Why did God order the slaughter of women and babies?

[wild_thing]

I have a quick question that I have always wondered about but never got around to asking. I’m sure it’s been asked before, but I can’t find it in the forum.

In many parts of the Old Testament, particularly Joshua, God orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child in the cities of Canaan. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that the merciful and loving God would order the Israelites to do this or incur great wrath. Having a newborn myself, I can’t imagine why God wanted our ‘ancestors’ to kill itty bitty babies just because they were pagan and didn’t even have a chance to convert, so to speak. What is the Catholic reasoning behind these passages from scripture?

 

[Spencerian]

I have a quick question that I have always wondered about but never got around to asking. I’m sure it’s been asked before, but I can’t find it in the forum.

In many parts of the Old Testament, particularly Joshua, God orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child in the cities of Canaan. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that the merciful and loving God would order the Israelites to do this or incur great wrath. Having a newborn myself, I can’t imagine why God wanted our ‘ancestors’ to kill itty bitty babies just because they were pagan and didn’t even have a chance to convert, so to speak. What is the Catholic reasoning behind these passages from scripture?

Hi.

The problem with how you may see such passages involves who we are and what God is.

God is not some immensely large version of us. While we are obligated to follow the covenant(s) He gave us, God is the ultimate Authority and has the right to do what He sees fit. He put us on this planet, and He can remove us. He does not have to follow His own Commandments to us.

That brings us two points of reason for God’s actions. One: God creates, and God can destroy. The time of the ancient Israelites were more barbaric than we today can realize. Many civilizations wanted what the Israelites had, in some cases. Two: Others may have been put on God’s radar because they failed to acknowledge the Lord in the way that He presented Himself to them or had become unrepentently corrupt in some other fashion.

That said, God appeared to show the Israelites as an example to other nations (and to Israel itself) by showing a direct and powerful support of what was right or wrong in the one way that these ancient nations would understand: complete conquest. When the Israelites themselves become astray from the Lord several times, the Lord permitted their tribes to be defeated to show Who was really in charge.

God would not continue this process of war. More enlightened civilizations emerged over time, and started to emphasize the “civil” in “civilization.” While the Roman Empire was far from fully tolerant of the Jews, they did show a certain level of co-existance (and, perhaps by way of the earlier conquests in history, may have learned historic lessons of how to treat those who you’ve conquered). For that reason, God came to earth as a Man, not as a warring messiah, but as Christ, who gave a covenant that all mankind, Jew or gentile, could understand and practice. A covenant of peace.

You may find more answers in this old thread, including teaching sources.

 

[Riddle_me_this]

I have a quick question that I have always wondered about but never got around to asking. I’m sure it’s been asked before, but I can’t find it in the forum.

In many parts of the Old Testament, particularly Joshua, God orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child in the cities of Canaan. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that the merciful and loving God would order the Israelites to do this or incur great wrath. Having a newborn myself, I can’t imagine why God wanted our ‘ancestors’ to kill itty bitty babies just because they were pagan and didn’t even have a chance to convert, so to speak. What is the Catholic reasoning behind these passages from scripture?

I guess it was a protection for the Isrealites. The perception of death also is a very large componant of the situation. Does death provide any kind of restriction to God? It is hard to think about things like that from God’s perspective because we don’t know what he knows.

 

[Joe_5859]

I think Jimmy Akin does a great job of answering this question. At least, it’s the best explanation I have read.

Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

 

[_Abyssinia]

I have a quick question that I have always wondered about but never got around to asking. I’m sure it’s been asked before, but I can’t find it in the forum.

In many parts of the Old Testament, particularly Joshua, God orders the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child in the cities of Canaan. It is hard to wrap my head around the fact that the merciful and loving God would order the Israelites to do this or incur great wrath. Having a newborn myself, I can’t imagine why God wanted our ‘ancestors’ to kill itty bitty babies just because they were pagan and didn’t even have a chance to convert, so to speak. What is the Catholic reasoning behind these passages from scripture?

Please watch this talk/debate that Dr William Lane Craig about the Cannanites starting at 1:46:00:

youtube.com/watch?v=fP9CwDTRoOE

 

[fred_conty]

Hi.

The problem with how you may see such passages involves who we are and what God is.

God is not some immensely large version of us. While we are obligated to follow the covenant(s) He gave us, God is the ultimate Authority and has the right to do what He sees fit. He put us on this planet, and He can remove us. He does not have to follow His own Commandments to us.

