I’ve been talking with an atheist friend lately about God killing thousands of innocent people in the Old Testament. My friend’s complaint isn’t just that God slaughtered these people but that He did it when they chose not to worship Him but other gods. After all, He gave them free choice, why did He kill them just because they chose wrongly?
Actually, God didn’t kill them because of their choices, at least not physically. Most of these gods and their ancestors were worshipped for centuries without such consequences before the Israelites entered the land. He killed them because their choices effected His people and drew them away from the truth, from the worship of the true God, leading them to spiritual death. As I’ve said in earlier blogs, I believe God is much more interested in the condition of our souls than that of our physical bodies.
Some of these pagan gods required worship through temple prostitution and live child sacrifice. One of them, Ashtaroth was worshipped by heating his iron idol until cherry red then placing live children in its arms where they suffered a torturous death. Some gods required the firstborn to be killed and buried under the doorstep of the family home in order to bring blessings. These were not “innocent” people.
“But, He didn’t give them a chance to turn to Him”, you might say. We know Sodom and Gomorrah and Nineveh were warned, of course.
In 1968, an ancient town known as Ebla was discovered in Syria. Ebla was founded around 3500 B.C. and was at its heyday around 2700 B.C. The king of Ebla at that time kept records of everything he bought,everything he did, and all the news in the city. Some 17,000 of the king’s tablets have been found by archaeologists. According to these tablets, a prophet entered the city and told the people of the great God “Yah” (a shortened version of “Yahweh” and the same Yah we praise in our term “alleluia” meaning “Praise be to Yah”). There are even recorded names of individuals dedicated to Yah: ish-ma-ya meaning “Yah Hears”and eb-du-ya meaning “servant of Yah.” So, the pagan nations were told of the One Who was to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries later. These pagan cultures were warned. They weren’t ignorant of Yahweh’s call to worship Him.
If we were to see someone killing a loved one of ours, we would be justified in killing the perpetrator. In the same way, God saw people of other cultures as spiritual threats to His loved one, Israel, so he killed them to protect His people.
My friend wanted to know how a benevolent God could allow children to suffer. We’ll address that next week. God bless.
Believers Armed and Dangerous 