Have you ever read the conquest narratives in the Bible and felt deeply troubled? When we encounter passages commanding the destruction of entire populations—including explicit mentions of "children and infants"—we face one of the most challenging ethical dilemmas in Scripture. These texts have left many believers struggling with their faith and have provided ammunition for critics who question how a good God could issue such commands.

Although Randal Rauser is a Christian theologian, he argues that these texts show God commanding "the targeted killing of civilians," which would make God a "moral monster." If Rauser is right, Christians face a very difficult moral problem.

But what if there's more to these texts than meets the eye? What if we've been reading them through the wrong lens?

The Problem of Divine Violence

When Rauser critiques apologists like Paul Copan or Gavin Ortlund, he makes a compelling point that deserves our full attention. Ortlund and others often emphasize that "not all Canaanites were killed" during the conquest, pointing to passages showing Canaanites still living in the land afterward. But Rauser points out that this defense misses the moral issue entirely.

As Rauser explains:

"[I]t's not enough to say not every child and infant was killed; [Ortlund] would have to say no children or infants were killed. It's not enough to say not every man and woman was killed; they'd have to say no non-combatant men and women were killed."¹

Rauser offers a provocative analogy in support of this point. He says arguing that "not all women were raped" would never justify rape, as the moral problem is that any were raped. Similarly, the moral horror isn't diminished if only some children were killed rather than all of them.

At face value, texts like 1 Samuel 15:3 seem quite explicit: "Put to death men and women, children and infants." Joshua 6:21 similarly states they "devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old." The natural reading suggests God commanded the deliberate killing of noncombatants, including the most vulnerable.

This appears to contradict everything else we believe about God's character. How can we reconcile the God who "defends the cause of the fatherless" (Deuteronomy 10:18) with commands to kill children? The tension is real and should not be dismissed lightly.

Four Reasons to Question the Surface Reading

After deep study and reflection, I've come to believe there are compelling reasons to question whether God actually commanded the intentional targeting of innocent noncombatants. Let me walk you through four key considerations:

1. Battlefield Uncertainty: The Limits of Ancient Accounts

First, we simply don't know what actually happened on these ancient battlefields. The biblical texts provide narrative summaries, not forensic reports or detailed chronicles. They were written in a particular literary context with specific theological purposes, not as modern history.

Archaeological evidence adds important perspective here. Cities like Jericho were small—perhaps 1,000 inhabitants total—not the vast metropolitan areas we might imagine. More importantly, contradictions within the biblical text itself suggest the language is not straightforwardly literal:

• Joshua 10:40 claims Joshua "left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed," yet Joshua 13:1 states "there remains yet very much land to possess."
• Judges 1:27-35 lists numerous Canaanite peoples still living in the land after the supposed "total destruction."
• Centuries later, 1 Kings 9:20-21 mentions descendants of these supposedly destroyed peoples still living among the Israelites.

These inconsistencies strongly suggest the conquest language employs hyperbole and conventional war rhetoric rather than literal description. Without detailed battlefield accounts, we cannot determine whether soldiers deliberately targeted infants or whether civilian deaths were incidental to military action.

This uncertainty alone should give us pause before concluding God commanded systematic infanticide. The text simply doesn't provide the level of detail needed to make such a definitive judgment.

2. God's Intent Was Total Victory, Not Civilian Deaths

Looking more closely at the Hebrew concept of ḥērem (often translated "utterly destroy"), we find it focuses on defeating enemy power and removing their threatening presence, not necessarily killing every individual.

Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan (2014) note that the text uses terms for "dispossession" and "driving out" three times more frequently than terms for "destruction" and "annihilation" when discussing the Canaanites. From this they observe:

The text therefore continually and repeatedly states that the Canaanites will not be exterminated in the sense that the Israelites are to kill every single man, woman, and child in Canaan. Rather, it states they are to be driven out. As we have noted, the language of “destroy” or “annihilate” is typically in a context of gradually driving out the nations—or of nations fleeing before the battle is joined. “Driving out” or “dispossessing” is different from “wiping out” or “destroying.” If you state that you had driven an intruder from your house, no one would assume the intruder was dead in your living room. Similarly, if you say you had killed an intruder, one would not normally think this meant the intruder had been “driven out.” The Hebrew text confirms this....This would indicate that the dominant “intended effect” was for the peoples in the [Promised] Land to migrate somewhere else.²

In Exodus 23:28-31, God explicitly states He will "drive out" the Canaanites "little by little," not annihilate them instantaneously.

