Stupidity

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” – Luke 18:16

In the Torah, the prohibition against taking innocent life is expressed in several key passages—anyone who forbids murder necessarily includes children—while a few statutes even single out the protection of orphans and minors. Below is a (reasonably comprehensive) list of the places where the Pentateuch explicitly forbids murder (applying equally to children) or otherwise insists on safeguarding the young and vulnerable:

1. Genesis 9:5–6

“And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning; from every beast I will require it, and from man. . . . Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God He made man.”

This first “murder‐ban” following the Flood establishes that shedding human blood—including that of children—is a capital crime.

2. Exodus 20:13 / Deuteronomy 5:17

“You shall not murder.”

The Sixth Commandment is an absolute prohibition against unlawful killing. Classical Jewish interpretation understands “murder” here to cover any innocent human being—child or adult—outside the divinely‐ordained exceptions (e.g., capital cases).

3. Exodus 21:12

“He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.”

A civil law imposing death for homicidal assault, again with no age exemption for the victim.

4. Exodus 23:7

“Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and the righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked.”

God expressly commands refraining from killing the innocent—a category that necessarily includes children.

5. Leviticus 24:17

“And he who kills any man shall surely be put to death.”

Reiterates the general rule: no one is to take another’s life without due process, regardless of the victim’s age.

6. Numbers 35:16–21, 30–34

These verses distinguish between manslaughter and premeditated murder, prescribe cities of refuge for accidental killers, and warn that deliberate bloodshed defiles the land. Again, the term “any man” (אִישׁ) is used universally.

7. Deuteronomy 19:11–13

“But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies in ambush for him and attacks him . . . so that he dies, and flees into one of these cities, the elders of his city shall send and bring him back . . . and he shall die.”

Further procedural detail on prosecuting willful murder—no carve‑out for child victims.

8. Deuteronomy 22:8

“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring blood-guilt on your house, if anyone should fall from it.”

While not a “murder” statute per se, it imposes positive duty to protect children (and all residents) from accidental death.

9. Deuteronomy 24:17

“You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless . . . nor take a widow’s garment in pledge.”

Though focused on legal rights, it underscores special care for orphans—protecting vulnerable minors from exploitation or harm.

10. Deuteronomy 27:25

“Cursed be he who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.”

A public curse on anyone who accepts payment to kill the innocent (again, covering children).

These passages establish a bedrock—“Thou shalt not murder”—that embraces every human life, including that of children, and they add specific protections for orphans and mandates to prevent both intentional and negligent killing. Any interpretation of Torah law that permits killing children outside the narrow, God‑commanded contexts (e.g., capital punishment after due process) stands in direct tension with these clear injunctions.

The Torah’s most vivid narrative of children being murdered—and condemned—occurs in the very opening of the Book of Exodus. Pharaoh, alarmed by Israel’s growing numbers, orders all newborn Hebrew boys to be thrown into the Nile (Exod. 1:22). The two royal midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, “feared God” and deliberately let the boys live (Exod. 1:17–21), whereupon God “made them houses” for their faithfulness and “multiplied the people” of Israel (Exod. 1:20). That entire episode makes clear that the slaughter of innocent children is a crime so outrageous that defying the king—indeed, choosing to honor God’s higher law—is itself portrayed as the only moral course.

A related—but earlier—story hints at the same principle in miniature. When Moses is born and hidden for three months, his mother nonetheless “dares” to set him adrift in a basket on the Nile rather than hand him over to be killed (Exod. 2:2–3). That act of preserving a child at the risk of royal wrath underscores the Torah’s deep abhorrence of child‐murder: even in dire circumstances, saving a baby’s life is the only acceptable path.

Beyond Exodus, the Torah contains no other extended narrative in which children are actually slain and the text explicitly pronounces it wrong—rather, its laws and curses (e.g. “Cursed is he who strikes down an innocent person” in Deut. 27:25) universally apply “to any man” (אִישׁ), encompassing the young as well as the old. But in its foundational storytelling—through Pharaoh’s decree and the midwives’ courageous disobedience—the Torah leaves us in no doubt: the taking of a child’s life is an evil that cries out for resistance.

Below is a summary of the principal Torah passages in which Israel, at God’s command, wages war and “devotes to destruction” entire populations—including children. In each case the text makes clear that men, women and “little ones” are put to the sword or under the ban (ḥērēm):

1. The Ban on the Canaanite Cities (Deuteronomy 20:16–18)

As Israel approaches the Promised Land, she is instructed that in the cities of the seven Canaanite nations “you shall save alive nothing that breathes”—i.e. no person, young or old, is to be spared under the ban. 

