# Children in OT Theology ## Intro The Old Testament treats children as a gift from God, not as property and not as a burden. "Children are a heritage of Jehovah," says Psalm 127, and the whole law is built around parents passing faith on to their sons and daughters at home, on the road, at bedtime and at breakfast. Barrenness is grieved, births are celebrated, and orphans are placed under God's personal protection. The same Old Testament draws a hard line where its neighbors did not. Some ancient peoples burned their children as offerings to their gods. Israel's law made that a capital crime, and the prophets called it something God "commanded not, neither came it into my mind." The valley outside Jerusalem where kings did it became the Bible's picture of hell. That makes the hard texts sharper. Children died in the Flood, in the conquest of Canaan, in the tenth plague, and a famous story has bears mauling "young lads." Each of those texts has its own page in the codex. This page sets them inside the larger picture and then turns to the question every grieving parent asks: what happens to children who die? The Bible gives real comfort there, though the popular phrase "age of accountability" is an inference from Scripture, not a verse in it, and Christians reason toward it in different ways. Finally, Jesus welcomed children and said the kingdom belongs to such as these. ## In full The Old Testament's theology of children has four strands. **Value**: children are a divine gift and blessing ([Psalm 127:3](/codex/psalms-127-3/); [128:3](/codex/psalms-128-3/)), formed by God before birth ([Psalm 139:13](/codex/psalms-139-13/); [Jeremiah 1:5](/codex/jeremiah-1-5/)), bearers of the image of God ([Genesis 1:27](/codex/genesis-1-27/); see [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/)), and under God's protection when fatherless ([Psalm 68:5](/codex/psalms-68-5/)). **Formation**: the covenant is transmitted through household teaching ([Deuteronomy 6:6-7](/codex/deuteronomy-6-6-7/)) and through children's questions at the feasts. **Protection**: child sacrifice is prohibited and punished ([Leviticus 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/); [20:2](/codex/leviticus-20-2/)) and denounced by the prophets ([Jeremiah 7:31](/codex/jeremiah-7-31/)), with [Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom](/codex/topheth-and-the-valley-of-hinnom/) as the emblem; individual responsibility forbids executing children for parents' crimes ([Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/)). **Judgment and hope**: children are present in corporate judgment narratives, which the codex answers text by text, and the Old Testament supplies the material from which Christian theology infers that those who die before moral knowledge are received by God ([Deuteronomy 1:39](/codex/deuteronomy-1-39/); [2 Samuel 12:23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/); [Isaiah 7:16](/codex/isaiah-7-16/)). The "age of accountability" is a theological inference, and the major traditions (Augustinian, Reformed, Wesleyan-Arminian, Roman Catholic) ground it, qualify it, or hold it as hope in different ways. The New Testament's welcome of children by [Jesus](/codex/jesus/) ([Matthew 19:14](/codex/matthew-19-14/)) completes the trajectory. --- ## Children as gift and heritage The Psalms speak of children in the language of inheritance and reward: > 3. Lo, children are a heritage of Jehovah; And the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4. As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, So are the children of youth. 5. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: They shall not be put to shame, When they speak with their enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:3-5, ASV) > 3. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, In the innermost parts of thy house; Thy children like olive plants, Round about thy table. ([Psalm 128:3](/codex/psalms-128-3/), ASV) The flip side is that childlessness is grieved openly. Rachel cries, "Give me children, or else I die" (Genesis 30:1, ASV), and Hannah, when Samuel is born, says, "For this child I prayed; and Jehovah hath given me my petition" (1 Samuel 1:27, ASV). God is praised as the one who "maketh the barren woman to keep house, And to be a joyful mother of children" (Psalm 113:9, ASV). **Known before birth.** The Old Testament speaks of God's personal work in the womb: > 13. For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother's womb. ([Psalm 139:13](/codex/psalms-139-13/), ASV) > 5. Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. ([Jeremiah 1:5](/codex/jeremiah-1-5/), ASV) These texts underlie the Christian conviction that a child's worth does not wait on age, size or usefulness; see [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/) and [Abortion](/codex/abortion/). **Protected when vulnerable.** The law singles out the fatherless: > 22. Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. 23. If thou afflict them at all, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; 24. and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. (Exodus 22:22-24, ASV) > 5. A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, Is God in his holy habitation. ([Psalm 68:5](/codex/psalms-68-5/), ASV) --- ## Children as the next generation of the covenant The Shema's command to love God is followed immediately by a command to teach children, woven into daily life: > 6. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thy heart; 7. and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. ([Deuteronomy 6:6-7](/codex/deuteronomy-6-6-7/), ASV) The command is repeated in Deuteronomy 11:19. Israel's feasts were designed to provoke children's questions, so that the story of redemption would be told in answer: > 14. And it shall be, when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand Jehovah brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage: (Exodus 13:14, ASV) The relationship runs both ways. Children are to "Honor thy father and thy mother" ([Exodus 20:12](/codex/exodus-20-12/), ASV), and the New Testament adds the parallel duty to fathers: "provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord" ([Ephesians 6:4](/codex/ephesians-6-4/), ASV). On the discipline texts in Proverbs, see [Spare the Rod Objection](/codex/spare-the-rod-objection/). --- ## The ban on child sacrifice Child sacrifice was a real practice in Israel's world, and the Old Testament condemns it in law, narrative and prophecy. **The law makes it a capital crime:** > 21. And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to make them pass through the fire to Molech; neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am Jehovah. ([Leviticus 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/), ASV) > 2. Moreover, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. ([Leviticus 20:2](/codex/leviticus-20-2/), ASV) Deuteronomy names it as the reason the Canaanite cults were abhorrent: "even their sons and their daughters do they burn in the fire to their gods" ([Deuteronomy 12:31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/), ASV). **The prophets denounce it when Israel adopts it.** Kings Ahaz and Manasseh did exactly what the law forbade ([2 Kings 16:3](/codex/2-kings-16-3/); [21:6](/codex/2-kings-21-6/)), and the site was the valley of Hinnom: > 31. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded not, neither came it into my mind. ([Jeremiah 7:31](/codex/jeremiah-7-31/), ASV) Ezekiel puts God's claim on Israel's children in the most personal terms: "thou hast slain my children, and delivered them up, in causing them to pass through the fire unto them" ([Ezekiel 16:21](/codex/ezekiel-16-20-21/), ASV). The psalmist calls it shedding "innocent blood, Even the blood of their sons and of their daughters" ([Psalm 106:38](/codex/psalms-106-37-38/), ASV). Josiah's reform ended the practice by defiling Topheth ([2 Kings 23:10](/codex/2-kings-23-10/)), and the valley's name, *ge-hinnom*, became *gehenna*, the New Testament word for hell. The full history is at [Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom](/codex/topheth-and-the-valley-of-hinnom/). **Micah rejects it as a way to God.** The prophet imagines the worshipper asking, "shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" ([Micah 6:7](/codex/micah-6-7/), ASV), and answers with justice, kindness and humility instead. **The archaeological debate.** Excavations at the Carthage *tophet*, a Phoenician-Punic precinct of cremated infant burials, are the main external evidence for Phoenician child sacrifice. Scholars disagree about how to read them. Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues argued that the age profile of the remains does not support systematic sacrifice ("Skeletal Remains from Punic Carthage Do Not Support Systematic Sacrifice of Infants," *PLoS ONE*, 2010). Patricia Smith, Lawrence Stager and colleagues argued the opposite ("Cemetery or Sacrifice? Infant Burials at the Carthage Tophet," *Antiquity*, 2013). The debate is over Carthage specifically; the biblical texts themselves are unambiguous that the practice existed in Canaan and in apostate Judah. The hard texts sometimes cited as divine endorsement of human sacrifice, the binding of Isaac, Jephthah's daughter and the "devoted things" law, are answered at [Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament](/codex/human-sacrifice-in-the-old-testament/) and [Akedah](/codex/akedah/). --- ## Children and individual responsibility The law forbids punishing children for their parents' crimes: > 16. The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. ([Deuteronomy 24:16](/codex/deuteronomy-24-16/), ASV) Ezekiel generalizes it: "the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son" ([Ezekiel 18:20](/codex/ezekiel-18-20/), ASV). How this squares with the "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" texts is treated at [Inherited Guilt and Visiting Iniquity](/codex/inherited-guilt-and-visiting-iniquity/). --- ## Children in the judgment narratives The objection usually comes as a list: children drowned in the Flood, killed in the conquest, struck in the tenth plague, mauled by bears. The codex answers each text on its own terms, because the texts differ in genre, context and what they actually say. | Narrative | What the text says | Where it is answered | |---|---|---| | The Flood | Judgment on a world "filled with violence" (Genesis 6:5; 6:11), with a promise never to repeat it | [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/); [Flood Genocide Objection](/codex/flood-genocide-objection/) | | Conquest of Canaan | Judgment after a long waiting period (Genesis 15:16) on cultures that burned their children (Deuteronomy 12:31), with war rhetoric that is not a literal census | [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/); [Canaanite Conquest and Herem](/codex/canaanite-conquest-and-herem/) | | The Amalekites | The command of 1 Samuel 15 | [Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/amalekite-genocide-objection-defeater/) | | The tenth plague | Judgment on a regime that had drowned Hebrew boys (Exodus 1:22), with the Passover as an open way of escape | [Plagues of Egypt](/codex/plagues-of-egypt/); [God and the Killing of Children](/codex/god-and-the-killing-of-children/) | | Elisha and the bears | A mob of "young lads" mocking the prophet at Bethel (2 Kings 2:23-24) | [Bears Mauling Youth Objection Defeater](/codex/bears-mauling-youth-objection-defeater/); [Bears Mauling Youth Objection](/codex/bears-mauling-youth-objection/) | Three principles run through all of them. 1. **The texts that protect children are the frame, not an afterthought.** The same God who judges in these narratives is the God who made child sacrifice a capital crime, who promised to hear the fatherless, and who forbade punishing children for their parents' sins. A reading of the hard texts that makes God careless about children has to ignore the rest of the canon. 2. **The judgments are on societies, and children share the fate of their societies in every age.** War, famine and disaster fall on whole peoples. The Old Testament explicitly links the conquest to the wickedness of the nations, not to Israel's merit ([Deuteronomy 9:4-5](/codex/deuteronomy-9-4-5/)), and among the named sins is the burning of children (Frank Turek makes this point in *Stealing from God*, PDF p. 133). Abraham's question, "shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" ([Genesis 18:25](/codex/genesis-18-25/), ASV), is the Bible's own standard for evaluating them. 3. **Death is not the end for a child.** On Christian theism, the God who takes a child's earthly life is the God who receives that child, which is why the next section matters for the moral question and not only for pastoral comfort. The overall moral argument is developed at [God and the Killing of Children](/codex/god-and-the-killing-of-children/) and [Divine Wipeouts and Their Justification](/codex/divine-wipeouts-and-their-justification/). --- ## When a child dies: David's son When the child born to David and Bathsheba was dying, David fasted and wept. When the child died, he got up, washed and ate, and explained: > 22. And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who knoweth whether Jehovah will not be gracious to me, that the child may live? 23. But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me. (2 Samuel 12:22-23, ASV; see [2 Samuel 12.23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/)) **Two readings of "I shall go to him":** - **Reunion.** Most pastoral and many evangelical readers take David to express confidence that he will be with the child after death. The change from grief to calm, and the personal "to him," fit that reading. - **The grave.