Introduction
There are quite a few times in the Bible where God commands the Israelites to wipe out whole societies because God didn’t like them as they were “sinful.”
Samuel Commands Saul to Kill Children
1 Samuel 15:2-3 is one of the most quoted verses regarding this:
1 Samuel 15:2-3 – “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
God commanded this soon after Saul became the first Israelite king. Samuel was the prophet who guided Saul on what God’s will was. In this passage, Samuel gets God’s instructions and tells Saul to annihilate the Amalekites. God seems to hold a grudge against the Amalekites from back to the time when the Israelites first escaped Egypt.
In the passage above, the Bible specifies that the Israelites are to kill off the children and infants. They weren’t even allowed to spare the animals.
Result of Warfare?
Some say that the killing of children is just the result of warfare. In current times, there is a war in the Middle East, and they are killing innocent children from both sides. Many regular Americans condemn this killing of the innocent and want a ceasefire. The idea that they are killing civilians and children is intolerable. Even in this war, they are taking some measures to try to curb the amount of innocents dying. Not enough measures, however. I very much disagreed when we went to war with Iraq starting in 2003, and many innocent civilians had their lives taken. However, we didn’t go in and annihilate everyone. The Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand, describe the attacks that God commanded, which included the slaughter of everyone in the nations they opposed.
Born To Sin
One argument Christians use is that everyone has been born into sin, including infants. In other words, why spare the infants if they were born into sin? This argument seems foolish, especially with how far we have come in science. Everyone knows babies don’t make their choices and, therefore, have not willfully sinned. Sometimes, they will resort to passages such as Romans 5:12, which states that all have sinned. However, using the Bible to prove the Bible isn’t a good defense of the Bible.
God foreknows
Then there is the idea that God knows what will happen in the future and that he foresaw that these infants would grow up and possibly become a problem for the Israelites. This argument sounds good at first; God is all-knowing and just wanted to prevent more bad stuff. If one is to believe in the God of the Bible, one must accept the idea that God foreknew all things. However, we see him repenting of creating humankind in the first place in the book of Genesis before he sent the flood.
Genesis 6:6 – “And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.”
There were other times when God was going to destroy the Israelites, but Moses begged him not to (Exodus 32:14). There is no evidence in the Bible that God destroyed the infants because they would end up making things worse in the future. With this reasoning, I could say that abortion is a form of God knowing who would make things worse, so he allows abortion to prevent evil people from being born. Of course, almost every right-winged Christian I have come across are voraciously anti-abortion. There isn’t any consistency in this argument.
When it comes to people saying that God has foreknowledge of everything, I argue that God would also have the foreknowledge of people reading the Bible and the people not understanding how they are supposed to interpret Scripture. He would have known that some people would use these passages against Christianity. If he knew that, then why isn’t it explained better in the Bible? The Bible makes us rely on guesswork regarding some of the problematic passages.
Because he is God
There is always the “God can do what he wants because he is God. Who are we to tell what God can and can’t do?” This argument raises a good point but also reveals God’s character. He commands us not to murder, but then he does a lot of killing just because it fits his fancy. Why would anyone want to worship a God like this is beyond me. God can do what he wants, but that doesn’t make things right. We were forced into this world, and it isn’t our fault that Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit and brought sin into the world. We didn’t choose to be born.
Evil Today
Then there is the problem of modern times. There are all sorts of evil going on in the world, and it seems like God doesn’t do anything to make things better. We hear of constant conflict in the Middle East, but there is no God who is commanding these things. Where was he during the Middle Ages when people would kill the innocent using the name of Jesus?
When I read the Bible, I feel that most modern-day people are, on average, much more merciful than the God of the Old Testament. We irk when a person brings harm to a child. It makes us angry, as it should. Some people view Atheists as being immoral because of their lack of belief, but I have heard many Atheists condemn the slaughter of children, whether it be in the Bible or in modern times. We need to stop making excuses for God and call it what it was—genocide.
Conquests in Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy 7:16 – “And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee.”
