Yes
9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
KJV Psalm 145:9
No
14 And I will dash them one against another, even the fathers and the sons together, saith the LORD: I will not pity, nor spare, nor have mercy, but destroy them.
KJV Jeremiah 13:14
SAB contradiction 683 (by book)
(Jim Meritt – in his List of Biblical Contradictions – sees a contradiction in these verses. He says: “God good to all, or just a few?”)
Affection for righteousness
It is clear that Jim is a good man and that he cannot stand that God is not always good, isn’t it? It sounds okay, but unfortunately Jim is a little bit naïve. He doesn’t take into account that many transgressions of the Israelites had to do with the other religions of the neighboring people. In fact the old religions of the Canaanites came up again and again in Israel.
Cults
There was the cult of Moloch. Part of this cult was the sacrificial offering of little children by parents. As the children didn’t have the natural protection normally accorded by their parents, it was a law in Israel to bring parents to court if they destroyed children according to this cult.
There was also the Baal cult. At certain times in the year there were festivals with free sex for all. The idea was that the fertility of the land would be enhanced by these festivals. We have a description of that. When the Israelites were in the desert, Moabite women invited Israelite men (not women) to attend a Baal festival “to play the harlot with the daughters of Moab”. (Numbers 25:1-2)
Sexually transmitted diseases
Imagine, Jim, what happened. These men returned and certainly many of them were infected with Gonorrhoea, Syphilis, Chlamydia and other sexually transmitted diseases. Their wives would be infected; many of them would become sterile or get Cervical Cancer. How many children of these women would be born handicapped (blindness)?
Imagine Jim, no medicine was available to fight against these terrible diseases, no penicillin etc. These cults were a real plague to the nation of Israel. Isaiah complained: “You burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree. Who slay your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks?” (57:5) Sometimes even kings were guilty of these actions. The cults were not nice folklore, they were aggressive religions with many endemic diseases, also to the innocents. These cults certainly didn’t follow the rule: “Love God and your neighbor as yourself!” There was social pressure to get involved.
Nice gods …
What was God’s reaction? Okay, my people Israel, if you like the ‘gods’ of your neighbors so much, I will make you live there: I will kick you out of the land. Then you can see how nice their ‘gods’ are to strangers.
Righteous to all
God in Israel had accepted – as a Heavenly Father – the task of protecting the unprotected in society and to judge the guilty ones. He is not the executioner. So God is good indeed, if he gives the guilty one over to his own conceptions. That is God’s way of righteousness. And yes, the prophets, like Jeremiah, could say in harsh words how God’s judgement would be. We always see that those who listened to the prophets received God’s help and his blessings. So God is indeed righteous to all. That means: No Biblical Contradiction in these verses at all.
No Bible Contradiction