First Samuel 15 contains one of the most morally challenging passages in the Hebrew Bible. The text presents God commanding the Israelite king Saul to attack the Amalekites and "put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."1 The Hebrew text is explicit: the word for "infants" (olel) refers to children still being weaned, while "nursing babies" (yoneq) describes infants at the breast.2 This is not ambiguous language subject to interpretation. It is a specific enumeration that includes the most vulnerable human beings, commanded to be killed as a religious act.
The biblical text
The passage in question occurs in the context of God's instructions to King Saul through the prophet Samuel.
"Samuel said to Saul, 'I am the one the LORD sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the LORD. This is what the LORD Almighty says: "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."'" 1 Samuel 15:1-31
The Hebrew phrase translated "children and infants" is olel v'yoneq (עֹלֵל וְיוֹנֵק).2 The term olel derives from a root meaning to act childishly or to suckle, referring to young children still dependent on nursing.3 The term yoneq is even more specific: it is the present participle of the verb yanaq, meaning "one who is nursing" or "suckling."3 This is the same terminology used in Lamentations 4:4, where the prophet describes children's tongues cleaving to the roof of their mouths for thirst, and "the infants" (yoneqim) asking for bread with none to give.4 The language denotes infants and toddlers, children too young to walk, too young to speak, too young to have any moral agency whatsoever.
The phrase "totally destroy" translates the Hebrew verb hacharem (הַחֲרֵם), from the root cherem (חרם).2 This term has profound theological significance in the Hebrew Bible, denoting complete devotion to destruction as a sacred act. The command is not merely military but religious: the Amalekites and everything they possess are to be offered to God through annihilation.
The context and motivation
The stated reason for this command is punishment. God orders this destruction as retribution for what "the Amalekites did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt."1 This refers to an incident described in Exodus 17:8-16, where the Amalekites attacked the Israelites shortly after the Exodus.5 In that earlier passage, God declares perpetual war against Amalek: "The LORD will have war against Amalek from generation to generation."5
The critical point is chronological. The attack referenced in Exodus 17 occurred during the wilderness wanderings, traditionally dated to the thirteenth century BCE.6 The command to Saul comes during his reign as king, traditionally dated to the late eleventh century BCE, approximately 1047-1007 BCE.7 This represents a gap of roughly two to three centuries. The Amalekite infants and nursing babies being commanded for slaughter in 1 Samuel 15 were not even born when the offense occurred. Their great-great-great-grandparents may not have been born. They are being killed for something their distant ancestors allegedly did centuries earlier.
This represents generational punishment of the most extreme kind. The infants targeted by this command had no connection to the events of Exodus 17. They could not have participated in the attack on Israel. They could not have endorsed it, prevented it, or even understood it. They were guilty only of being born into the wrong ethnic group at the wrong time.
The herem concept
The Hebrew term cherem (חרם), often translated as "devotion to destruction" or "the ban," represents a distinctive concept in ancient Israelite warfare.8 When something was placed under cherem, it was irrevocably dedicated to God through complete destruction. Nothing could be kept, used, or spared. Everything, including people, animals, and possessions, had to be annihilated as a form of religious offering.9
The concept appears throughout the Pentateuch and historical books.
"When the LORD your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy." Deuteronomy 7:1-210
"However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them." Deuteronomy 20:16-1711
The destruction of Jericho in Joshua 6 provides the paradigmatic example of cherem in practice.
"They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it, men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys." Joshua 6:2112
When Achan violated the cherem by keeping some of the devoted things, he and his entire family were stoned and burned.13 The severity of punishment for violating cherem underscores its sacred, non-negotiable character.