2. The Defeat of Sihon, King of the Amorites (Deuteronomy 2:34)

Recounting the victory over Sihon at Heshbon, Moses declares:

“…we utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city; we left none to remain.” 

3. The Destruction of Og, King of Bashan (Deuteronomy 3:6)

In the campaign against Og, the narrative parallels Sihon’s fate:

“…we completely destroyed them … every city—men, women and children.” 

4. The War against Midian (Numbers 31:7, 17–18)

After the Midianite women lead Israel into idolatry, Moses orders:

“Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls you may keep for yourselves.”

Earlier in the chapter it notes that “they … killed every male” of Midian as God had commanded. 

5. The Devotion of the Canaanite Nations (Deuteronomy 7:2)

In the framing law for entering Canaan, Israel is told:

“…when the LORD your God delivers them over to you … then you must destroy them totally; make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”

Though this verse does not list children by name, the phrase “destroy them totally” (Heb. harām) is consistently understood in the Torah’s war laws to include every living soul in the besieged city. 

•In these passages the killing of women and children is not portrayed as an accidental by‑product of war but as part of a divinely‑mandated judicial “ban” (ḥērēm) or act of national judgment.

• Nowhere in the Torah narrative is Israel rebuked for following these commands; on the contrary, obedience to the ban is depicted as the fulfillment of God’s justice.

• These texts stand in stark tension with the Torah’s general prohibition against murder (e.g. Exodus 20:13; Leviticus 24:17), illustrating that in the biblical worldview the divine judgment enacted through Israelese warfare falls outside the ordinary moral ban on killing the innocent.

The verses commanding the destruction of entire populations—including children—sit in an uneasy juxtaposition with the Torah’s universal ban on taking innocent life. On the one hand, Exodus 20:13 (“You shall not murder”), together with its reiterations in Exodus 21:12 and Leviticus 24:17, lays down an absolute, context‑free prohibition that embraces every human being “created in the image of God” (Gen 9:6). On the other hand, passages such as Deuteronomy 20:16–18 and Numbers 31:17–18 portray the slaughter of non‑combatant offspring as part of God’s judicial “ban” (ḥērēm) against nations judged for idolatry or moral corruption.

In the narrative framework of the war‑laws, these killings are not treated as illicit homicides but as divinely ordained acts of national judgment. When Israel “devotes” a city to destruction, the text repeatedly specifies that no one—men, women, or little ones—may be spared (Deut 2:34; 3:6; 20:16). Because these commands emerge directly from God’s mouth, the narrative presents them not as moral failures but as the fulfillment of a higher, exceptional justice that lies outside the normal category of “murder.”

Yet from a legal‑ethical standpoint the tension is stark. The same Torah that enjoins “Do not kill the innocent” (Exod 23:7) also recounts instances where Israel, precisely in obedience to divine instruction, slaughters children. In the everyday civil code—cities of refuge for accidental killers (Num 35:16–21)—the sanctity of each life, child or adult, is vigorously protected. But in herem warfare, “destroying the little ones” becomes an instrument of cosmic judgment rather than an infringement of the murder ban.

Rabbinic tradition subsequently grapples with this disjunction by distinguishing between retzichah (murder) and ḥērēm (the ban). Murder, in the halakhic sense, is an unjustified taking of life; by contrast, the herem‑laws inherit their force from a direct divine imperative, and so do not carry the usual stigma of wrongful killing. Some medieval commentators even argue that the violence of cultic warfare must be read symbolically or metaphorically, though the plain sense of the narrative remains extraordinarily severe.

Ultimately, these contrasting strands illustrate that the Torah’s vision of justice operates on multiple registers. Its universal moral ideals—“You shall not murder”—stand alongside particular historical commands that reframe violence as an act of sacred judgment. The result is a complex interplay between a general ethic of life‑preservation and exceptional episodes in which divine sovereignty temporarily suspends that ethic in the name of national or cosmic rectification.

The sense that the Torah’s universal ethic—“You shall not murder”—stands in stark tension with its war‑laws has long prompted readers, both within and outside Judaism, to ask whether some of these harsher passages might be later interpolations or perversions of a more humane core. From a historical‑critical standpoint, many scholars argue that the Pentateuch is a composite work, woven together from different source‑strands (commonly labeled J, E, P, and D) whose varying agendas help explain these moral dissonances. For instance, the Deuteronomistic editor, writing (by most datings) in the age of King Josiah’s reforms (7th century BCE), may have shaped conquest traditions to underscore divine sovereignty and covenantal fidelity—whereas the Priestly source (P) and the Jahwist (J) source often emphasize ritual purity, social justice, and the sanctity of life. When we read the ban‑commands in Deuteronomy 20 or the Midianite episode in Numbers 31, we are encountering an editorial voice quite different in tone from the priestly reiterations of “no bloodshed” in Leviticus.

