What's the official Catholic position regarding the literal truth of incidents described in the Old Testament?

Someone recently told me that passages like Samuel 15:3 and Numbers 31:17-18 which talk of God and Moses giving orders for violence, are considered by the Catholic church as **exaggerations** and **hyperbole** and not literally true, inserted by human authors whose ideas of God were influenced by the times they lived in. I want to know if this is really the position of the Catholic Church? Are these verses regarded as literally true or if these can be interpretated as exaggerations or even lies attributed to God and Moses?