Why Did God Command that Even Women, Children, and Babies Should be Killed?

[dwight92070]

Because He knew that the women of these extremely wicked societies would not only be an immoral and violent stumbling block to the Israelites, but that they would also teach their own children wicked sins, so they would grow up to be just as wicked as their fathers were, or maybe even worse. The sins that these evil nations committed are spelled out in detail in Leviticus 18.

Verse 24 says: "Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants."

Also Deuteronomy 20:16-18 says: "ONLY in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would not sin against the Lord your God.

However, for the other nations or cities that Israel was not occupying, God gave them different instructions: Deuteronomy 20:10-15

When they approach a city to fight against it, they would first offer it terms of peace. If the city agreed to those terms, then they would become slaves for the Israelites. If they disagreed with the terms of peace, then Israel was to kill all the men of the city, but to keep the women, the children and the animals to keep as booty. Evidently these nations or cities were not as wicked as the nations that Israel totally wiped out.

 

[Selah]

Verse 24 says: "Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants."

Also Deuteronomy 20:16-18 says: "ONLY in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would not sin against the Lord your God.

…and here:
Deuteronomy 7:1 ¶When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; 2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: 3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.
Deuteronomy 7:4. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.