Within Christian thought, especially in the patristic era, one finds the accusation—rooted partly in polemical conflict and partly in deep reverence for a purer Mosaic law—that some Jewish schools preserved only a corrupted version of the “original” revelation. Origen’s Hexapla (3rd century CE) and later Church Fathers sometimes charged that the Hebrew text had been tampered with to justify Israel’s militarism—though modern textual scholarship has largely discredited any wholesale “Christian” corruption theory in favor of recognizing the complex manuscript history shared by Jewish and Christian communities.

Similarly, Islamic tradition teaches that earlier scriptures suffered taḥrīf (textual distortion), a doctrine found in the Qurʾān and early Muslim exegesis. From this perspective, the more violent injunctions in the Torah might be read as signs of later adulteration, whereas a genuine Abrahamic revelation would have been uniformly merciful. Yet again, most contemporary Qurʾānic scholars acknowledge that while the concept of tahrif addresses genuine redactional phenomena, it does not necessarily imply a single original text from which all others deviate, but rather a rich tapestry of scriptural transmission.

From the vantage point of traditional Jewish exegesis, however, these passages are integral: the war‑laws are expressions of divine judgment (ḥērem), not moral failings or editorial corruptions. Medieval commentators like Rashi and Maimonides wrestled earnestly with the brutality of herem warfare, but ultimately treated it as a temporary suspension of ordinary ethics, reserved for specific historical moments when a society’s idolatry had become irredeemable.

So, is it “possible” that the most severe commands are later perversions? If one adopts a strict documentary‑critical model, then yes: they reflect a post‑Mosaic editorial layer concerned with national identity and divine retribution. If one works within the classical faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, the answer varies: Christianity once charged Jewish text‑corruption but now accepts the Old Testament’s integrity; Islam posits theological distortion while affirming the essential continuity of divine message; and rabbinic Judaism regards these war passages as difficult but divinely authentic. In each case, the tension you perceive becomes a mirror for deeper questions about authority, history, and the very nature of revelation.

Unlike the biblical herem‑laws that literally mandate the slaughter of non‑combatants, the Qurʾān never commands—or even suggests—the killing of children or other innocents in war. On the contrary, it contains explicit prohibitions against killing children, and its rules of engagement insist on restraint and the protection of non‑combatants:

1. Surah al‑Anʿām (6:151)

“Say, ‘Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden to you: … Do not kill your children for fear of poverty – We provide for you and for them. And do not take a human life – which Allah has made sacred – except by way of justice.’” 

2. Surah al‑Isrāʾ (17:31)

“And do not kill your children for fear of poverty. We provide for them and for you. Surely killing them is a heinous sin.” 

3. Surah al‑Baqarah (2:190)

“Fight in the way of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress – indeed, Allah does not love transgressors.” 

(When read in context, these verses limit combat to those who take up arms, forbid exceeding just bounds, and protect anyone not actively fighting, including women, children, the elderly, and the pious.)

4. Prophetic Prohibition (Hadith)

In Sahih Muslim, it is related that during a military expedition “a woman was found killed; so the Messenger of Allah forbade the killing of women and children.” 

Taken together, these texts establish that Islamic law categorically rejects the deliberate targeting of non‑combatants—children, women, the elderly, and the unarmed are expressly off‑limits, and any killing outside a lawful context of justice (e.g., capital punishment following due process) is strictly forbidden.

Despite this notion of Islam being ‘a religion of violence’, the Old Testament has injunctions to kill women and children while the Quran doesn’t.

In the late seventh century BCE, King Josiah of Judah (c. 640–609 BCE) initiated what the biblical texts portray as a sweeping purgation of non‑Yahwistic worship and a concerted effort to centralize religious observance in Jerusalem. According to 2 Kings 22–23 and its parallel in 2 Chronicles 34–35, Josiah ordered the dismantling of local high places, the destruction of Asherah poles and idolatrous altars, and the reconstitution of Yahweh’s priesthood under the supervision of the Temple’s high priest, Hilkiah. These measures, framed as a revival of Mosaic covenant fidelity, formed the core of his reform agenda and marked a turning point in Judah’s religious life .

