If God is love, how do we explain the Old Testament passages where he commands the Israelites to eradicate entire groups of people, even the children (Josh 9:24; Num 31; 1 Sam 15)? Sometimes people say it was to punish these people for their evil practices, like child sacrifice. Well, child sacrifice is certainly a terrible thing. But does it make sense to punish child sacrifice by killing all the children?
Let’s think about this for a moment. When cultures engaged in child sacrifice, it’s not because they just loved killing children — it’s because they believed it served as some kind of propitiation, appeasing their gods for the greater good. So if God didn’t approve of child sacrifice, what seems like the most rational way to deal with it: (1) kill everyone, including all the children you don’t want killed, or (2) make yourself known to these people as the one true god and tell them that child sacrifice is not what you want? Wouldn’t option 2 be a win-win scenario?
Here’s something else to consider. If God didn’t like child sacrifice, why did he command Abraham to offer his son Isaac as one? Granted, he stopped the sacrifice before the boy was killed, but isn’t this a weird command for a deity who despises child sacrifice? And what about Psalm 137, where the inspired writer is lamenting Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem and says the following:
8 O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed,
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!
9 Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!
Furthermore, if God wanted the Canaanites destroyed because of their heinous practices, why stop at Canaan? There were many cultures that engaged in terrible practices like this from time to time — why not send the Israelites to slaughter them all? Instead this “judgment” is only brought against people in the same geographic location that God wanted the Israelites to inhabit:
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ assistant, saying: 2 “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your territory. 5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. 6 Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.
— Josh 1:1-5So they answered Joshua and said, “Because your servants were clearly told that the Lord your God commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you; therefore we were very much afraid for our lives because of you, and have done this thing.”
— Josh 9:24
How strange that these passages focus on taking the land from the Canaanites and not on their evil natures…
As a final consideration, even if the only thing left to do with these evil Canaanites was kill them all, does it make sense that God would choose the cruelest and most agonizing way to do it? Instead of speaking them out of existence, or immediately striking them all dead, he has them besieged by invaders. They’re forced to watch their loved ones being massacred before being hacked to death themselves. Would God really command this?
How does a god who would command genocide on this scale differ from the vilest despots of the modern era? What’s the difference between this god and bin Laden? What’s the difference between a god like this and a devil? Could a god this bloody be right?
Finding Truth 
Ron,
Might makes right is the result of atheism, not Christianity.
Plato wrote about such justice in his, “Republic.”
Socrates asked the character Thracymachus, “What is justice?”
Thracymachus responded, “Justice is the advantage of the stronger.”
Such is justice under atheism because there is no God, only people constantly at war with one another over who gets say what is just.
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Ruth,
God is being, not doing.
When Jesus, Son of God walked the Earth, God did.
And what he did was always just, merciful and kind.
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Ark,
Just as the artist owns his work by the power of creation, so the Lord of the Universe owns his own creation.
God owning his own creation is what lends dignity to the work that men do.
Even the smallest, most mundane job is lent dignity by the man who works it.
Such is the ownership of God.
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RE: “Since the atheist must make of himself the god of his own private Idaho, the Lord of the Universe is necessarily small potatoes. – wrong again (still?), Silliness, “small potatoes” actually exist, your “Lord of the Universe,” not so much —
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Nate,
Was the United States guilty of genocide for bombing the genocidal societies of Nazi German and Imperial Japan back to the Stone Age during World War II?
Is a policeman guilty for killing a maniac who is about to wreak havoc on others?
Atheists are necessarily immoral because they are unable to discern what is truly just and what is truly not just.
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Nate,
The real problem is not being able to discern evil.
The error you folks are making with regard to God is called moral equivalence.
Killing the guilty is the same as killing the innocent because killing is killing, no?
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Nate,
In your Bible quote, God kind of sounds like legendary American generals Douglas McArthur and Dwight Eisenhower.
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what were those children guilty of, SOM?
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T,
Atheist propaganda do tug at the heart strings.
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Did those generals go out if their way to target children?
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While Thracymachus may have said that justice is the advantage of the stronger, that’s not how modern society defines it.
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T,
In the Biz we say that a man like Arch has real talent.
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Nate,
Tyranny is tyranny in any age.
The sense of justice you hearken to is Christian.
Christianity is the dynamo that powered the rise of the society you refer too.
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It’s not strictly Christian. Even Buddhism, which is atheistic, encourages justice, compassion, and morality. I won’t deny that Christianity has heavily influenced western culture, but that doesn’t mean we can’t function without it.
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Everything that begins to be must have a cause.
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God is not doing when he kiils people?
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Nate,
What were baby Hitler or baby Joe Stalin guilty of?
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Nate,
One thing to understand about the Bible is that it concerns ancient people who were always on the brink of extinction.
Children were precious because they were the embodiment of the future.
So in the Bible, when children are somehow involved in calamity the author is using the children as a metaphor for having a future.
“Evil has no future,” is what is being communicated by the passages that cause you and your atheist brethren so much heartburn.
And certainly, God who is all good would communicate with man on understandable terms.
What a beautiful message from the loving God, “Evil has no future.”
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Nothing. And had their upbringing been different, maybe history could have been. Or if appropriate, maybe if they could have been diagnosed with whatever their issues were they could have been treated. Either way, I’m very skeptical that some people are beyond any hope. Don’t forget the Bible’s claim about training up a child…
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A beautiful message? Killing children?
No, it’s a message that shows just how much value primitive people expected their gods to place on human life.
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Nate,
Only Christianity spawned modern society where human life has infinite value.
In Buddhist and Hindu societies human life has the value of warm spit.
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Ruth,,
To address men, God must act.
The Bible teaches that God acts justly and with great mercy.
Killing evil is morally good, don’t you think?
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Reforming evil is better, don’t you think?
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And I’m not even sure how to respond to your comment about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. Guess I’ll just have to say that we profoundly disagree.
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I’d say it was horribly evil to reach out to steady the ark of the covenant. Bloke had it coming.
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