Further, when we examine specific divine commands, like God instructing Joshua to "hamstring their horses and burn their chariots" (Joshua 11:6), we find the focus is on military targets. Even ancient Near Eastern warfare conventions generally spared women and children for enslavement or assimilation, as Deuteronomy 20:14 permits for "distant cities".

The merisms (paired opposites expressing totality) like "men and women, young and old" function rhetorically to express comprehensive victory, not as a hit list of demographics to target. Ancient Near Eastern victory inscriptions regularly employed such hyperbole—the Moabite Stone, for instance, claims total annihilation of enemies who clearly survived.

Ancient conquest accounts routinely used stock phrases and exaggerated language as conventional expressions of total victory, not as precise body counts. When we read these texts in their historical-literary context, we see God commanding decisive victory over enemy powers, not the systematic slaughter of babies.

3. God's Holiness Precludes Intending Evil

Building on theological and philosophical foundations, Mark Murphy's work on divine holiness provides a robust framework that strengthens this case. As Murphy argues, God's absolute holiness means God has "requiring reasons" not to intend evil.³ Intentionally targeting innocent noncombatants would be evil. Therefore, God cannot intend such actions.

This is more than just a convenient "get out of jail free" card. Murphy explains that intending evil would place God in an unacceptably intimate relationship with evil, making the evil constitutive of God's success as an agent:

"For if God intends an evil, then God stands in an intimate relation to it: its obtaining partially constitutes the success conditions of the action. For any action that God performs, we must say that it is successful, and perfectly so. But the success conditions of action include the obtaining of the intended object, and so evil would define the success of divine action. Part of what makes God a success—not an unhoped-for byproduct of God’s success, not a precondition of some successful divine action—would be the obtaining of evil. That seems an extraordinarily intimate relation for God to stand in to evil." (2021: 151)

This would contradict God's nature as absolutely holy. God's holiness forbids this intimate relation to evil, while still allowing God to foresee but not intend evil consequences. This important distinction between intention and foresight is at the heart of the doctrine of double effect, which we'll explore shortly.

Murphy's argument gives us strong reason to interpret commands like "kill children and infants" non-literally—either as rhetorical exaggeration, filtered through human understanding, or as targeting systems of power rather than individuals. Just as Jesus used hyperbole when saying we should "hate" our family (Luke 14:26), ancient war rhetoric employed exaggeration that the original audience would have recognized.

4. The Doctrine of Double Effect: A Crucial Ethical Framework

Even given what I've said, we need to admit that civilian deaths likely occurred during these conquests. The doctrine of double effect (DDE), developed by Thomas Aquinas and refined by modern ethicists, helps us understand how these could be morally justified without making God the author of evil.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) article on DDE, there are five conditions under which an action with foreseen but unintended negative consequences can be morally permissible. Let's look at each condition and show how 1 Samuel 15 satisfies those conditions.

1. The nature-of-the-act condition: The action itself must be morally good or at least morally neutral (not intrinsically evil).

   • Application to 1 Samuel 15: God's command to Saul to defeat the Amalekites can be considered a just military action against a nation that had attacked Israel unprovoked (1 Samuel 15:2). Military action against aggressors is not intrinsically evil.

2. The right-intention condition: The agent intends only the good effect and not the bad effect. The bad effect may be foreseen but must not be intended.

   • Application to 1 Samuel 15: God's stated intention was to punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them (1 Samuel 15:2). The intention was justice and protection of Israel, not the death of innocents for its own sake.

3. The means-end condition: The bad effect must not be the means to the good effect. Good ends do not justify evil means.

   • Application to 1 Samuel 15: The defeat of the Amalekite military threat was the direct means to achieve the good end of justice and protection. The deaths of non-combatants were a side effect, not the means to the good end.

