Concept

God and the Killing of Children

Intro

"Your God killed babies. Egyptian firstborns. Pregnant women. Forty-two boys eaten by bears for teasing a prophet. And there's a psalm that calls people 'blessed' for smashing infants on rocks. How is that not just monstrous?"

This is the hardest cluster of Old Testament texts to read honestly. The page does not soften them. They are real, and they are severe.

What the page does instead is sort them out. The skeptic argument lumps very different kinds of texts into one accusation. Once you separate them, four distinct things are going on, and each one needs its own answer.

First, there are judicial-judgment narratives, like the death of the Egyptian firstborn. Egypt had been killing Hebrew babies in the Nile for generations. The Tenth Plague is delayed justice on a state that had been doing exactly this. And it came with a way out: any household, Egyptian or Hebrew, could be spared by putting blood on the doorframe. Many Egyptians did. They left with Israel as the "mixed multitude" of Exodus 12:38.

Second, there are narrative-curse events, like Elisha and the bears. These are not random; the Hebrew tells us the "small boys" were a young mob of likely a few dozen men running a prophet out of a town, a death threat to Yahweh's representative.

Third, there are imprecation psalms like Psalm 137:9. These are not God's commands to anyone. They are exiled survivors, who had watched the Babylonians do exactly this to their own children, praying their pain to God instead of acting on it. The psalm shows the survivor handing the worst part of their grief over to God, which is the opposite of taking revenge.

Fourth, there are prophetic curse formulas describing what siege warfare actually does. Hosea's "ripped open" language is not a divine command; it is a horror-photograph of ancient siege reality, used as a warning about what is coming if covenant terms keep being broken.

The page keeps the canonical frame in view. The same God who is accused in these texts is the God who grieves over child suffering in Jeremiah 31:15, calls child sacrifice an abomination so horrible He says it never even crossed His mind (Jeremiah 32:35), and ultimately puts His own Son in the place of judgment so others (including children) can be rescued. None of this makes the hard texts easy. But none of them is gratuitous cruelty either.

In full

The OT texts the skeptic literature most cites to claim God commands or commits the killing of children: Ex 12:29 (the death of Egyptian firstborn); 2 Kgs 2:23-24 (Elisha and the two bears mauling 42 boys); Ps 137:9 ("blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock"); Hos 13:16 (rip open pregnant Samarian women); Num 31:17 (kill male infants of the Midianites); Lev 26:30 ("you shall eat the flesh of your sons"); 1 Kgs 16:34 (foundation child-sacrifice). The hub presents the texts honestly, distinguishes the four structurally different text-types in the cluster (judicial-judgment narratives, cursing-narratives, imprecation-psalms, prophetic-curse-language, and conditional-covenant-curses), addresses each on its own exegetical terms, and surfaces the deeper theological frame: children's death in the OT is never gratuitous; it is always either (a) judicial-judgment in covenantal-historical context, (b) imprecation-prayer to God against violent oppressors, (c) prophetic-curse language describing siege-warfare reality, or (d) covenantal-curse-warning that the oppressors of God's people will themselves face.

This is the hardest cluster of OT hard-texts pastorally and apologetically. The texts are real and severe, and a careful Christian engagement does not minimize them. What it does is distinguish the text-types the skeptic-popular reading collapses, and connect them to the broader canonical theological frame, God's character as revealed in the canon-as-a-whole, including God's explicit grief over child-suffering (Jer 31:15; 32:35) and God's ultimate self-substitution in Christ for the redemption of all creation including children.

The four text-types in the cluster

Type 1, Judicial-judgment narratives in covenantal-historical context

The Egyptian firstborn (Ex 12:29):

"At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the cattle." (Ex 12:29, ESV)

The Tenth Plague is the focal text. The careful frame:

Egyptian prior infanticide. Ex 1:15-22: Pharaoh ordered the systematic killing of Hebrew newborn males ("every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile"). The Hebrew people endured centuries of this systematic-state-infanticide. The Tenth Plague is retributive symmetry, the Pharaoh who ordered the deaths of Hebrew children faces the death of his own firstborn and the firstborn of his nation.
The 400+ years of slavery context. Gen 15:13-16, God told Abraham 400+ years before the Exodus that Israel would be afflicted, that the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete, that judgment would come in due time. The Tenth Plague is delayed judicial action, not gratuitous-cruelty.
The universal Passover provision. Ex 12:1-13: any household, Egyptian or Israelite, could be spared by applying the Passover lamb's blood. The judgment was not ethnic; it was covenantal-volitional. Egyptians who joined Israel and applied the blood were spared.
The "mixed multitude." Ex 12:38: when Israel left Egypt, "a mixed multitude went up with them also." This is Egyptian and other-non-Israelite individuals who responded to the Passover provision in faith. The judgment-with-provision pattern was actually-historically-effective at protecting those who responded.
The Christotelic completion. 1 Cor 5:7, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed." The Passover lamb is typological-prefiguration of Christ. The pattern of judgment-with-substitutionary-blood-protection established in the Tenth Plague is the foundation of the cross.