The catalyst for these reforms was the reported discovery—during Temple repairs in 622 BCE—of a “Book of the Law” (sefer‑ha‑torah) in the Temple archives. When this text, commonly identified with an early form of Deuteronomy, was read aloud to the king, Josiah is said to have reacted with profound alarm at Judah’s covenant infidelity. He then mandated a covenant renewal ceremony, exacting oaths from the populace to adhere strictly to the commands within this scroll. The “book” itself prescribes a treaty-like structure between Yahweh (as suzerain) and Israel (as vassal), demanding exclusive worship and obedience and spelling out curses for disobedience—measures that provided ideological justification for Josiah’s centralizing and purgative policies .

Modern source criticism views Josiah’s era as the fulcrum for a major editorial phase in the Pentateuch, especially in Deuteronomy’s chapters 12–26, often termed the Deuteronomic Code. Scholars posit that an early Deuteronomic document was composed or redacted to underpin Josiah’s program, embedding his reforms within the corpus of divine law. By casting Israel’s relationship to Yahweh in the mold of an ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty—complete with obligations, sanctions, and ratification rituals—these texts provided a theological rationale for dissolving rival cultic sites and enforcing a centralized, Yahweh‑exclusive worship in Jerusalem.

This Deuteronomic redaction also introduced and codified the concept of herem (“the ban” or “devotion to destruction”), mandating the irrevocable annihilation of certain Canaanite populations deemed “abhorrent” or “religiously contaminating.” Where earlier Yahwistic strands (the Jahwist and Priestly sources) wove themes of divine compassion, sabbath rest, and care for the widow, orphan, and sojourner, the Deuteronomic Code interposed explicit commands for holy war—most starkly in Deuteronomy 7:1–6 and 20:16–18—and rituals of purgative violence against enemy peoples. This emphasis on total conquest and religious unmixing represented a decisive shift from a theology centered on mercy and covenantal forgiveness to one legitimating war as a divine imperative.

The cumulative effect of Josiah’s reforms and the corresponding Deuteronomistic redaction was to recast the Torah’s ethos from one anchored primarily in merciful covenantal blessings to one dominated by a theology of conditional land tenure and divinely sanctioned warfare. Whereas earlier texts celebrated Yahweh’s steadfast love (ḥesed) and upheld mercy as foundational, the post‑Josianic Torah interweaves blessings for obedience with warnings of military defeat and exile, framing Israel’s history as a function of militant fidelity to Yahweh’s sovereign will. In this sense, the core of the text was transformed: mercy remained, but conquest and war assumed pride of place as expressions of covenantal obedience.

The Quran speaks explicitly of earlier “People of the Book” (ahl al‑kitāb) who “distorted” (tahrīf) or “aged” their scriptures. Key passages include:

1. Sūrah al‑Baqarah (2:79)

“So woe to those who write the Scripture with their own hands, then say, ‘This is from Allāh,’ in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written and woe to them for what they earn.”

Here the charge is that some wrote “their own additions” and falsely ascribed them to God.

2. Sūrah Āl ʻImrān (3:78)

“And indeed there is among them a party who distort the Scripture with their tongues [i.e., in recitation], so you [O Muḥammad] may think it is from the Scripture, but it is not from the Scripture. And they say, ‘It is from Allāh,’ but it is not from Allāh. And they speak untruth about Allāh while they know.”

This verse highlights oral as well as written tampering—altering wording so that listeners mistake it for genuine revelation.

3. Sūrah an‑Nisā’ (4:46)

“Among the Jews are those who distort words from their [proper] usages and say, ‘We hear and disobey’ and ‘Hear but be not heard’ and ‘Ra‘inā,’ twisting their tongues and defaming the religion. And if they had said [instead], ‘We hear and obey’ and ‘Wait for us [to understand],’ it would have been better for them and more correct. But Allāh has cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.”

The term “distort” here (wa‑yuḥarrifūna) is the same root used elsewhere of “turning aside” or “corrupting” divine speech.

4. Sūrah al‑Mā’idah (5:13)

“But because of their breaking of the covenant, We cursed them and made their hearts hard. They distort words from their [proper] usages and have forgotten a portion of that of which they were reminded…”

Although this verse emphasizes broken covenants, it again ties covenant‑breaking to tahrīf of Scripture.

Taken together, these passages present a Quranic critique of those among the “People of the Book” who, for reasons of power, prestige, or profit, inserted, omitted, or twisted God’s words—thereby moving a “Book of Mercy” toward something more self‑serving (and, in the biblical case, toward justification of war).

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Hegel says, in his discussion of Reflective History in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History, such historians “approach their task with their own spirit; a spirit distinct from that of the element he is to manipulate,” and thus may unwittingly impose contemporary ideas on ancient events; often indulging “subjective fancies in the place of historical data,” and thus risk inventing “anti‑historical monstrosities” under the guise of scholarship.