4. The proportionality condition: The good effect must be proportionate to and outweigh the bad effect (the good must outweigh the harm).

   • Application to 1 Samuel 15: The good effects—ending the Amalekite threat, establishing justice for past wrongs, and preventing future attacks on Israel—can be argued to outweigh the immediate harms, particularly in a context where the Amalekites remained a persistent threat to Israel's existence.

5. The minimization condition: All reasonable measures to avoid or minimize the harm must be taken.

   • Application to 1 Samuel 15: Though the text doesn't explicitly mention sparing civilians, the biblical pattern suggests God's commands always allowed for the sparing of those who sought mercy (like Rahab). The advance warning and specific nature of the command allowed for repentance and potential flight.

As the SEP notes, DDE explains why we consider some military actions that result in civilian casualties morally different from intentional targeting of civilians. Both may result in civilian deaths, but intent makes a key moral difference.

Similarly, God's commands aimed at defeating enemy nations and their idolatrous systems, not specifically at killing innocents. God foresaw civilian casualties as a tragic consequence in a fallen world but did not intend them. Other biblical texts show evidence of this distinction: Rahab and her family were spared (Joshua 6:23), and Deuteronomy 7:2-4 reveals the primary concern was preventing religious corruption, not ethnic cleansing.

The Reality of Horrendous Evils

Despite these arguments, I want to concede something to Rauser. Any deaths of innocents in these conquests, whether intended or not, count as what philosopher Marilyn McCord Adams calls "horrendous evils" or "horrors."

In Christ and Horrors, Adams defines "horrors" as:

"evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) have positive meaning for him/her on the whole.” (2006: 32)⁵

These aren't merely bad experiences but fundamentally destructive ones that threaten to shatter the very possibility of meaningful existence.

Participating in horrors, whether by being a victim of them or inflicting them on others:

"furnishes reason to doubt whether the participant’s life can be worth living, because it engulfs the positive value of his/her life and penetrates into his/her meaning-making structures seemingly to defeat and degrade his/her value as a person." (2006: 33)

These experiences don't merely diminish life's value—they appear to negate it entirely. A Canaanite child caught in battle would experience the kind of suffering that seems to render their entire life meaningless. Likewise, an Israelite soldier bludgeoning a baby would be participating in a soul-destroying horror.

Adams argues that these horrors arise from fundamental "metaphysical mismatches" in creation itself: tensions between our personal and animal dimensions, between human beings and our material environment of scarcity, and between human and divine capacities. Our vulnerability to horrors isn't just a result of sin. It's built into the very structure of our existence as personal animals in a material world.

Conceding that the conquests likely involved horrors is taking Rauser's moral concerns seriously. It acknowledges that innocent suffering in ancient warfare represents a genuine horror that cannot be minimized or explained away. If we pretend otherwise, we dishonor victims and diminish our own moral intuitions. I admit that the cry of the innocent demands a response that doesn't dismiss their suffering as merely instrumental to some greater good.

Defeating (Not Just Balancing) Horrendous Evils

Here's where Adams's work becomes critical.⁶ Adams makes a distinction between:

• Balancing off evils: arithmetically adding enough good to outweigh them
• Defeating evils: integrating them into a meaningful whole through organic unity with a great enough good

The difference is huge. Balancing off is like saying, "Yes, this child suffered terribly, but God gave them so much pleasure in the afterlife that it made up for it."⁷ This feels inadequate and even offensive. Mere compensation doesn't restore meaning to a shattered life.

Defeat, however, involves transforming the evil by integrating it into a relationship with transcendent good, giving it new meaning within a larger whole. Adams explains:

In Christ and Horrors, Adams elaborates a three-stage model of how Christ defeats horrors:

Stage I: Divine Solidarity

Adams writes that Stage I involves, "establishing a relation of organic unity between the person's horror-participation and his/her intimate, personal, and overall beatific relationship with God." Christ doesn't remain distant from suffering but enters fully into it. Through the Incarnation, God shares our vulnerability to horrors, experiences our human development with all its messiness, and ultimately suffers crucifixion—being "cursed, cut off from the people of God and from God." This divine solidarity transforms the meaning of suffering by connecting it to God's own experience.