The structural reading: The Tenth Plague is delayed judicial judgment on Pharaoh and Egyptian state-system that committed centuries of state-infanticide, with universal substitutionary provision available to spare anyone who responded. It is a hard text, children of Egyptians whose families did not apply the blood died. But it is not gratuitous cruelty; it is judicial action with universally-available mercy.

For the broader hardening-question dimension of the Tenth Plague (was Pharaoh's heart sovereignly hardened by God, making the firstborn deaths a divinely-determined consequence?), see Hardening Pharaohs Heart.

Type 2, Specific narrative-cursing actions

Elisha and the bears (2 Kgs 2:23-24):

"He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, 'Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!' And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys." (2 Kgs 2:23-24, ESV)

The single most-cited text against OT moral coherence. The careful frame:

The "small boys" translation is misleading. The Hebrew ne'arim qetannim literally is "young lads", the Hebrew na'ar covers a broad age range from young child to young man (David at the time he killed Goliath was called a na'ar). The qetannim (small / young) modifier here likely indicates "young men" rather than "small children" in the modern sense, the na'ar + qaton combination in 1 Kgs 3:7 is the way Solomon describes himself when he became king (likely 17-20 years old).
The "from the city" is geographically loaded. Bethel was the northern-kingdom apostate cult center, Jeroboam's golden-calf shrine (1 Kgs 12:28-33). The Bethel population was systematically engaged in covenantal apostasy. The young men coming out to mock Elisha, YHWH's prophet, were not random children playing; they were a coordinated-mob of apostate-covenant-Bethel.
The "Go up, you baldhead" is theologically loaded. Elijah had just gone up in the chariot of fire (2 Kgs 2:11), Elisha's famous predecessor was taken up to heaven. The taunt "Go up" is mockery of Elijah's ascension and rejection of Elisha's prophetic-succession. "Baldhead" was likely an insult specific to Elisha's personal appearance, and may have signaled rejection of his prophetic-status (some readings: Levitical-priestly-purity rules; ritual-baldness associations).
The mob size matters. Forty-two young men constitutes a large coordinated group, not a few mischievous children. The size suggests a deliberately-organized confrontation.
The judgment was Elisha's curse in the name of YHWH, ratified by YHWH. Elisha cursed (Hebrew qalal) them in YHWH's name; YHWH ratified the curse via the bears. The narrative is YHWH's judicial response to a coordinated-mob of apostate-Bethel rejecting His prophet.
The narrative is anti-Bethel, anti-apostasy. The book of Kings consistently presents Bethel as the seat of covenantal apostasy; this narrative fits the broader Kings' anti-Bethel framing.

The text is not gratuitous slaughter of small children. It is judicial-prophetic action against a coordinated-mob of apostate-covenant-Bethel young men whose Go up taunt rejected the prophetic-succession YHWH was establishing. The text is severe; it is not gratuitous. The skeptic-popular reading that depends on "small children mauled for teasing baldness" is a translation-and-context misreading.

Type 3, Imprecation psalms (especially Ps 137:9)

Psalm 137:9:

"Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" (Ps 137:9, ESV)

The single most-cited imprecation-psalm text. The careful frame:

The psalm is a lament-song from exile in Babylon (Ps 137:1). Israel's people are captives, themselves the victims of a Babylonian conquest that included Babylonian soldiers killing Israelite children (Lam 2:20-22 narrates this in graphic detail). The psalm-singer is one whose own children have been killed by the Babylonians. The "little ones" the psalm-singer wishes for the rock are Babylonian, the children of the conquerors.
The text-form is imprecation-prayer, not divine command. The psalm is Israel's prayer to God, not God's command to Israel. The psalmist is crying out to God for retributive justice against the Babylonians, not commanding anyone to actually kill Babylonian children.
The prayer follows the lex talionis pattern. Babylonian soldiers killed Israelite children at the conquest of Jerusalem (586 BC). The imprecation prays that the Babylonians experience the same fate they inflicted on Israel. This is the OT lex-talionis ("eye for eye") principle pressed in prayer-form: let those who kill children themselves face the death of their children. It is not gratuitous violence; it is prayer for retributive justice.
The fulfillment is Babylon's actual fall (586 BC → 539 BC). History records that the Medo-Persian conquest of Babylon was relatively-bloodless (Cyrus's policy was clemency). The psalm's prayer was not literally fulfilled in the way it was prayed. The text is prayer that did not literally happen, the cosmic-justice theme of the psalm is handed to YHWH; the human-outcome was different.
Imprecation as a category in the canon. Imprecation-psalms (Ps 7, 35, 58, 59, 69, 79, 109, 137, 139:19-22) are a recognized psalm-genre. Their structural function: the oppressed person hands their cry-for-justice to God rather than taking vengeance themselves. The very existence of the imprecation-psalm form, as prayer, not as action, is the OT's substitution of prayer for violence. The wronged person prays imprecation; God adjudicates; vengeance is not taken by the wronged person.
NT engagement with imprecation. Jesus' "love your enemies" (Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-28) does not abrogate the cry for justice but redirects it: love your enemies AND pray for them. Romans 12:19, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord'", this is the imprecation-pattern preserved: hand the cry-for-justice to God. Revelation 6:9-10 has the martyrs under the altar crying "How long, O Lord, holy and true, before you will judge and avenge our blood?", the imprecation is preserved in the NT, the people-of-God's prayer-for-final-justice. (See Imprecation Psalms which deserves to be built.)

The text is a person whose children have been killed praying that the killers face the same fate. This is morally complex; it is not God commanding the killing of Babylonian children. The skeptic-popular reading that treats Ps 137:9 as God-endorsed-violence-against-children misses both the text-form (imprecation-prayer) and the canonical-theological function (vengeance-handed-to-God-rather-than-taken-by-the-wronged).

Type 4, Prophetic-curse / siege-warfare description

Hosea 13:16:

"Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open." (Hos 13:16, ESV)

Lev 26:30:

"And I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and my soul will abhor you. And I will lay your cities waste and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing aromas. And I myself will devastate the land... You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters." (Lev 26:30, expanded context)

Isaiah 13:15-18:

"Whoever is found will be thrust through, and whoever is caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed in pieces before their eyes; their houses will be plundered and their wives ravished... They will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; their eyes will not pity children." (Isa 13:15-18, ESV, about Babylon's coming destruction by the Medes)

Numbers 31:17, kill male infants of the Midianites. (See OT Sexual-Violence Laws for fuller engagement.)

The text-form is prophetic-curse language describing siege-warfare reality. The careful frame:

Siege-warfare in the ANE was unspeakably brutal. Documented historical reality: when ANE cities were besieged and conquered, soldiers systematically killed children, raped women, plundered, burned. This is what happened at the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC, Lam 2:20-22), the fall of Samaria (722 BC), the fall of Babylon (539 BC, limitedly), and dozens of other ANE conquests. The prophetic texts describing this are describing siege-warfare reality, not commanding it.
The prophetic genre is covenant-curse warning. Lev 26 is structurally a covenant-blessing-and-curse text: if Israel breaks covenant, these are the consequences in covenantal-historical reality. The prophets repeatedly warn Israel and Judah of the coming consequences of covenant-breaking: those consequences are the ANE-conquest pattern that historical events would actually unfold.
God's role in conquest-narratives is judicial, not direct-actor. Isa 10:5-15 makes this explicit: God uses Assyria as the rod of His anger to judge Israel, but Assyria exceeds its judgment-mandate and itself becomes object of further judgment. The pattern: God brings nations as judgment-instruments; the nations commit atrocities God did not command; God then judges the nations for their atrocities. (See Hab 1-2 for the same pattern with Babylon.)
Children's death in siege is the evil God is responding to, not commanding. Hos 13:16 describes what will happen to Samaria when Assyria conquers it, as judicial consequence of Samaria's covenant-breaking. The text is not God commanding the dashing of children; it is God predicting the siege-warfare reality that will unfold as judicial-consequence.
The Christotelic completion. Christ Himself enters the siege-warfare reality (Mt 24:1-22 prophesies Jerusalem's siege; Lk 19:41-44, Jesus weeps over Jerusalem foreseeing this; Lk 23:28-31, "weep for yourselves and your children"). God's response to siege-warfare reality is not to command it but to bear it in Christ's incarnation, which itself culminated in His death at the hands of the violence the prophets had warned about.

