
Because the God of the Hebrew Bible desires and demands that his people obey him for their sake rather than his own, the chastisements he is said to inflict on them are seen as expressions of his love and concern for them. His commitment to their wholeness and well-being will not allow him simply to overlook and ignore their destructive behavior but compels him to do everything in his power to bring them to abandon that behavior and instead live in ways that will allow them to experience the well-being he seeks for them. While at times this involves subjecting them to tremendous sufferings and hardships, the alternative would be to abandon them to their own fate and give them up to their own destruction.