** Some commentators read it more narrowly: David will join the child in death and in Sheol, the realm of the dead, so the point is the finality of death, not a statement about the child's salvation. The text does not settle the question by itself, and the codex does not pretend it does. [John Chrysostom](/codex/john-chrysostom/) used the verse to counsel grieving parents: "the same words say thou, when thy child is dead, 'I shall go to him, but he will not come to me'" (NPNF1 vol. 13, PDF p. 235), presenting David's composure as the model of a faithful parent's grief. --- ## The age of accountability: a debated inference The phrase "age of accountability" is not in the Bible. It names an inference that many Christians draw from texts where Scripture distinguishes young children from those who know good and evil. **The texts usually cited:** > 39. Moreover your little ones, that ye said should be a prey, and your children, that this day have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it. ([Deuteronomy 1:39](/codex/deuteronomy-1-39/), ASV) Here the wilderness generation is barred from the promised land for its unbelief, but the children "that this day have no knowledge of good or evil" are explicitly excluded from that judgment and given the land (compare Numbers 14:31). > 15. Butter and honey shall he eat, when he knoweth to refuse the evil, and choose the good. 16. For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land whose two kings thou abhorrest shall be forsaken. ([Isaiah 7:15-16](/codex/isaiah-7-15-16/), ASV) Isaiah assumes a recognizable stage in childhood before a child knows "to refuse the evil, and choose the good." > 11. and should not I have regard for Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? ([Jonah 4:11](/codex/jonah-4-11/), ASV) God's pity for those who "cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" is often read as including Nineveh's young children, though some commentators take it to describe the city's moral confusion generally. **What the texts establish, and what they do not.** They show that Scripture recognizes a stage before moral knowledge and that God distinguishes children at that stage from adults under judgment. They do not give an age, and they do not by themselves answer how such children relate to the sin of Adam. That is where traditions diverge: - **Augustinian.** [Augustine](/codex/augustine/) held both sides of the tension. Preaching on the children brought to Jesus, he said, "As far as concerns them personally, I see that they are without fault," and yet "In the branch they have not yet committed any evil, but they are ruined in their root," so they too must be brought to the Physician (NPNF1 vol. 6, PDF p. 400). On this view infants need the grace of Christ because of [Original Sin](/codex/original-sin/), not because of personal sins. - **Reformed.** Many Reformed theologians hold that all who die in infancy are elect and saved by grace, not by innocence. Ronald Nash defended this view in *When a Baby Dies* (Zondervan, 1999). - **Wesleyan-Arminian and much of evangelical and Pentecostal teaching.** Infants and young children are covered by the atonement until they reach moral accountability, so those who die before then are with the Lord. This is the form most people mean by "the age of accountability." - **Roman Catholic.** The medieval theory of limbo was never defined as dogma. In 2007 the International Theological Commission's document *The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised* concluded there are serious grounds to hope such infants are saved, while describing this as hope rather than certain knowledge. **The common ground.** Across these traditions, the hope for children who die rests on God's character and on Christ's work, not on a claim that children are sinless by nature. The traditions differ on mechanism and certainty, and a fair presentation says so. For the wider question of those who never hear the gospel, see [Salvation of the Unevangelized](/codex/salvation-of-the-unevangelized/). --- ## Jesus and children The Gospels complete the Old Testament's trajectory. When the disciples tried to keep children away, Jesus rebuked them: > 14. But Jesus said, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven. ([Matthew 19:14](/codex/matthew-19-14/), ASV) Mark adds that Jesus "was moved with indignation" ([Mark 10:14](/codex/mark-10-14/), ASV) and that "he took them in his arms, and blessed them, laying his hands upon them" (Mark 10:16, ASV); see [Mark 10.13-16](/codex/mark-10-13-16/) and [Luke 18.15-17](/codex/luke-18-15-17/). Jesus also warns against despising "one of these little ones" and says, "it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish" ([Matthew 18:14](/codex/matthew-18-14/), ASV). When children praised him in the temple, he answered his critics from Psalm 8: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou has perfected praise" ([Matthew 21:16](/codex/matthew-21-16/), ASV). The New Testament thus confirms the Old Testament's estimate of children and makes them the model of how anyone enters the [Kingdom of God](/codex/kingdom-of-god/): not by achievement but by receiving. --- ## See also - [Old Testament Difficult Texts](/codex/old-testament-difficult-texts/), parent cluster - [God and the Killing of Children](/codex/god-and-the-killing-of-children/), the moral objection across all the hard texts - [Topheth and the Valley of Hinnom](/codex/topheth-and-the-valley-of-hinnom/), where child sacrifice was practiced and condemned - [Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament](/codex/human-sacrifice-in-the-old-testament/), the binding of Isaac, Jephthah and Leviticus 27 - [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/), the Flood - [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/), the conquest - [Bears Mauling Youth Objection Defeater](/codex/bears-mauling-youth-objection-defeater/), Elisha and the bears - [Plagues of Egypt](/codex/plagues-of-egypt/), the tenth plague and the Passover - [Inherited Guilt and Visiting Iniquity](/codex/inherited-guilt-and-visiting-iniquity/), children and their parents' sins - [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/), the image of God in every human being - [Original Sin](/codex/original-sin/), the doctrine behind the infant-salvation debate - [Abortion](/codex/abortion/), the unborn child - [Spare the Rod Objection](/codex/spare-the-rod-objection/), discipline texts - [Disabled People Cannot Choose God Objection Defeater](/codex/disabled-people-cannot-choose-god-objection-defeater/), the accountability principle applied to people with severe intellectual disabilities ## Common questions this page answers **Q: How does the Old Testament view children?** As a gift and a blessing from God: "children are a heritage of Jehovah" ([Psalm 127:3](/codex/psalms-127-3/)). God forms them in the womb ([Psalm 139:13](/codex/psalms-139-13/)), defends them when they are fatherless ([Psalm 68:5](/codex/psalms-68-5/)), and commands parents to teach them his ways throughout daily life ([Deuteronomy 6:6-7](/codex/deuteronomy-6-6-7/)). **Q: Did the Bible allow child sacrifice?** No. The law made giving a child to Molech a capital crime ([Leviticus 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/); [20:2](/codex/leviticus-20-2/)), Deuteronomy calls it an abomination, and Jeremiah says God "commanded not, neither came it into my mind" ([Jeremiah 7:31](/codex/jeremiah-7-31/)). The kings who practiced it are condemned, and the site, Topheth, became the Bible's image of hell. **Q: Why did children die in the Flood and the conquest of Canaan?** These were judgments on whole societies, and children share in the fate of their societies in every age, in war, famine and disaster. The Bible ties the conquest to the wickedness of the nations, including the burning of their own children, and Christian theology holds that children who die are received by God. Each text is answered in detail on its own defeater page, linked above. **Q: Do babies go to heaven when they die?** Most Christian traditions hold or hope that they do, though they reason to it differently. The key texts are David's words about his dead son, "I shall go to him" ([2 Samuel 12:23](/codex/2-samuel-12-23/)), God's sparing of children "that this day have no knowledge of good or evil" ([Deuteronomy 1:39](/codex/deuteronomy-1-39/)), and Jesus' words that the kingdom belongs to little children ([Matthew 19:14](/codex/matthew-19-14/)). **Q: Is the age of accountability in the Bible?** The phrase is not. It is an inference from texts that distinguish young children from those who know good and evil, such as [Deuteronomy 1:39](/codex/deuteronomy-1-39/) and [Isaiah 7:16](/codex/isaiah-7-16/). Scripture gives no specific age, and Reformed, Wesleyan, Augustinian and Catholic theologians explain the salvation of children who die in different ways. **Q: What did Jesus say about children?** "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven" ([Matthew 19:14](/codex/matthew-19-14/)). He took children in his arms and blessed them, warned against despising them, and said it is not the Father's will that one of them should perish ([Matthew 18:14](/codex/matthew-18-14/)).