Why did every man, woman, child, and beast have to be killed?

Question

Psalms 137:8-9 - 8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.

Deuteronomy 20:10-16; Numbers 31:14-18

and others. my question is this: if the children were born evil and would grow up evil then there is no such thing as freewill, for god created evil children who could not be changed. if they were NOT evil then god is a nasty one indeed for slaughtering innocent children.

so why did god kill all of them?

12 answers and no one knows, one even admits that i should love god, even if he's killed children for no reason. odd. PROVERB, you didn't even come CLOSE to answering my question. THE CHILDREN WERE NOT EVIL, any moreso than the jewish children. UNLESS god created them as evil and deserving of being slaughtered by the jews. which means that there really IS no free will and we are either good or bad depending only on how god makes us. OR, god killed innocent children.

Answer 1

Those younger than the age at which children begin to reason right from wrong go to heaven. Those of the enemy who were spared, the virgins who were taken, witnessed their brothers, fathers, and uncles, and mothers, and aunts, and their older sisters who had lain with man killed. That would have had a deep impact on them. God was not going to let those who caused the Israelites to commit whoredom to be allowed to continue to grow in numbers and strength and come against his people in the same manner again, and the young women who had not lain with man saw the cost of whoredom as they watched the slaughter.

Answer 2

Have you noticed that every person who was born over 150 years ago has died?
If you are really seeking the truth, the only way you will come to know it is if you accept the testimony of God, that He became a man and suffered death on a cross to redeem men from Satan and sin, and He rose again from the dead, giving mankind a hope of eternal life. You will then receive the light of Truth, and begin to be able to understand all things. Some things will not be clearly understood until the last day.
If you are interested in finding fault with God, the day will come when everything that is hidden will be revealed, and in that day it will be abundantly clear to every creature that there is no wrongdoing with God.

Answer 3

Good question, bad reasoning. Alas and alack.
Free will is real. The options we have are dictated by our time/space position. I may will snowboarding in the Atlantic, but it ain't going to happen.
The evil of Babylon's children is known as proximity sin. It is the sin which we inherit by where/when/who we are. Thus slave holders children inherit the sins associated with it. Ditto Nazi Germany when Churchhill firebombed Dresden. Ditto our children w/ the environmental disaster from our greed. Ultimately this is known as original sin - the fallen nature we inherit from the first parents.
God killed all of them as a cleansing of evil as one would kill all of the lice upon a child's head. We gasp at this - but Hollywood makes big bucks out of the same idea. Watch Star Wars or Terminator (tame compared to many others) and see whole villages zipped/zapped.
It's like a bad paper in English. Sometimes y ou just have to wad up the whole thing and throw it away.

Answer 4

Well, every man, woman, child, and beast was not killed, because where do we get the concept of Noah's Ark? Noah and his family were found righteous and were thus spared to replenish the earth. We do have free will, which is why we're in the mess we are now. Children are not born evil, but we are born in sin. As we grow we have a choice weather to do good or evil. We cannot blame God if we choose evil. We must be careful not to mistake being born in sin as being born evil. We are born into a sinful world but we are not born sinning.

Answer 5

Your understanding is backwards. Just because God knows who will accept or reject Him, does not make Him responsible for "OUR" choices. We are given Free Will to choose our destiny. God already knows what we will all choose. He sees our lives from beginning to end. Children are a whole different issue.
Children who die go into eternity with Christ Jesus. What we humans see as sad, God sees as wonderful, as do the children living with Him in heaven now. Quit judging God by human standards and try to understand that His ways are best, whether we understand them or not. Children who die, go straight to heaven, this is a blessing, not a tragedy.
Perhaps God knows that living in that sinful society, all or most of those children would grow up and reject Him. Out of His Love and Mercy, He saves them, not kills them as you say. He saves them and brings them to Himself.
God Bless You....Peace.

Answer 6

I've read all of the previous answers to mine, and everyone(well almost) tried to give a safe non committal answer. Well mine isn't: "God" is subject to and bound by the same Quantum/Macro rules as us and every atom in this universe and therefore is subject to the same chaotic, random impulses, effects, reactions as everything else. I therefore submit that if god exists then this entity is capable of great acts of love/ barbarism and at this moment does not give a rat's *** about us or our problems. Or he's just real busy and doesn't have time right now.

Answer 7

For pete sakes kid why do you waste your time on questions that will do you no good but to depress you all the more.
Listen if you believe in God trust He knows what He's doing. All of us we're human and we cannot give you the truth; we can only give you our opinions and perhaps they won't be enough.

Answer 8

This is an example or Darwinism in its infancy. Creatures vying for the same niche will invariably come into conflict and the strongest will win out. Post event guilt made them blame it on God.

Answer 9

Haven´t God promissed Noah he wouldn´t ever do such thing again?????

I do believe in God, not in the word of God, but in his acts.

Answer 10

If you leave any of your enemies alive they will multiply and it starts all over again in the future! This has happened many times in history because we have not followed his directions!