Biblical instances of herem (devotion to destruction)8, 9
| Passage | Target | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Deuteronomy 7:1-2 | Seven Canaanite nations | Total destruction, no mercy |
| Deuteronomy 20:16-17 | Cities in promised land | "Nothing that breathes" |
| Joshua 6:21 | Jericho | Men, women, young, old, animals |
| Joshua 8:24-26 | Ai | 12,000 killed, city burned |
| 1 Samuel 15:3 | Amalekites | Men, women, children, infants, animals |
God's anger at incomplete obedience
What makes 1 Samuel 15 particularly striking is not just the command itself but God's response when Saul fails to carry it out completely. After the battle, Saul spares the Amalekite king Agag and the best of the sheep, cattle, and lambs, "everything that was good."14 He destroyed only what was "despised and weak."14
God's reaction is immediate and severe. First Samuel 15:10-11 records: "Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 'I regret that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.'"14 The Hebrew verb nacham (נָחַם), translated "regret," expresses divine grief and reconsideration, the same verb used in Genesis 6:6 when God regrets making humanity before the flood.15
When Samuel confronts Saul, the king offers an excuse: the people spared the best animals "in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God."16 Samuel's response has become one of the most quoted passages in the Hebrew Bible.
"Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king." 1 Samuel 15:22-2317
The logic is clear: obedience to God's commands takes absolute priority over other considerations. Saul is not condemned for excessive violence but for insufficient violence. He showed partial mercy by sparing Agag and the best livestock, and this partial mercy constituted "rebellion" against God. The passage concludes with Samuel personally executing the judgment Saul failed to complete: "Samuel put Agag to death before the LORD at Gilgal."18 The Hebrew verb describing this execution is shachat, meaning to hew or cut in pieces.19
The moral problem stated plainly
The moral problem presented by 1 Samuel 15 can be stated simply. The passage presents God as commanding the deliberate killing of infants and nursing babies, not as collateral damage, not as a metaphor, not as hyperbolic warfare language, but as an explicit, enumerated command using specific Hebrew terminology for the youngest and most vulnerable human beings. Furthermore, God punishes the person who shows partial mercy, rejecting him from kingship specifically because he did not kill enough.
This is not a case where infants die as an unintended consequence of broader military action. The command names them specifically. The phrase olel v'yoneq appears in a list alongside men, women, cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys.1 Each category is enumerated. Nursing babies are not an afterthought or an implication; they are an explicit target. A commander who received orders to destroy "men, women, children, and infants" could not reasonably claim he did not understand that infants were included.
By any system of ethics recognizable to modern readers, the deliberate killing of nursing babies is among the gravest possible moral wrongs. The International Criminal Court defines the intentional killing of civilians, including children, as a war crime and a crime against humanity.20 The Geneva Conventions specifically protect children as persons who "shall be the object of special respect" and protected "against any form of assault."21 The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every member nation except the United States, affirms that children have an "inherent right to life" and that states must "ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child."22
These modern legal frameworks represent not merely contemporary preferences but the crystallization of moral intuitions that are nearly universal across human cultures. The protection of infants is one of the few genuine moral universals, rooted in our evolutionary psychology and reinforced by virtually every ethical and religious tradition.23 To command the killing of nursing babies is to violate one of the deepest and most consistent moral prohibitions in human history.
Common theological defenses
Theologians and apologists have offered various defenses of passages like 1 Samuel 15. Each defense encounters significant philosophical difficulties.
The irredeemable wickedness defense
Some defenders argue that the Amalekites had become so thoroughly evil that their destruction was necessary. The Amalekites are portrayed elsewhere in Scripture as particularly wicked: they attacked Israel's stragglers, "the weary and worn out," rather than engaging the main force.24 On this view, the culture had become so corrupt that complete eradication was the only solution.
This defense fails when applied to nursing babies. Whatever moral corruption existed in Amalekite society, infants at the breast cannot participate in it. A nursing baby cannot be wicked. A nursing baby cannot attack stragglers or engage in any moral action whatsoever. The baby has no beliefs, no intentions, no capacity for moral choice. To describe a nursing baby as "irredeemably wicked" is incoherent. The defense may or may not work for adult Amalekites, but it categorically cannot justify killing infants.
The divine sovereignty defense
The most common defense holds that God, as creator and sovereign over all life, has the authority to give and take life as He sees fit. Since God grants existence, He may terminate it without moral wrong. What would be murder for a human is simply God exercising His prerogative.
