in Religion | March 31st, 2026 1 Comment
Whether or not we believe in any god, most of us here in the twenty-first century have the impression of divine rulers overlooking humanity with at least theoretical love and benevolence. They forgive us, they have plans for us, they never close a door without opening a window, and so on. But in the particular case of the Christian God, we’ve all heard that he both giveth and taketh away, even if we’ve never so much as opened the Bible, Old Testament or New. That line comes from the Book of Job, which belongs to the Old, a text whose depiction of God may surprise first-time readers — especially in his willingness to cause death, the subject of the Hochelaga video above on “God’s Biblical Kill Count.”
It turns out that, if you go through the King James Version and tally up every single person God kills on a spreadsheet (a task to which Hochelaga creator Tommie Trelawny is surely among the best-suited YouTubers), you end up with a high number at the bottom indeed. “Throughout the Old Testament, God is responsible for a whole slew of natural disasters,” he says, “from erasing life on Earth in a world-ending flood to unleashing devastating plagues of” — yes — “Biblical proportions.”
