything.

Solomon thinks it’s wrong for fools to occupy high positions and live in luxury. He says no one should even hire them, because that would be a criminally reckless thing to do. The idiot who wrote Proverbs 30 says the earth can’t stand when a “godless fool” gets enough to eat. And Solomon thinks fools should be beaten with rods like animals, for having no sense.

The Bible says if you’re a fool, you will come to ruin, because nobody will be on your side. But it also says the same thing will happen if you’re wise, so that doesn’t matter.

God sent his people into exile for their lack of understanding. He shows no favor and has no compassion for people without understanding.

Somebody in the Bible claimed that God wanted “any maniac who acts like a prophet” to be put in the stocks. God didn’t actually approve of this, though.

Jesus advises you to invite all the poor and disabled people to your banquets. (To make sure no one but God can repay you for your hospitality, because God will refuse to reward you if you’ve already been rewarded.) Jesus says blind people aren’t guilty of sin unless they claim they can see.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul says different people have different spiritual gifts, but all the gifts are equally good… until the last verse, when he decides that some gifts are better than others.

Association

Sometimes how God treats you is determined by what kind of people you’re associated with, instead of what kind of person you are.

God told Abraham he would (hypothetically) spare a whole city of evil people just because it had ten good people in it. I guess God must not be capable of targeting his destruction more precisely than at the level of whole cities. And he doesn’t expect any better from his people, either. He says they have to completely destroy a town if anyone in it ever suggests worshiping other gods. He doesn’t care if most of the people there don’t want to want to worship other gods.

God says if you obey his commands, he will bless your children and your animals and your animals’ children. And if you don’t, he will curse your children, and send people to eat your animals’ children and to rape your fiancee.

Solomon thinks you can trust people who wound you, as long as they’re your friends. Micah, on the other hand, warned people not to trust anyone no matter how close they were.

God disliked one of the King Jeroboams. Well, he disliked both King Jeroboams, but he disliked the first King Jeroboam so much that he wasn’t satisfied with just punishing him. God said he was going to kill all of Jeroboam’s male relatives too, and even all his male slaves. Later, God said he would do the same to all of Ahab’s male relatives and slaves, because he didn’t like Ahab. God gave that job to a maniac named Jehu, who killed Ahab’s friends while he was at it.

Jehoiada the priest had everyone who followed Queen Athaliah killed.

Jesus seems to think people should be “called Beelzebul” just because somebody called the head of their household that. And he says you should never invite your friends, relatives, or rich neighbors to dinner.

Sometimes, though, God doesn’t think who someone is associated with matters at all. He says you should mercilessly kill anyone who suggests worshiping other gods, even if it’s your brother, your child, your wife, or your best friend.

Virginity and marital status

It sounds like women are worth more when they’re virgins, according to God’s law. It costs more to buy a virgin, unless it’s your fault that she’s not a virgin, in which case there’s a “you break it, you buy it” policy. But women who aren’t virgins when they get married get stoned to death. And if you’re not a virgin, you can’t marry the high priest. If you’re a woman from a country God decides his people need to invade, your fate depends on whether you’re a virgin or not. But you’re probably screwed either way.

Israelite men who are engaged or afraid or who drink water in a certain way don’t have to / don’t get to go to war. And Israelite women who are widowed or divorced or not virgins don’t get to marry priests, unless they are widows of other priests, according to Ezekiel.

If a man has sex with a virgin who hasn’t gotten engaged to him, God has laws for dealing with them that depend on a few things: If she’s engaged to someone else and they had sex in town, they both get stoned to death. If she’s engaged to someone else and this guy raped her out in the country, only he gets stoned to death. And if she’s not engaged and he rapes her, he just has to pay a fine, but she has to marry him.³

When the king of Persia wanted a new wife, he had beautiful young virgins recruited from all over the country to compete for that position. Apparently you didn’t get to be queen if you weren’t a beautiful young virgin. And apparently if you were a beautiful young virgin in Persia at that particular time, it was mandatory to join the king’s harem.

144,000 male virgins will get special treatment from Jesus in the end times, because he considers them blameless.

Looks

The Pharaoh said all new baby Hebrew boys had to be thrown into the Nile. But Moses’s mother decided not to kill Moses, because “she saw that he was a fine child“.

According to God’s rules for dealing with skin diseases, hair that is yellow instead of black is a sign of a problem. So apparently God thinks blondes are diseased.

Priests who are disfigured, hunchbacked, or dwarfs aren’t allowed to make offerings to God. But animals that are disfigured are safe from being offered to God.

God claims to only consider inner character, and not outward appearance or height, when he chooses kings. Yet somehow he pretty consistently chooses to give his people kings who are tall or handsome, and who turn out to be evil. Maybe evil is what God is going for? I don’t know how else to explain it. Anyway, God also killed 42 boys for making fun of a prophet for being bald.

God said he would make the women of Jerusalem ugly to punish them for making themselves pretty. Then they would be disgraced, and no one would want to marry them. The book of Lamentations mentions God killing everyone who is pleasing to the eye.

God told Ezekiel he was going to “judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep“. I guess that’s supposed to be some kind of metaphor, but I’m not sure which kind of sheep is supposed to be better. Normally it would be desirable to have fat sheep, right? But the context here indicates that God is siding with the weak sheep… Would that be the lean ones? I don’t know. And I have no idea what kinds of people all these sheep are supposed to represent, either. God really needs to learn to communicate better.

Esther was chosen to marry the king of Persia because she was the most beautiful girl they could find in the kingdom. Solomon’s favorite girl thinks her own loveliness is remarkable, given how dark she is.

Individuals

Sometimes in Genesis, someone will decide that a specific individual should be treated very differently from everyone else for no apparent reason.

Lamech decided that he, a murderer, mattered so much that if anyone ever killed him, he should be avenged 77 times over. It doesn’t say whether God agreed with that idea or not. But it seems rather likely he would, since Lamech got that idea from something similar that God had said about Lamech’s ancestor Cain.

Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and gave him special treatment. He even insisted that Joseph’s descendants would get twice as much land as those of any of Jacob’s other sons, by treating Joseph’s two sons as if they were Jacob’s own sons. Supposedly this was all because Joseph “had been born to him in his old age”. But if that was really what it was about, Benjamin should have been Jacob’s favorite. Jacob was even older when Benjamin was born than when Joseph was born.

Benjamin was Jacob’s second-favorite, at least. After Jacob had lost Joseph, he was not willing to send Benjamin to Egypt to buy food, “because he was afraid that harm might come to him”, but he had no such concerns about his other ten sons.

Benjamin was also Joseph’s favorite brother.⁴ When incognito Joseph invited his brothers to lunch, he had Benjamin served five times as much food as anyone else. And after he told them who he was and sent them to bring their father to live in Egypt, he also gave Benjamin a bigger gift than he gave anyone else.