Did God Order the Death of Innocent Children?

God is love (1 John 4:16).

Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey (1 Samuel 15:3).

How can these two verses possibly be squared? In 1 Samuel 15, God clearly tells Samuel that the people of Amalek are to be devoted to destruction. Not even children are to be spared. They — like the adults — should be met with the sword.

Did God order the death of innocent children?

The Difficulty of the Question

When we are asked difficult questions like this one, I think we believers have a tendency to grab for any easy answer to satisfy our own hearts, and hopefully our interlocuter. But the reality is that this is an incredibly difficult question.

Yes, we can say that theologically speaking, children are not innocent. We are all, by nature, children of wrath. God, as creator, has the divine right to end the life of any. When humanity chose rebellion over relationship, we sewed death into the fabric of our being.

That’s all true, but does it really help? Dead children are still dead children, to be frank. And that is gut-wrenching.

It’s gut-wrenching to think that the death of children came at the hands of a sword that God commanded to be swung. Any effort to soften this blow only feels like cheapening the horror of the experience.

One of the greatest difficulties with the passage is that God even judges Saul for not going through with the command entirely. That is unsettling. What do we do with this?

Possible Answers

There are several possible answers to the question at hand. Some of them are not grounded in truth, others having some truth but not entirely satisfying. Here are a few of these possible answers.

1. God didn’t command this. This view can take many forms. Some will deny that there is even a God that would speak to humanity. In such a view, we would say that humans wickedly came into a community and slaughtered them all.

In order to give sanction to this mess, they blamed their god. Others may not be quite so bold but rather chalk this up to human misunderstanding.

The problem is that the text says what it says. Yes, we could deny the truthfulness of the scriptures. But then, what do we have?

We’ve maybe solved one problem but opened ourselves to other issues. Does God speak truthfully or not? At the end of the day, this isn’t really a solution.

2. That was the God of the Old Testament. Marcion was a heretic in the early church who attempted to divorce the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament. Anything that he didn’t like, Marcion grabbed scissors and went to cutting.

We can do something similar today. A text like 1 Samuel will rub us the wrong way. It seems so foreign to who Jesus reveals the Father to be.

It doesn’t seem to square with the fact that “God is love,” so we throw this one out and find ourselves grateful that this was the old and outdated God of the previous covenant.

Unfortunately, for this “answer,” the scriptures do not present two different Gods of each covenant. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. God is unchanging.

The same God who spoke in 1 Samuel is the same God who loved the world and sent His only begotten Son. How we square that is difficult. But it’s what the scriptures proclaim.

3. They were Nephilim. I’ve heard this theory in a few places. The idea is that the Amalekites were descended from Anak who was descended from the Nephilim.

The occupants of the Promised Land were giants — those who had interbred with angelic beings — and thus cursed. In order to wipe out these half-breeds/demigods they needed to entirely take out the bloodline.

The biggest issue with this is that the text in Samuel doesn’t make any of this explicit. Nor can we be certain that they were even in a lineage where Nephilim could be possible. And are we okay with it if they're only “half” human?

4. God can do what He wants. This is certainly true. God is God, and we are not. His ways are higher than our ways. But can we not be honest that we have a moral aversion to killing children?

Does it not seem, at least on the surface, immoral to order the slaughter of children? Again, I’m all for saying that God is sovereign and that the Judge of the earth will do what is right.

I’m okay with saying that I simply do not have all of the information, and with a passage like this, I simply do not understand.

But certainly, we can admit that this isn’t really an answer. Yes, God can do what He wants but that doesn’t exactly solve the issue. Why did God do this? We may never get an answer to that question. 

5. This is the consequence of sin. This is also theologically true. Apart from sin, there wouldn’t have been death. And there wouldn’t have been rebellion.

There would not be a feud between the Amalekites and the Israelites. The whole mess is a consequence of sin. God isn’t the one who killed these children, and human sin is what killed the children.

Yes, God commanded it. Yes, it was part of the execution of justice. But it would not have been necessary had people not sinned.

Again, this is one of those issues where there is much theological truth there. And we might also say that these children who died would be in heaven. Death wasn’t the worst possible outcome for them.

It certainly makes us feel a little better that their eternal destiny might be secure. And it makes us feel better that what we are dealing with here are evil people. We don’t have as much of a problem with that. But even still, I think this is an unsettling text.

Perhaps the unsettling feeling that we have with a text like this might drive us to a bit of an answer.

A Proposed “Solution”

I will admit from the beginning that my “solution” isn’t really a solution. The difficulty with what is happening in this text is still present, but maybe this will help to fill out the narrative a little. Let’s look a little closer at what is happening in 1 Samuel 15.

In verse 3, we have the command. This is the principle of herem. It is unique and certainly not something that frequently happens. Through one lens, we can say that this is booting out of God’s kingdom all sin and unbelief.

Had the children also not been cut off, then the godless Amalekites would have continued to be a thorn in the side of the Israelites. You can’t have “heaven” if “hell” is still living in your land. Conceptually, that is what is happening here.

As the narrative unfolds, we see Saul not following God’s orders. But notice what part he didn’t obey. King Saul had no problem, it seems, killing all the people. He didn’t bat an eye when it came to wiping out the vulnerable amongst them.

But he did save that which was valuable. He kept the king alive. He kept some of the choicest of sheep. (For sacrifice, he’d later tell Samuel).

When you read in verse 9, “all that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction,” you need to put the children in that category. They weren’t of any value to Saul, so he slaughtered them.

It exposed his heart. And that is what God calls him on. Why are there still sheep present? Why was he okay with destroying the despised things but he kept valuable things for himself? God was angry with Saul for this.

And it bothered Samuel, the prophet, as well. In fact, Samuel spent the whole night interceding on behalf of Saul (I think that’s what we should read in verse 11, at least in part). God doesn’t entirely wipe out Saul — but he does take the kingdom from him.

And this is where my “solution” comes into play. What did Abraham do whenever God spoke of destroying Sodom and Gomorrah? He interceded. He questioned God’s justice. Would God destroy the city if there were righteous people? Would he actually kill an innocent?

What did Moss do when God spoke of wiping out the Israelites and starting over with him? He interceded on their behalf. We see this all throughout the prophets as well.

And we ultimately see this in the person of the Lord Jesus. That’s what people who are close to the heart of God will do — they will plead for the vulnerable. Saul didn’t do that.

I wonder what would have happened if Saul had heard this word from the Lord in verse 3, and Saul would have dropped to his knees.

How would God have responded if the king had pleaded for the Amalekites? It’s entirely speculation, but I believe that should have been Saul’s response. And I think we see some of that even with Samuel. There is a contrast here between the prophet and the king.

None of this really solves the difficulty. Did God order the death of innocent children? Well, not technically, because there is no such thing as “innocent” children. But also, kind of. And I do not understand that. But I also do not understand why God would order the death of His innocent Son.

That is the truly baffling thing in the universe. Why would God give His Son for sinners like you and me? He was the only truly innocent to ever die.

And He died willingly on our behalf. It is in this death, as well as in the subsequent resurrection, that I’ve found at least some sort of answer to the question at hand.

I honestly do not understand 1 Samuel 15:3. It rubs me the wrong way. Not because I don’t believe God can do what He wants. But it rubs me the wrong way because it feels different than the God I know.

But the reality is that the God I know is mediated to me through the blood of Jesus Christ. I don’t know God’s wrath because of what Jesus did on my behalf.

And that’s part of my answer. I still admit that I do not grasp what is happening in 1 Samuel 15:3, but I trust God. Someday it will make sense. For now, we wait in the mystery.

Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Sergio Yoneda