Why did God command the OT killing of women and children?

There is no doubt that this has been one of the most difficult questions that Christians have faced throughout the centuries. This is not a modern question, it is an older question, but modern sensibilities have made the question much more pertinent. We feel the pain of this much more. Now, and one of the most difficult things is, in fact, that God we see and read God's own thoughts when ordering the extermination of the Canaanites and what makes it feel much worse is that they talk about

women

and

children

in this context , believe. It's shocking and I think we're supposed to feel its weight.

The second thing that makes it so difficult, unlike, say, a so-called act of God, a tornado or an earthquake that kills

women

and

children

, is that in this case God

command

s his people to be his agents of extermination and The shocking thing about that is that his people are sinners themselves. There's the hard side we look at, but if we're going to be honest with the Bible, we have to take a look at it. What else does the Bible teach us that is really the other side of the coin? First of all, it arises at the very heart of this question: Is this ethically fair?

Is it right because of these women and children? Well, not everyone will accept this answer and I, before I was a Christian, would have hated this answer. The answer is that only God is a just judge. Will the God of all the earth judge righteously? Maybe you don't or maybe I don't see how to read the Bible, read the story of life around me. how God can be just and allow these things to happen. I think there is a biblical teaching that I hope I can show at least some of the reasons why we should trust that God really is just in the way that he does these things, but fundamentally what the Bible teaches us is that God is just.

If we fully understand how and that for us to assume that he is somehow unjust is, in fact, to assume that we know more about things than we actually know, we do not know everything, so only God is. in a place of justice where I can make these judgments, that is fundamentally important as part of the answer to this problem. Second, we must understand that this was not arbitrary ethnic cleansing. In fact, the Bible highlights this as a very important event in God's rescue plan for the human race and more on that shortly, but in fact this is a specific judgment on a morally degraded people.

We know this not only from the biblical descriptions of what the Canaanite people were like, but also from archeology and the type of horrible sacrificial practices. It's just an example. of offering their children to the gods and in very painful types of deaths, in fact, the Bible shows that God's judgment on the Canaanites was delayed. He predicts it 400 years before it happens in the book of Genesis in chapter 15 and describes it as his, his, his. wait until the sin of the Canaanite people is total and it is a very interesting theological concept but again it is not arbitrary, the extent of their degradation was total and this brings them to a very important point.

I already alluded that God beginning with Abraham has a mission to rescue a sinful human people and involves fallible and sinful agents like Abraham to the present with people like me and one of the things that is clear in this extermination is that God warns that the same people at that time an entire nation would be corrupted by the Canaanites if they were in fact allowed to remain. One of the interesting things that is often mentioned when people come across this question is that, in fact, the Bible makes it clear that the Canaanites were never completely exterminated number one and number two, exactly what God says actually happened to them.

Throughout the Old Testament, the main problem is that time and time again God's people mix the worship of God the Creator, the only true God, with Bail or some other version of the Canaanite religion, so judgment not only was fair, but it was also fair. part of a necessary attempt to protect God's own people, he would use it as part of his mission, but there is another point here so that it does not seem unfair that God's worthy people have been told to be the instruments of his judgment, in This case is that God judged his own people Israel more harshly than anyone else and in fact the story throughout the Old Testament over and over again is that because of their sinfulness they are worse than the Canaanites because they knew that the only true God God uses the pagan nations. the same types of people, whether Egyptians, Assyrians or earlier Babylonians, to judge the same people of God, so there is a warning here.

I think we should think in conclusion. Jesus tells a story in his time when Jewish thinkers were wondering about natural disasters why certain people say if a tower fell on someone God clearly allowed it to happen they must have been terrible centers and Jesus warns and says don't think that somehow you are better because this has not happened to you these things serve as a warning to all of us who are sinners and this shocking story of the extermination order is in fact highlighted in the same story in the book of Joshua with God's rescue of a Canaanite prostitute Rahab because she seeks the only God.

True God, she is saved and her family is not only saved, she will become King David's grandmother and end up in Jesus' genealogy in Matthew chapter one. She stands out, in fact, she is mentioned in the book of James, a book of Hebrews. she stands out as a kind of hero of faith she is a harbinger of the end there are many others in the bible this one just catches our attention but there are many of these types of judgments and they are all around us to this day we are supposed to be warned and no one gives us a greater warning of the dangers of the life to come in an unredeemed state than Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus had more to say about the pending judgment, but he himself was the one who gave himself a sacrifice so that those who believe in him might be saved, so this is the amazing grace, the other side of judgment, that we see in the unique story that is the Bible and I think if we think about it in a broader perspective, in the light. of Jesus' teachings, then I think we really see him for what he is. It is a merciful warning. Thanks for seeing the honest answers. Don't forget to subscribe to find out the answer to next Wednesday's question.