Can a believer explain the brutality of this Bible example in an agreeable way so we all understand your God?

Question

better.
My single favorite ideological contradiction comes from Second Kings, chapters 9 and 10, the story of Jehu. There is much in the way of shooting people in the back, tricking them, ambushing them, widespread murder in general, all condoned by God, however the worst of it is the cutting off the heads of 70 children. After all this God says "because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes ... your sons ... shall sit on the throne of Israel." In other words, good work, Jehu. And that fits in with "thou shall not kill" exactly how? There are many contradictions that can be waved away by believers with a clever interpretation. I simply don't see how you explain away a particularly brutal mass slaughter of innocent children.

Answer 1

First of all, it does not say that these were chldren, just the kings sons. Perhaps some were children. You have to understand about bloodline to get this- God's people were under opression- God gave them the means to be free from that oppression, sometimes war and death is necessary. History just repeats itself with the descendants of the oppressor taking up the throne and makingthings worse. This is a picture of sin in the physical- if every remnant of that sin is not wiped out, it will just come back and take over again- God commanded that the entire bloodline of those that refused to submit to His authority or at the very least respect His people and let them live in peace be wiped out or it would come back to haunt them.
I will not even go into the explanation of understanding Hebrew words and concepts to explain "thou shalt not kill" I am sure you have heard it and if you continue to reject it because it does not fit in with your ideals , it does not make it any less true. Either way , what is true is that either by the laying down of all arrogance or because you have no other choice- every knee will bow and every tongue will confess - there will be no room for, and no way to deny the majesty of God!
There is no contradiction, His ways and thoughts are not my ways and thoughts- I was not there at the foundations of the earth and I had no part in hanging one star in the heavens and neither did you.

Answer 2

First of all, they weren't 'children' - they were seventy men. Here's the quote:

2 Kings 10:7 And it came about that as soon as the letter came to them, they went taking the sons of the king and slaughtering [them], seventy men, after which they put their heads in baskets and sent them to him at Jez′re·el

Second of all, do you think God is supposed to put up with just anything forever? Read about what kind of people Jezebel and Ahab and their families and supporters were and what they did. They were having innocent people murdured left, right and center. For example, she had a man called Naboth murdured just so her husband, king Ahab can have his vineyard.

Also - a MUCH OVERLOOKED point - the fact that the Israelites had promised to worship God on his terms. They had made a covenant agreement and they knew what the result would be. The israelite Jews you mentioned in your passage had began worshiping false pagan Baal Gods. They didn't live up to their end of their agreement. For this reason, God decreed the eradication of Baal worship and worshipers from Israel.

Put it this way, people are always saying, "why doesn't God dooooo something?" about war, wickedness, etc. So here in second kings you have an example of God dooooing something to eradicate some wicked elements. It might not seem fair to us, but God who is a perfect balance of love, justice, wisdom and power - always makes perfect decisions.

Answer 3

The silence is deafening. I'm agnostic so I shouldn't respond but I have these same issues with Christianity, other issues as well. You might get an answer in a few minutes as some may be searching the internet for an explanation. What is really interesting though is if you persist asking different Christians about passages like these you will start getting a variety of completely different explanations for it all. I find the story about God sending two bears to kill children for teasing a prophet about being bald. I have heard at least five different invented explanations that allow them to believe such an action would be justifiable from a supposedly loving father type God. As for reading to the end and it will make sense, I have, it doesn't.

Answer 4

Brook, what happened in this story is just the consecuence of disobeying God's commandments, specially for leaders of God's people. As you read, the Israel's king and his wife went after other pagan gods (forbidden on Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:3-5).
3 "You shall have no other gods before me.
4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Acab and Jezabel were bad leaders who drive the people of Israel to "...all the idolatry and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?" (2 Kings 9:22).