The prophetic-curse texts are describing siege-warfare reality as covenantal-judicial-consequence, not commanding the atrocities. The skeptic-popular reading that treats these as God's commands misses the prophetic-warning genre.

Why the objection is sharp despite the four-fold distinction

The careful distinction does not fully dissolve the difficulty. Three residual problems:

The Egyptian firstborn (Type 1) is direct divine action. Even granting the prior-Egyptian-infanticide and universal-Passover-provision, the Tenth Plague is God Himself killing the Egyptian firstborn. The judgment is delayed and merciful-in-provision, but the action is direct.
The Elisha-bears narrative (Type 2) is narrative-with-divine-ratification. Even granting the apostate-Bethel context and the coordinated-mob reading, the narrative shows judicial action against young men in a way that's hard to defend if reduced to "they should not have mocked baldness."
The Numbers 31:17 male-infants text is the direct-command-of-killing-infants problem the careful four-fold distinction cannot fully cover. Even on the Canaanite Conquest and Herem hyperbole-thesis, some infant deaths in conquest-context are described and may have happened.

How to engage the objection in conversation

For practical apologetic deployment:

Distinguish the four text-types. The skeptic-popular reading collapses judicial-narratives (Ex 12:29), cursing-narratives (2 Kgs 2:23-24), imprecation-psalms (Ps 137:9), and prophetic-curse (Hos 13:16, Isa 13:15-18) into a single category of "God-orders-killing-children-texts." Distinguishing the four is the first dialectical move.
For the Egyptian firstborn (Type 1): surface the prior-infanticide and the universal-Passover-provision. The Tenth Plague is delayed retributive judgment on the regime that committed centuries of state-infanticide, with universal substitutionary provision available. This is judicial-with-mercy, not gratuitous cruelty.
For the Elisha-bears (Type 2): correct the translation and surface the apostate-Bethel context. "Small boys" is misleading; the Hebrew ne'arim qetannim covers young men. The 42-mob coordinated-rejection of a YHWH-prophet at apostate-Bethel is judicial-prophetic action, not slaughter-for-mocking-baldness.
For Ps 137:9 (Type 3): explain the imprecation-psalm genre. This is a prayer, not a command. Israel's exile-psalmist whose children were killed by Babylonians prays for retributive justice in the lex-talionis form. The OT's substitution of prayer for violence is what the text-form is for.
For Hos 13:16 / Isa 13 / Lev 26:30 (Type 4): explain the prophetic-curse / siege-warfare-description genre. The texts describe what will happen in siege-warfare as covenantal-judicial-consequence; they do not command the atrocities. ANE siege-warfare's brutality is the evil God responds to in judgment, not the practice God commends.
For Numbers 31:17: integrate with Canaanite Conquest and Herem and OT Sexual-Violence Laws. This is the residual hard case. The conquest-context engagement (hyperbole-thesis + judicial-not-ethnic + divine-prerogative-as-backstop) applies. Even with all the moves, this remains a hard text; honest acknowledgment is more apologetically credible than pretending it dissolves.
Acknowledge the residual difficulty. The honest Christian engagement does not pretend these texts dissolve into easy explanations. Some of them remain genuinely hard. The framework is: God's character revealed in the canon-as-a-whole (including God's grief over child-suffering, Jer 31:15, and God's self-substitution in Christ) is the deeper context within which these hard-texts must be read. Christians are not committed to defending each text as if it were the primary revelation of God's character; they are committed to reading scripture as a coherent canonical-narrative whose climax is the cross.

God's character on child-suffering, the texts the skeptic-deployment omits

The skeptic citation typically omits the OT texts where God explicitly grieves over child-suffering and condemns those who cause it:

Jer 31:15, "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more." (The text is read in Mt 2:18 as fulfilled in Herod's massacre of Bethlehem children, a moment in which God's prophetic-grief over child-suffering is specifically tied to the Christ-event.)
Jer 32:35, "they did not command, nor did it come into my mind, that they should do this abomination", God's explicit denouncement of child-sacrifice, the act that defines the cultic context against which much of the conquest-judgment was directed.
Ezek 16:20-21; 23:37, God denounces child-sacrifice as adultery against Him; the OT's most-graphic condemnation of harming children.
Mic 6:7-8, Micah's rhetorical question "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?", answered: no; what YHWH wants is justice, kindness, and walking humbly. The child-sacrifice option is dismissed as inadequate.
Ps 127:3, "Children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward." The default-OT-position on children is gift-from-YHWH, reward, not commodity.
Mt 18:1-6, Jesus' fierce defense of children: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
Mt 19:13-14, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."
Mk 10:13-16, Jesus taking children in his arms and blessing them.