Stage II: Healing Our Meaning-Making

According to Adams, Stage II involves "healing and otherwise enabling the horror-participant's meaning-making capacities so that s/he can recognize and appropriate some of the positive significance laid down in Stage I." Our capacity to make meaning is often shattered by horrors. Christ's ministry provided "downpayments" on this healing through His exorcisms and healing of the mentally ill and spiritually broken, signaling "Divine power and intention to follow through with Stage II" and "to rescue us from permanent personal ruin." Christ's teaching relationship with the Father models the divine-human collaboration involved in this restoration.

Stage III: Cosmic Restoration

Adams explains that Stage III involves "recreating our relation to the material world so that we are no longer radically vulnerable to horrors." Christ's miracles—healing physical ailments, calming storms, multiplying food, and ultimately His resurrection—were "downpayments on and signal Divine power and intention to follow through with Stage-III horror-defeat" that will "place us in a non-toxic relation to our material environment" and "bring an end to the power of matter to ruin personal meaning." This final stage promises the complete transformation of creation itself.

For a Canaanite child who died in conquest, global goods like "best possible world" or "Israel's mission" would never justify their suffering from their perspective. This is where Rauser's critique of global theodicies hits home. But Adams' model of horror-defeat gives us resources to understand how each individual horror-participant's suffering is not just balanced off but transformed within the context of their own eternal existence.

This is not abstract theological speculation but the heart of Christian hope. Romans 8:18 reminds us that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." This isn't mere arithmetic balancing, but transformation so profound that present sufferings are engulfed in future glory.

Integrating the Pieces: A Comprehensive Solution

Let me pull these threads together into a coherent response to the conquest narratives:

God Did Not Command Targeted Killing of Innocents: Despite surface appearances, God's commands reflect ancient military rhetoric, human interpretation, and focus on defeating enemy power, not targeting civilians. God's holiness precludes intending evil, giving us theological grounds to interpret these texts non-literally. Uncertainty about battlefield realities prevents us from proving systematic targeting occurred.

Any Innocent Deaths Were Horrendous Evils: Even as collateral damage, civilian deaths constituted terrible tragedies that prima facie ruined lives. These horrors should not be minimized or dismissed. Our moral intuition that such suffering is appalling is correct and should be preserved.

God Ultimately Defeats All Horrors: Through Christ's three-stage defeat of horrors—divine solidarity, healing of meaning-making capacities, and cosmic restoration—God transforms these evils within the context of each individual's existence. This defeat doesn't erase the reality of suffering but integrates it into a meaningful whole through organic unity with transcendent good.

This integrated approach takes both the biblical text and our moral intuitions seriously. It acknowledges the terrible reality of ancient warfare while asserting that God's commands, properly understood, did not intend evil—and that God ultimately defeats all horrors, including those in conquest narratives.

Addressing Potential Objections

Critics might raise several objections to this approach:

Objection 1: "The text explicitly mentions 'children and infants' (1 Samuel 15:3). You're ignoring what it plainly says."

Response: I'm not ignoring the text but interpreting it in its historical-literary context. ANE conquest accounts regularly used stock phrases and hyperbole. The same Bible that contains these passages also contradicts a literal reading by showing many Canaanites survived. Further, God's holiness gives us theological reason to interpret these descriptions as reflecting human understanding, not divine intent.

Objection 2: "Your appeal to defeat seems abstract. How does this practically help a dying Canaanite child?"

Response: The defeat of evil isn't abstract but concrete in the Incarnation. Christ experienced human suffering firsthand, entering into solidarity with victims. For the Canaanite child, God's defeat of evil means their suffering becomes integrated into a personal relationship with God that transforms its meaning. This isn't distant theorizing but intimate divine action within each individual's life.

Objection 3: "Even if God didn't intend civilian deaths, foreseeing and permitting them still makes God morally culpable."

Response: This objection collapses the crucial distinction between intention and foresight which the doctrine of double effect maintains. Modern military ethics recognizes this distinction—we hold generals responsible differently for foreseen collateral damage versus intentional targeting of civilians. God permitted but did not intend these deaths, and more importantly, God defeats them within each victim's life, ensuring their existence remains a great good through divine solidarity, healing, and ultimate cosmic restoration.

