Did the Judge of All the Earth Always Do
What Was Right?
Farrell Till
Elsewhere in this issue (pp. 4-5), Roger Hutchinson
continues his losing battle to prove that when Yahweh killed
David's son, there was no violation of the biblical
principle that children should not bear the iniquity of
their fathers. This principle was stated in Deuteronomy
24:16, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the
children, neither shall the children be put to death for the
fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin."
It was repeated in Ezekiel 18:20, "The soul that sins, it
shall die: the son shall not bear the iniquity of the
father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the
son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him,
and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." My
position has been that the killing of David's son for his
parents' act of adultery was a clear violation of this
principle, but Hutchinson has resorted to all sorts of
verbal maneuvers to deny this conclusion.
I have decided that the best way to bury this issue is
to let my rebuttal of Hutchinson's latest effort (pp. 5-7)
and its predecessor articles speak for themselves as I take
readers through the Bible to show other examples of where
Yahweh violated his own moral code and held the innocent
accountable for the "sins" of others. I hope that Hutchinson
will go along on the trip and see for himself that he is
trying to ride a dead horse.
First, I will need to establish that the Hebrew god
Yahweh declared another moral principle that will be
important in showing that he sometimes punished the innocent
for the offenses of the guilty. That other principle was
enunciated when Moses was reminding the Israelites of a
rebellion against Yahweh when the spies who had been sent
into Canaan had returned with a report of giants in the
land. The people had trembled so at the report that Yahweh,
in one of his typical tantrums, decreed that everyone but
the children and Joshua and Caleb (who had urged the people
not to listen to the spies) would be doomed to wander in the
wilderness for 40 years until they were all dead, after
which those who had been children at the time of the
incident would be allowed to go into Canaan and possess the
land. In Deuteronomy 1:39, Moses explained why Yahweh had
spared the children the punishment of death in the
wilderness that he had pronounced upon the adults: "Moreover
your little ones and your children, who you say will be
victims, who today have no knowledge of good and evil, they
shall go in there; to them will I give it, and they shall
possess it." The other principle, then, was a fair and just
one: those who were too young to know right from wrong would
not be held accountable for their actions or the actions of
their parents. We will see that Yahweh violated this
principle time and time again.
The most obvious example to begin with would be the
Genesis flood by which Yahweh destroyed all life on earth
except for that which was aboard the ark. Yahweh's complaint
was that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually" (Gen. 6:5). Therefore, Yahweh selected
Noah, who had found favor in the eyes of Yahweh (6:8), and
his family to build an ark by which life on earth could be
saved from destruction. For sheer silliness, few stories in
the Bible rival this one, but for this article, I won't
concentrate on biblical absurdities. I will just take the
Bible at face value and note that if this story happened as
recorded in the Bible, then there were necessarily thousands
of children all around the world who drowned in the flood.
Even if we assume that the wickedness of their parents was
"great" and that "every imagination of the thoughts of
[their] hearts was only evil continually," this would not
have been true of the children, who would have been just
like the Israelite children mentioned above, who did not
know the difference in good and evil. In killing them via
the flood, Yahweh punished them because of the sins of their
parents or adult guardians and in so doing violated his own
principle that children should not bear the iniquities of
their fathers.
The same is true of all the children who were killed
when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 19:24-26 says
that Yahweh rained fire and brimstone from heaven onto these
cities and overthrew "all the inhabitants," except for Lot
and his two daughters. If anything like this happened, then
there would have been children and infants in these cities
who, like the Israelite children in the wilderness, would
not have known the difference in good and evil. So if the
wickedness of these cities was "grievous," as Yahweh claimed
in Genesis 18:20, it would have been due to the wickedness
of the adults. The children, like all children who don't
know good from evil, were innocent. In killing them, Yahweh
violated his own law that prohibited children from bearing
the iniquity of their fathers.
Another case in point was the massacre of children and
infants during Joshua's invasion of the "promised land."
Yahweh himself had told Moses that nothing should be saved
alive to breathe in these cities but to utterly destroy them
(Dt. 20:16). Joshua 10:40 and 11:11 claim that this
commandment was carried out and that nothing was left alive
to breathe in the cities that the Israelites destroyed in
Canaan. Joshua 11:15 and 20 state that all this was done
according to what Yahweh had commanded Moses.