That brings us two points of reason for God’s actions. One: God creates, and God can destroy. The time of the ancient Israelites were more barbaric than we today can realize. Many civilizations wanted what the Israelites had, in some cases. Two: Others may have been put on God’s radar because they failed to acknowledge the Lord in the way that He presented Himself to them or had become unrepentently corrupt in some other fashion.

That said, God appeared to show the Israelites as an example to other nations (and to Israel itself) by showing a direct and powerful support of what was right or wrong in the one way that these ancient nations would understand: complete conquest. When the Israelites themselves become astray from the Lord several times, the Lord permitted their tribes to be defeated to show Who was really in charge.

God would not continue this process of war. More enlightened civilizations emerged over time, and started to emphasize the “civil” in “civilization.” While the Roman Empire was far from fully tolerant of the Jews, they did show a certain level of co-existance (and, perhaps by way of the earlier conquests in history, may have learned historic lessons of how to treat those who you’ve conquered). For that reason, God came to earth as a Man, not as a warring messiah, but as Christ, who gave a covenant that all mankind, Jew or gentile, could understand and practice. A covenant of peace.

You may find more answers in this old thread, including teaching sources.

I don’t know of anything that God wills into non-existence. Even material things do not get annihilated but are so to speak recycled into something else because matter has commonality.

It is ony the soul that is individual and distinct as a person from every other soul. And as such cannot be recycled. And also since being a soul is spirit, in itself, is not destructable.

Since God brings everything into existence as good, then there would be no reason to annihilate it. To annihilate would mean to erase a mistake. Can God make mistakes?

They were killed not annihilated.
They were called to exist in another way.
The reason is known by the divine being who made them.
Since God is justice and love, we trust him.
They will receive fair consideration.

To us, this lacks emotion, but it is reality, and is what will happen to us…

just a thought.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

God never condones, much less orders, the murder of innocent human beings by other human beings. Such ordaining of an intrinsic evil would contradict God’s infinite perfection. Thus, any valid interpretation of the verses in question will need to retain this truth.

 

[Uzziah1]

God kills millions now, before our eyes, with mortally dangerous tools infesting our environment. I have been struck by lightning. I survived. The brother of one of my clients was struck by lightning. He died. Lightning is God’s fault. I nearly died of the MRSA bacterium. Millions have died from the MRSA bacterium. Ultimately, the MRSA bacterium is God’s fault. Random explosions in reproductive DNA due to quantum forces at the sub-atomic level or due to ambient radiation from ground water radon or cosmic rays from supernovas which result in mortal birth defects are God’s fault.

We are not, in an Original-Sin-tainted world, entitled to better.

File a complaint.

No matter what, note well that you are complaining about death caused by God only when the Bible has Him ordering it.

Why?

 

[Riddle_me_this]

God kills millions now, before our eyes, with mortally dangerous tools infesting our environment. I have been struck by lightning. I survived. The brother of one of my clients was struck by lightning. He died. Lightning is God’s fault. I nearly died of the MRSA bacterium. Millions have died from the MRSA bacterium. Ultimately, the MRSA bacterium is God’s fault. Random explosions in reproductive DNA due to quantum forces at the sub-atomic level or due to ambient radiation from ground water radon or cosmic rays from supernovas which result in mortal birth defects are God’s fault.

We are not, in an Original-Sin-tainted world, entitled to better.

File a complaint.

No matter what, note well that you are complaining about death caused by God only when the Bible has Him ordering it.

Why?

That’s like saying that if you walk off a cliff it’s God’s fault that you died because he created gravity. That’s a distorted perspective to things.

God had put certain laws in place and expects us to abide by them. If we don’t then bad things happen. But on the other hand because of the laws we are able to build skyscrapers, fly jets, go to the moon etc. Whenever you get into your car you don’t have to worry about the laws that God had put in place changing and you crashing and dying for some unpredicable reason.

Man sinned and continues to sin. Sin spread to all men and death through sin, now all men die.

Look how intelligent men are. We dump our untreated sewage into the rivers and oceans and then wonder why we get sick. We just aren’t very smart that’s all. You can’t blame that on God.

 

[Riddle_me_this]

God never condones, much less orders, the murder of innocent human beings by other human beings. Such ordaining of an intrinsic evil would contradict God’s infinite perfection. Thus, any valid interpretation of the verses in question will need to retain this truth.