This defense encounters the Euthyphro dilemma, articulated by Plato in the dialogue of the same name: is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?25 If actions are good simply because God commands them, then goodness is whatever God wills, and the term loses all content. Torturing infants would be good if God commanded it. The word "moral" becomes meaningless, equivalent to "whatever the powerful being wants."26
If instead God commands things because they are good, then there is a standard of goodness independent of God's will by which God's actions can be evaluated. This preserves the meaning of moral language but makes God subject to moral evaluation. And if we can evaluate God's actions, then we can ask whether commanding the killing of nursing babies is morally good, and the answer from any recognizable ethical framework is no.26
The cultural context defense
Some argue that we cannot judge ancient texts by modern moral standards. Warfare in the ancient Near East was brutal, and the Israelites were products of their time. The command reflects the cultural context of ancient warfare, not timeless moral prescriptions.
This defense is available only to those who view the Bible as a human document reflecting human cultural limitations. If the Bible is divinely inspired, and if God is timeless and morally perfect as classical theism holds, then cultural context provides no excuse.27 A perfect God would not command infanticide in any era. If God accommodated Himself to the brutal norms of ancient warfare, this accommodation would constitute moral compromise, inconsistent with divine perfection. The defense essentially concedes that the command is morally problematic and offers an explanation for why a human author might have written it, not a justification for why a perfect God would issue it.
The hyperbole defense
Some scholars argue that ancient Near Eastern warfare accounts routinely employed hyperbolic language. Kings boasted of total annihilation when they achieved partial victories. On this reading, phrases like "destroy all that belongs to them" and "do not spare" are conventional exaggeration, not literal commands.28
This defense struggles with the specific enumeration in 1 Samuel 15:3. The command does not simply say "destroy everything." It lists categories: men, women, children, infants, cattle, sheep, camels, donkeys. The specificity undermines the hyperbole interpretation. If the author intended hyperbolic total destruction, why enumerate nursing babies specifically? The very precision that makes the passage morally troubling also makes the hyperbole defense less plausible.
Furthermore, God's anger at Saul's incomplete obedience suggests literal intent. If the command were merely hyperbolic, one would expect God to be satisfied with partial fulfillment, since hyperbole is not meant to be taken literally. Instead, God rejects Saul as king because he did not complete the destruction.17 The narrative treats the command as binding in its particulars.
The future threat defense
Some defenders argue that God, being omniscient, knew that these children would grow up to threaten Israel. By destroying them young, God was protecting Israel from future harm. The children were not being punished for what they had done but removed to prevent what they would do.
This amounts to pre-crime punishment, a concept widely rejected in moral philosophy and jurisprudence.29 Punishing individuals for crimes they have not yet committed violates basic principles of justice. If the future is determined such that the children would inevitably become enemies, then free will does not exist, and the entire framework of sin and redemption collapses. If the future is not determined, then the children might have chosen differently, making their preemptive killing unjust.
Moreover, this logic could justify any atrocity. Any population might hypothetically produce future enemies. By this reasoning, any genocide could be defended on grounds that some members of the target group might eventually cause harm. The defense proves too much: it provides a template for justifying the killing of any children anywhere.
The broader pattern
First Samuel 15 is not an isolated incident. The Hebrew Bible contains multiple passages where God commands or endorses the killing of children as part of warfare or judgment. This represents a systematic pattern, not an anomaly requiring special explanation.
In Deuteronomy 2:34, regarding the conquest of Sihon's territory: "At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them, men, women and children. We left no survivors."30 Deuteronomy 3:6 describes the same for Og's kingdom: "We completely destroyed them, as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city, men, women and children."31
Joshua 6:21 describes Jericho: "They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it, men and women, young and old."12 Joshua 8:24-26 describes Ai: "When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it... all who fell that day, both men and women, were twelve thousand."32
Numbers 31:17-18 contains a particularly disturbing command regarding the Midianites.
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Numbers 31:17-1833
This passage combines the killing of children with the taking of virgin girls, presumably as war brides or slaves.
Biblical commands to kill children8, 9
Theological implications
The command to kill Amalekite infants creates a logical problem for classical theism, which holds that God is simultaneously omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good).34 This combination of attributes is logically strained by 1 Samuel 15.
If God is omnipotent, He could have achieved His purposes without killing infants. An all-powerful being faces no constraints. God could have changed hearts, relocated populations, created protective barriers, struck only the guilty adults, or accomplished His goals through any of infinite alternative means. The killing of nursing babies was not necessary; it was chosen.