The image of an invading army massacring everyone in the
conquered territory is repugnant to all modern standards of
morality, yet the Old Testament depicts the god Yahweh as a
barbaric national deity who commanded his "chosen people" to
take no prisoners in their march through the "promised
land." Rather than recognizing such stories for what they
are, i. e., the superstitions of a primitive people
who had created their god in their own barbaric image,
biblicists resort to all sorts of desperate rationalizations
to try to explain this embarrassing moral problem in their
sacred scriptures. Some actually argue that God did these
children a favor by having them killed, because they died
sinless and went to heaven rather than growing up to be
wicked like their parents. Inerrantists also talk about a
"plan of redemption" that required Yahweh to eradicate
entire nations of people who were so completely evil that
unless they were utterly destroyed, they would have been a
threat to corrupt the chosen "seed" through whom the
redeemer would come, but even if we conceded that there was
any merit at all to this "argument"--and there isn't--it
would not explain why Yahweh ordered the massacre of even
children and infants. Once the adults in these nations had
been exterminated, there would have been no one left but the
Hebrews themselves to corrupt the children and infants, who
at that time did not know the difference in good and evil,
so surely biblicists will not argue that keeping the
children alive to be educated in the religion of the Hebrews
would have posed any kind of threat to a "plan of
redemption" that Yahweh may have had in mind. So if the
Canaanite nations were killed because they were "evil,"
killing the children and infants too would have been a case
of children bearing the iniquity of their parents. If not,
why not?
In another case, Yahweh even held the entire nation of
Israel accountable for the sin of just one man. After the
defeat of Jericho, the Israelites turned their attention to
the city of Ai, but even before the battle began, the Bible
states that "the anger of Yahweh was kindled against the
children of Israel" (Josh. 7:1). The source of the anger
turned out to be the offense of a single man named Achan,
who during the sacking of Jericho had found some precious
artifacts and kept them for himself, buried in his tent.
Such things were to become a part of the spoils of war that
were to be "devoted to Yahweh," which is just another way of
saying that they were supposed to be put into coffers that
were controlled by the priests. Rather than informing Joshua
that one of his soldiers had committed this offense, Yahweh
allowed an Israelite force to attack Ai and suffer defeat as
punishment for Achan's sin (7:2-5). In great anguish, Joshua
then tore his clothes and fell upon his face before the ark
of Yahweh to ask why this terrible calamity had happened.
Only then did Yahweh tell Joshua what the problem was.
"Israel has sinned," Yahweh said. "Yes, they have even
transgressed my covenant that I commanded them. Yes, they
have even taken of the devoted thing and have also stolen
and dissembled also; and they have even put it among their
own stuff" (7:11).
Well, pardon my insolence, but just where did Yahweh get
all of this "they" and "their" stuff, because as it turned
out, the man Achan was the only one who had kept artifacts
for himself during the sacking of Jericho. Yet Yahweh was
blaming all the Israelites for it and had caused them to
suffer a humiliating defeat. He informed Joshua that this
sin was why the Israelites had been unable to stand before
their enemy, and announced that he would not be with them
any more unless the "accursed thing" in their midst was
destroyed (v:12). So Joshua began a family-by-family
investigation, and when he confronted Achan, he somehow knew
that this was the guilty party. "My son," Joshua said to
Achan, "give, I pray you, glory to Yahweh, and make
confession to him, and tell me what you have done. Hide it
not from me" (v:19). Reading this, we have to wonder why, if
Joshua had such insight, he had not recognized Achan's guilt
before his troops had gone out to be defeated. Thirty-six
men had died in that encounter (7:5), all because Yahweh was
upset at one man.
At any rate, Achan came clean and told what he had done.
Whoever said that confession is good for the soul probably
never heard of the punishment that Achan received for the
crime he confessed to. Achan and all of his sons and
daughters, along with "his oxen, and his asses, and his
sheep, and all that he had" were taken to the valley
of Achor, where "all Israel" stoned them and burned them
with fire and "raised over them a great heap of stones"
(7:25-26). That must have been some sight when "all Israel,"
which according to census figures in the book of Numbers
would have totaled about 2.5 to 3 million people, stoned
this family and all their livestock to death. The ones in
the back must have encountered considerable difficulty
getting a clear shot at the victims. Anyway, this story is
an example of Yahweh's not only allowing but requiring the
punishment of children for an offense of their father.
Some may argue that the members of Achan's family knew
about his theft of the artifacts and therefore shared his
guilt, but that would be pure speculation. The biblical text
gives no indication at all that anyone was involved in the
"crime" except Achan himself. Certainly his oxen, asses, and
sheep couldn't have known anything about it. This story is
simply indicative of the barbarity of the times when it was
believed proper to punish a man by killing his entire family
in order to abolish his "name" forever by leaving him no
descendants. If space permitted, I could cite other biblical
examples of this barbarous practice. This was exactly the
mentality behind massacres of civilian populations during
the Israelite invasion of Canaan. The disgrace is that Bible
believers accept this as appropriate conduct and bend over
backwards to defend the claim that "God" had decreed it to
happen.
