Have you ever heard of Philo? He was a Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria during the Roman Empire. He believed that literal views of the Bible, Old Testament in particular, would repress how people viewed God and could also lead to civil unrest, which of course would have led to drastic, more violent results back then. So verses like Exodus 22:8 "Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people." was of his doing. What it originally said is "Thou shalt not revile God". He took one of the first steps in making Judaism more accepting of other religions. Another example would be Deuteronomy 20 (I'll highlight verses thirteen and fourteen in particular), "And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee."

Originally, those verses said that "anything that breathes, should not be left alive", but Philo cleaned it up. Those changes, among others, made it more socially acceptable for the Jews to live within the Roman Empire, which was important, especially considering they refused to worship Roman emperors as deities. Philo was able to convince Caligula of all people, that they were harmless.

His teachings are said to be one of the origins behind Christology. So two religions that are now considered peaceful, had some really violent passages that were cleaned up in order to maintain the survival of their religion. So when people say that certain passages are metaphors or hyperboles, they're often unknowingly doing the same thing that Philo did... at least to an extent.

I just wanted to type all of that lol. Hopefully a religious person reads it too.