I don’t know about you, but I find it contradicting that a God who is supposed to be rich in mercy commanded his people not to take pity on other nations. God commanded the Israelites to destroy them because God didn’t like the other gods that these nations worshiped. There may have been some grotesque things taking place in surrounding tribes, but why did God need the Israelites to execute his judgment? If people choose to be evil, God could take out the evildoer with a flick of his wrist. If he created all the galaxies, stars, sun, etc., he could certainly take out the evildoer without the help of the Israelites.
Deuteronomy 7:24 – “And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.”
By destroying the names of these kings, we can assume that this includes the children and others related to these kings.
Various Cities
Deuteronomy 20:12-18 (NASB) – “However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. However, the women, the children, the animals, and everything that is in the city, all of its spoils, you shall take as plunder for yourself; and you shall use the spoils of your enemies which the Lord your God has given you.
“This is what you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave anything that breathes alive. Instead, you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they will not teach you to do all the same detestable practices of theirs which they have done for their gods, by which you would sin against the Lord your God.”
The Bible is talking about three types of cities. There are the cities that make peace. Secondly, the Israelites asked to make peace in some towns, but the towns refused. To these cities, they were to slay all the men, but they could keep the women and children as spoils. Then there are the cities that God will give Israel as an inheritance. In these cities, nothing that breathes should be left alive. It’s kind of odd that sometimes God will spare the children, but on other occasions, he will have them slaughtered.
Walls of Jericho
The first place Joshua took in his conquest for the promised land was Jericho. God instructed the Israelites to walk around the city seven times and then blow the horns. I’m not going to go into all the details, but here is the verse I wanted to point out:
Joshua 6:21 – “And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
It is clear that the Israelites were to destroy the living, including the old and young. The only people they spared were Rahab and those with her. Besides that, they were to kill all the women, children, and animals. The fact that they spared Rahab demonstrates that the Israelites could have spared others, especially other women and children.
Joshua 10 Conquests
Joshua 10 discusses many of Joshua’s conquests, naming various utterly destroyed places like Jericho. God commanded them to kill every soul within the territories they were raiding. This obviously would include children. The conquests of Joshua were brutal.
Hagiographic Hyperbole
Some suggest that these killings were hagiographic hyperbole and that these things didn’t literally happen. In other words, let’s say two boxers face off, and one of them severely loses. One expression can be that “John annihilated Jim in that fight.” However, we know that Jim was not annihilated in a literal sense, as he is still alive. If God inspired the writings of the Bible, he should have foreknown that people in modern times would read the Bible and see acts of violence instead of hyperbole and be put off from the genocides that they recorded in the Bible.
Numbers 21:35 – “So they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land.”
I assume when it says “all his people,” that they included children. This verse is about the Amorites, the same people that, later on, Samuel instructed Saul to slaughter in 1 Samuel 15:2-3. I wonder how they were alive at the time of Saul if Moses and his people had already slaughtered them. Perhaps “utterly destroyed” just means simply ‘defeated.’ There is also the possibility that Moses slaughtered a group of Amorites, but there were other ethnic groups that could be considered Amorites.
More Innocence Murdered
Deuteronomy 2:31-34 – “And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land before thee: begin to possess, that thou mayest inherit his land. Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz. And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:”
Again, notice that this verse says that they destroyed the little ones. How can a loving God full of mercy command his armies to bring about these mass slaughters? It’s disgusting that so many children had to die because God was supposedly telling his leaders to go in and commit these genocides.
These Scriptures that relate to brutality continued after the time of Christ with such things as the Inquisition, crusades, etc. The church conquered the Knights Templar, Cathars, and others they considered “heretics.”
Conclusion
It’s sad how so many people trust in a book that blatantly supports the killing of children and infants. There could have been other ways to do things. It’s also questionable why an All-Powerful, All-Knowing God had to use the Israelites to bring his wrath upon his opposition. If God truly cared about all humans, every last life should be important to him, but this is not how he behaves in the Old Testament. He is a child and a baby killer.
A Different Point of View
Related Articles
God Kills Children Part 1 – The Flood
God Kills Children Part 2 – First Born
God Kills Children Part 3 – Numbers 31