Probably the most flagrant example of Yahweh's requiring
the innocent to be punished for the "sins" of their fathers
is found in his command to utterly destroy the Amalekite
nation. During their trek across the Sinai wilderness, the
Israelites were attacked by the Amalekites (Ex. 17:8-16). As
a result of this battle, Yahweh swore that he would "have
war with Amalek from generation to generation" (v:16). In
his farewell address to the Israelites, Moses mentioned this
incident and told them to "(r)emember what Amalek did to you
on the way as you were coming out of Egypt" (Dt. 25:17). He
went on to say that it would be "when Yahweh your God has
given you rest from your enemies all around, in the land
which Yahweh your God is giving you to possess as an
inheritance, that you will blot out the remembrance of
Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget" (v:19).
All of this happened in the wilderness during the
40-year wanderings of the Israelites, but about 450 years
later, when Saul was king of Israel, Yahweh decided it was
time to make good his prior threat and "blot out the
remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." He sent the
prophet Samuel to Saul with this message: "Thus says Yahweh
of hosts, I will punish Amalek for what he did to
Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from
Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy
all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man
and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep,
camel and donkey" (1 Sam. 15:2-3, emphasis added). If ever
there was an example in the Bible that shows the utter
futility of trying to depict the Hebrew god Yahweh as a just
deity who did not require descendants to bear the iniquity
of their fathers, we certainly have it in this passage.
Inerrantists have tied themselves into verbal knots trying
to explain this text. They argue that the Amalekites at this
time were a morally depraved nation, and so it was for their
own iniquity that Yahweh ordered their destruction. But what
does the text say? It has Yahweh clearly saying that he
would punish the Amalekites for attacking the Israelites on
their way out of Egypt. The KJV has Yahweh saying, "I
remember that which Amalek did to Israel," so the
only reason that he gave for these orders was the
Amalekite attack on Israel about 450 years earlier. One
could reasonably argue that the Amalekites had simply
reacted to protect their territory from the intrusion of a
nomadic horde of about 3 million, who had an army of 600,000
foot soldiers, but that is really beside the point. Whatever
the Amalekites may have done to the Israelites in the
wilderness, the Amalekites living 450 years later were not
responsible for it. To hold them accountable by ordering
their "utter" destruction can be seen only as a clear case
of Yahweh's violating his own moral standard that had
exempted children from responsibility for the sins of their
fathers.
The extent of Yahweh's grudge against the Amalekites is
seen in the rest of this story. Verse 9 states that Saul
carried out Yahweh's instructions by attacking the
Amalekites and "utterly destroy[ing] them" with the
exception of Agag, their king. When Saul kept Agag alive to
bring back as a prisoner, Yahweh sent Samuel the prophet to
meet Saul and strip him of his kingship for disobeying the
command to "utterly destroy" the Amalekites. Samuel then
took a sword and hacked Agag to pieces (v:33) as an apparent
indication that when Yahweh said "utterly destroy," he meant
utterly destroy.
This is the god that Roger Hutchinson has been defending
in a vain attempt to show that the Bible "consistently
teaches that children are not to be punished for the sins of
their fathers" (p. 4, this issue). Needless to say, the
Bible does not consistently teach this. In the next life,
Hutchinson should try to see how much luck he can have in
convincing the Amalekites that Yahweh never punished the
innocent for the sins of their fathers. Earlier I mentioned
Yahweh's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of
his holding children accountable for the sins of their
fathers. In a famous biblical scene in Genesis 18, Abraham
tried to persuade Yahweh to spare Sodom. He pleaded with
Yahweh to spare the city if 50 righteous people could be
found in it. "Will you consume the righteous with the
wicked?" Abraham asked Yahweh, and we see now that the
answer to that question is yes. On many occasions Yahweh
consumed the righteous with the wicked. It didn't seem to
matter to him. In this same context, Abraham asked Yahweh,
"Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" If we
assume that this Yahweh exists and that he is the "judge of
all the earth" and that the Bible is an accurate account of
his affairs with humanity, we are forced to say that the
answer to Abraham's second question is, "No, the judge of
all the earth won't necessarily do what is right, because he
sometimes kills children for the offenses of their parents."
If inerrantists think that this is "right," then they need
more help than I can give them.
