Can you give some examples from the Bible of God doing things that were not bad excluding any stuff that Jesus did and any stuff that God did to mitigate bad things he had previously done?
This is a serious challenge. In general, I agree with your point that there is no "God character": the Bible was written by many people, all with different ideas of the character of God, but I can't think of any unimpeachably good things that any of these God characters did.
This is a difficult one, especially for a non-believer to attempt. It's made all the more difficult because we need to sift the stuff which is obviously myth from the accounts which we know have some historical accuracy, and even the events which have some historical evidence have a fair deal of bias in favour of the righteousness of the Jews compared with other peoples.
I'd have to agree that the writers of the earlier part of the Bible seemed to think that they could depict God acting in all kinds of revolting ways if it seemed to further the prospering of his 'chosen people' (Numbers 31 and the whole of Joshua come to mind).
I suppose you could make out a case that the Egyptians got what was coming to them when they refused to allow the Jewish people to go free after they had been enslaved for so long.
But all that belongs to the realm of myth, and almost certainly none of it has any historical truth. Two passages which appear to be based on fact come to mind, however. The first is referred to in the Book of Isaiah, and deals with the liberation of the Jews from the Babylonian exile, where God inspires King Cyrus (whom Isaiah refers to as God's
Messiah) to bring about the liberation of the Jews from exile. That would certainly have been a good thing for the Jews which God was supposed to have done, and it didn't involve bloodshed (presumably they were exiled in the first place because they didn't 'keep God's commandments' - that was the usual explanation for the Jews' misfortunes, an explanation which rings just a bit hollow).
The second one refers to the Siege of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in the reign of Jewish king Hezekiah - the story is also told on an Assyrian monolyth. The siege was certainly lifted before all the Jews starved to death. The Bible says this was due to the intervention of an angel whom God sent; the Assyrian account says Hezekiah payed off a huge tribute in gold and jewels. Naturally enough this was followed by wholesale slaughter of the Assyrians, which may or may not have happened, but being starved to death is not likely to make a large population particularly compassionate towards their enemies.
There is one example from biblical myth which indicates God's concern for people beyond his Jewish 'chosen', and that is in the Book of Jonah. God is very concerned that he might not be able to contain his anger if Jonah doesn't go and preach to the people of Nineveh and tell them how they should be behaving. No doubt this was because God was very vexed about a lot of buggery and general sexual promiscuity going on, but may be also because the Ninevites were still performing child sacrifice which we would certainly think was a quite a reasonable phenomenon to get steamed up about (the Jews had at least been more or less weaned away from this vile practice, unlike many middle-eastern peoples). The story also illustrates the idea which becomes more evident in some parts of the Old Testament that God is concerned with all the nations of the world, and that the Jews have a special part to play in the unfolding of this master-plan.
Given the huge role Jews have played (despite their historical sufferings) in the amelioration of human life in so many different ways, it seems to me that viewing their God in a completely negative sense can't be telling the whole story.