The reaction of Jehu was a human imperfect reaction in trying to clean up the weaked sin performed against God's Commandments. It is true Jehu exagerate his reaction in killing (contrary to God's Ten Commandments "Ye shall not kill") but that's why it is written the consecuence of such act in 2 Kings 9:31

But remember that all of those 70 killed grown children were a bad influence to Israel society, so that situation was the "brake" to stop a little the idolatry condition on Israel's people.

Answer 5

The old testament of the bible clearly portrays a world devoid of God's sanctifying grace, so it's no wonder much of it seems like something right out of hell.

The simple fact is, all of the people of old were separated from God by grievous sin ... some more than others ... and none of them deserved anything from God but his righteous anger (wrath).

Still, God chose one relatively insignificant, generally faithless, and stiff-necked people through which to send his son and redeemer.

And once that redemption was accomplished, God's grace flowed, and the world was forever changed.

That's why we justifiably condemn evil acts in today's world, no matter what the source.

Anyone who commits such acts now, in spite of the abundant availability of God's grace, surely does evil which greatly exceeds all the crimes of the old testament, simply because the people of those times never really knew God.

Today, it's only the continuing worship, prayer, and devotions of the world's faithful, through God's very own church, which act to delay the chastisements we all deserve for our many sins, which continue cry out to heaven for judgment.

Answer 6

To put things back in to context Jehu was fullfilling an earlier judgement against the house of Ahab for his brutality and cold blooded murder streak he even had one innocent farmer killed because he wanted his land and the farmer named Naboth would not sell his herridetary land possession to ahab so he conspired to have him killed and ahabs sons were no mere children they were adult warriors who had been participating in baal worship where you put innocent babies in the fire alive to ensure fertility and good crops so when jehu has them executed at Gods command he was exercising his right as Soverign of all creation to execute divine judgement on some very wicked people he has the right and authority to do so as he knows all and sees all he knew their heart condition was totally wicked and cruel and they had to answer for their crimes so it helps to get your facts straight those 70 sons of the king were not children and absoluteluy not innocent hope this helps you Gorbalizer

Answer 7

You're getting a lot of waffling from the "biblicists." The text clearly states that the off-spring, and even the animals were to be killed on various occasions. And of course the "first-born Egyptians" were also killed during the Moses thing, along with 99.99999% of humanity during the flood. (And exactly how "pro-lifers" can justify drowning pregnant women & innocent children is beyond me.)

The best you're going to get is a pedantic, patronizing; "Read on and you will understand," or, "It will all be revealed in the end." And this absurdities will be uttered as if they actually made sense.

Answer 8

These were all typical practices of ancient warfare. It's smart strategy to kill the king's sons (who were in all likelihood grown men, not children). Yes, God did congratulate Jehu for accomplishing what he was supposed to do accomplish, which was to remove the king from his throne and keep him off.

The commandment is "thou shalt not murder." Not all killing is murder, especially during war.

In this case, "explaining away" a mass slaughter of "innocent children" isn't necessary, because in all likelihood the king's sons they were neither children nor innocent. The reason was to prevent one or more of them from claiming a right to the throne.

Answer 9

the old testament is full of battles that gods people went through. they were at war many times with tribes that would have totally wiped them out. but god put his people in a position where they would be saved from harm, and yes they had to kill to survive. god also judged his own people. our future was in the hands of every one of the children of Israel, if they didn't make it Jesus would not have been born and the world would still be under the Mosaic law, or what remnant there would have been left. as for Innocent children, the sons were grown men , many times in a war with another tribe of people god told them to kill even the beasts --the cows every living thing that was in the town----and not keep one thing , he didn't want these things to infect his people. if you think about it no one believes in murder, or i would hope they don't all the same when we have people killing our soldiers we are not going to condemn our soldiers for for killing. its a war.

Answer 10

easily. The murdering demon-king of the Bible is indistinguishable from the different blood-hungry center jap deity, no matter if Baal, Chemosh, which ever. If an ET confirmed up in a spaceship and behaved like Yahweh, say killing the firstborn of the U. S., each and every of the fundies might want to be headed for the gunsafe to put up a wrestle basically as i might want to. I basically would not make an exception for his or her demon king.