Huh? Did you happen to read about the Isrealites journey to the promised land? Or how about the wars with Saul and David? Very bloody!

 

[Riddle_me_this]

He did the same thing during the time of the flood? Why does that not present the same concern to you?

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Huh? Did you happen to read about the Isrealites journey to the promised land? Or how about the wars with Saul and David? Very bloody!

Yes I have read about these events and yes, it is a very bloody history. I’m merely pointing out a truth we know with certainty, which therefore serves as an essential guide for our interpretation of these passages.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

He did the same thing during the time of the flood? Why does that not present the same concern to you?

First of all, there is an important difference: water is not a free moral agent.

God is the giver and master of life. He is under no obligation to give an eighty-year lifespan to everyone, and indeed is free to revoke the gift of life at any time, whether through secondary causes or even directly.

On the other hand, human beings are not the masters of human life- not even of our own, much less that of others. It is intrinsically evil for human beings to take the lives of other, innocent human beings, except as an unintended second effect in some extreme situation. This is an objective truth, something that reason, including Divine Reason, reveals, not merely determined by an arbitrary and revocable choice of a lawgiving god. God, being perfect, never acts contrary to reason. Therefore, any interpretation of the commands of God in the Old Testament that would say God condoned or even ordered the murder of innocents by Israelites would be a misinterpretation.

All this does not mean that God did not accomplish His plan for history through the secondary cause of sinful free human actions, as He does with floods and a large number of other secondary causes, but this is entirely different than morally condoning or even ordaining those sinful choices.

What the ultimate answer is to this problem is more difficult to say, but we can cross “God ordered the murder of innocents” off the list entirely.

 

[livingwordunity]

God weeds out the wicked.

 

[wild_thing]

I think Jimmy Akin does a great job of answering this question. At least, it’s the best explanation I have read.

Hard Sayings of the Old Testament

Thank you, this helps me understand a little better where the whole Joshua narrative fits into the Catholic belief as a loving God.

Please watch this talk/debate that Dr William Lane Craig about the Cannanites starting at 1:46:00:

youtube.com/watch?v=fP9CwDTRoOE

Dr. William Lane confused me for a moment when he said that in the book of Joshua, there is no mention of God telling the Israelites to drive out and destroy all the Canaanites- because clearly in the New American Bible it does, that is why I asked the question- however, he goes onto an explanation that is somewhat similar to Jimmy Akin’s. I cannot say that this entirely assuages my horror that this was commanded by God- because it raises so many more questions for me- many of which can probably be answered in the fact that this was thousands of years ago and Jesus has since died and risen for everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. I have to continue to ponder on this question.

God kills millions now, before our eyes, with mortally dangerous tools infesting our environment. I have been struck by lightning. I survived. The brother of one of my clients was struck by lightning. He died. Lightning is God’s fault. I nearly died of the MRSA bacterium. Millions have died from the MRSA bacterium. Ultimately, the MRSA bacterium is God’s fault. Random explosions in reproductive DNA due to quantum forces at the sub-atomic level or due to ambient radiation from ground water radon or cosmic rays from supernovas which result in mortal birth defects are God’s fault.

We are not, in an Original-Sin-tainted world, entitled to better.

File a complaint.

No matter what, note well that you are complaining about death caused by God only when the Bible has Him ordering it.

Why?

He did the same thing during the time of the flood? Why does that not present the same concern to you?

In answer to both of your questions, I don’t personally question why people die. I do know that life is a gift from God and we live as long as He wills. I just didn’t understand Him ordering what seemed to be genocide upon the Canaanites. Reading Jimmy Akins response and watching Dr. Lane’s video has helped me understand the context better.

 

[uther]

Here’s another alternative answer. This guy can be somewhat anti-Catholic at times but on this subject he makes a good case if you follow through. Interesting, if nothing else. But it does give a very rational reason for the flood in the first place and then the command to kill the Canaanites.

Pay particular attention to the claim that this was the view of the early Church, which changed in the fifth century.

youtube.com/watch?v=FLARePBq0S4&feature=relmfu(Start at 0:50)

youtube.com/watch?v=Q9WxJhWQmfw&feature=relmfu

youtube.com/watch?v=OzzlJF16X8Q&feature=relmfu
(pay close attention to 8:24 and following where it directly answers the question of Joshua and Canaan)