If God is omniscient, He knew alternative approaches existed and foresaw all consequences of every possible action. He was not surprised or limited in His options. He chose infant slaughter with full knowledge of what it entailed and full knowledge that other paths were available.
If God is omnibenevolent, He would not command the killing of innocents. Perfect goodness is incompatible with commanding infanticide. No moral framework that deserves the name "ethics" permits the deliberate killing of nursing babies. To call such an action "good" empties the word of meaning.26
Something must give. Either God is not all-powerful and could not achieve His goals without killing infants. Or God is not all-knowing and did not realize alternatives existed. Or God is not all-good in any sense recognizable to human moral reasoning. Or the passage does not accurately represent God's commands. Each option requires abandoning some element of traditional theistic belief.
Comparison with modern ethics
By any modern moral framework, whether secular or religious, commanding the killing of infants is considered among the gravest possible moral wrongs. This is not a matter of contemporary preference but reflects deep moral intuitions that are nearly universal across human cultures and ethical systems.
Deontological ethics, exemplified by Immanuel Kant, holds that certain actions are intrinsically wrong regardless of consequences. The categorical imperative requires treating humanity never merely as means but always also as ends in themselves.35 Killing nursing babies as a means to punish their ancestors or to remove a future threat treats them purely as means, violating their inherent dignity.
Consequentialist ethics evaluates actions by their outcomes. Even the most permissive consequentialism struggles to justify infant slaughter. The suffering inflicted is immediate and certain; the benefits are speculative at best. An omnipotent God could achieve any good outcome without this harm, making the harm unnecessary and therefore unjustified even on consequentialist grounds.36
Virtue ethics asks what a person of good character would do. No virtue, whether justice, mercy, courage, or wisdom, calls for killing nursing babies. The action expresses no virtue and exemplifies no excellence of character. A virtuous person, by definition, would not perform such an act.37
Natural law theory, prominent in Catholic moral theology, holds that certain actions are intrinsically evil and can never be justified regardless of circumstances or intentions. The direct killing of innocents is a paradigm case of intrinsic evil in natural law thinking.38 A nursing baby is the clearest possible example of an innocent; killing one is therefore intrinsically and absolutely wrong.
Even divine command theory, which holds that morality derives from God's commands, faces difficulty here. Most divine command theorists add that God would never command something truly evil because God is good.26 But this presupposes a standard of goodness by which God's commands can be evaluated. If that standard exists, the command to kill nursing babies fails it. If that standard does not exist, then "good" means nothing more than "whatever God commands," and the theory becomes trivial.
Moral implications
The passage in 1 Samuel 15, whether understood as history or as sacred literature, presents a portrait of God that raises fundamental moral questions. If the story is historical, then the God of the Bible commanded the deliberate killing of nursing babies as a religious act and punished a king for showing too much mercy. If the story is theological literature, then the biblical authors believed this was an appropriate way to characterize their deity and expected readers to worship such a God.
The dilemma is stark. One can reject the passage as non-historical, viewing it as ancient mythological material that does not represent actual divine commands. This preserves divine goodness but requires reinterpreting significant portions of Scripture as non-literal, a move that many Christians and Jews resist and that raises questions about hermeneutical principles. If this passage is not historical, which others might not be?
Alternatively, one can accept the passage as accurately representing God's commands and defend the killing of nursing babies as morally justified because God commanded it. This preserves biblical authority but at the cost of moral coherence. It requires maintaining that killing nursing babies is good when God commands it, which either empties "good" of meaning or fundamentally contradicts our deepest moral intuitions.
A third option is to acknowledge the tension without fully resolving it, living with the discomfort of a sacred text that contains morally troubling material. This approach has intellectual honesty but offers little comfort to those seeking a coherent worldview. It admits that Scripture, tradition, and moral intuition are not easily harmonized.
What one cannot consistently maintain is that the command was morally good in any recognizable sense of the word "good." If killing nursing babies is wrong when humans do it, then either it is wrong when God commands it, or the word "wrong" has no stable meaning. If moral terms apply differently to God than to humans, then moral language becomes meaningless when applied to God at all. And if we cannot meaningfully call God "good," then claims about God's moral character, whether positive or negative, become empty.