Conclusion: Beyond the Surface

The conquest narratives remain challenging, but understanding them through the lens of ancient rhetoric, divine holiness, the doctrine of double effect, and Marilyn McCord Adams' three-stage model of horror-defeat allows us to approach them without sacrificing either biblical authority or moral integrity.

This approach does not whitewash violence or pretend suffering isn't real. Instead, it acknowledges the horror while providing resources to understand it within a framework where:

1. God doesn't intend evil
2. Evil is recognized as genuinely evil
3. God ultimately defeats all evil within the context of each individual's life through divine solidarity, healing of meaning-making capacities, and cosmic restoration

As we wrestle with these difficult texts, we should do so with both intellectual honesty and moral seriousness. The easy answers—either dismissing moral concerns or rejecting the texts—fail to engage the depth of the issue. But by looking beyond the surface, we find a God who neither commands evil nor abandons its victims, but enters into suffering to transform it from within.

What initially appears as divine sanction of atrocity reveals itself, upon deeper examination, to be part of a more complex narrative where God works within human history—with all its messiness and violence—to bring about redemption without ever intending evil.

The conquest narratives don't present a moral monster commanding atrocities. They present a holy God working within human limitations and ancient conventions to accomplish divine purposes while remaining true to His perfect nature—and ultimately defeating all horrors through His transcendent goodness.

Notes:

1. Randal Rauser - The Tentative Apologist YouTube Channel, "The Problem is Targeted Killing of Civilians: A Response to Gavin Ortlund." URL: https://youtu.be/Op4mFaMRltQ?si=hlpQiK5HSZbz52ta. Ortlund's video he's responding to is "The Conquest of Canaan: Genocide or Just?" URL: https://youtu.be/ssP-wQv2v5g?si=eXupdz1Xy86uwapb

2. Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (Baker Books, 2014), 80–81.

3. Mark Murphy (2021). Divine Holiness and Divine Action. Oxford University Press. Murphy explains requiring vs. justifying reasons as follows:

Requiring: R is a requiring reason for A to ϕ = df. R is a reason for A to ϕ that makes A’s failure to ϕ irrational unless there are adequate considerations to the contrary.
Justifying: R is a justifying reason for A to ϕ = df. R is a reason for A to ϕ that makes A’s ϕ-ing rational unless there are adequate reasons to the contrary. (2021: 78, n. 1-2).

4. Alison McIntyre, "Doctrine of Double Effect," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

5. Marilyn McCord Adams (2006). Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology. Cambridge University Press.

6. As mentioned in my previous article, Rauser (2009) introduces Adams' notion of "horrendous evils" as roughly what he had in mind by his central notion of "moral atrocities." I concede that the killing of noncombatants in low-tech, close-quarter ANE war qualifies as horrendous evils. Yet what still baffles me is that Rauser never adopts (or broaches) Adams's solution for this class of evils. This oversight matters because Rauser's stance on OT violence gains most force in the context of "balancing off" evils, not defeating evils. So by embracing Adams's defeat solution I deflate the force of his argument concerning innocent children caught in the bloodbath of messy ANE warfare. Again, this doesn't solve everything, but it goes a great distance in the direction of moral rectitude.

7. This is the sort of response William Lane Craig has given, which has rightfully generated reactions of moral disgust and repugnance, in my opinion. Here he doubles down on his troubling position:

"The very gruesomeness of the slaughter of the Canaanites was the most powerful object lesson imaginable to the Israelis of the need for and importance of separation from pagan nations and religions. Having the Canaanite children simply 'ascend to heaven' would certainly not have furthered that goal! God had more in view than simply taking these children to heaven."

Craig essentially argues that God needed the children killed in this brutal manner to demonstrate the moral gravity of the situation. I find this sort of response deeply disturbing. Rauser and I share the same perspective on this matter. I even created a reaction video to Craig's appearance on Alex O'Connor's show discussing the slaughter of the Canaanites. The thumbnail reflects my reaction to Craig's comments.