The full canonical position: God loves children; God grieves their suffering; God's character as revealed in the canon-as-whole is for children, not against them. The hard-texts are the difficult-cases against this background, not the primary canonical revelation of God's character toward children.

The eschatological hope

For Christians dealing pastorally with the question of children who died in OT judgment-narratives (Egyptian firstborn; Canaanite conquest; etc.), the broader theological frame includes:

Children's pre-moral-agency status. The classical Christian tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed) has held that children below the age of moral agency are not under personal-guilt-judgment in the same way adults are. The exact theology varies (limbo of infants in some Catholic tradition; doctrine of covenantal-elect-infants in some Reformed tradition; corpus mysticum of all children in some patristic and Eastern thought; 2 Sam 12:23, David's confidence he would see his deceased child; Mt 19:14, "of such is the kingdom of heaven").
God's perfect justice extends to all souls. Christian eschatology holds that God's judgment is just and perfect, including for those who died young. Whatever the exact mechanism, the fate of children who died in OT judgment-narratives is not abandoned by God's character of justice and mercy.
The cross includes the redemption of all creation. Rom 8:19-22, the whole creation groaning, longing for redemption. Rev 21:4, "every tear" wiped away. The eschatological completion includes the redemption of all suffering, including the suffering of children in OT judgment-narratives.

The Christian engagement of OT child-killing texts is not a dismissive "God can do what He wants and we can't question." It is a careful reading of the texts within the canonical-theological frame whose climax is the cross and whose end is the new creation in which every tear is wiped away.

Connection to scripture

The cluster (skeptic-cited): Ex 12:29 (Egyptian firstborn); 2 Kgs 2:23-24 (Elisha and bears); Ps 137:9 (dashing little ones); Hos 13:16 (Samaria's siege); Num 31:17 (Midianite male infants); Lev 26:30 (eat flesh of children); 1 Kgs 16:34 (Hiel's foundation child-sacrifice); Isa 13:15-18
Egyptian prior-infanticide context: Ex 1:15-22; the 400-years-of-slavery: Gen 15:13-16
Universal Passover provision: Ex 12:1-13; the mixed multitude: Ex 12:38
Apostate Bethel context: 1 Kgs 12:28-33 (Jeroboam's golden calves); 1 Kgs 13 (the man-of-God against Bethel)
Imprecation psalms (the broader genre): Psalms 7; Psalms 35; Psalms 58; Psalms 59; Psalms 69; Psalms 79; Psalms 109; Psalms 137; Ps 139:19-22
NT preservation of imprecation pattern: Rom 12:19; Rev 6:9-10
Jesus on enemy-love AND prayer-for-justice: Mt 5:44; Lk 6:27-28
Prophetic-curse genre (siege-warfare description): Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28; Jeremiah 19; Lam 2:20-22
God's grief over child-suffering: Jer 31:15; Jer 32:35; Ezek 16:20-21; Mic 6:7-8; Ps 127:3
Jesus and children: Mt 18:1-6; Mt 19:13-14; Mk 10:13-16
Christotelic substitutionary completion: 1 Cor 5:7; Jn 1:29 (Lamb of God); 1 Pet 1:18-19
Eschatological completion: Rom 8:19-22; Rev 21:4
David's confidence he would see his deceased child: 2 Sam 12:23

Patristic / scholarly engagement

Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum; Tractates on John, patristic engagement with Tenth Plague and similar narratives; develops the typological-substitutionary reading.
Origen, Homilies on Joshua, allegorical reading of conquest-narratives; engages the moral problem.
Aquinas, ST II-II q. 64 a. 6, divine-prerogative engagement.
Calvin, Commentary on Exodus; Commentary on Hosea, Reformed-classic reading of judicial-judgment narratives.
C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (1958), ch. 3, classic engagement with imprecation psalms.
Walter Kaiser, More Hard Sayings of the Old Testament (1992), accessible evangelical engagement with the cluster.
Daniel Block, The Gods of the Nations (2nd ed. 2000), ANE-religious-context engagement.
John Walton, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest (2017), ANE-cultural-context approach.
Christopher Wright, The God I Don't Understand (2008), accessible evangelical engagement, esp. ch. 4 on children.
Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (2011), esp. chs. 6, 13-14, popular-evangelical apologetic on these specific texts.
David Lamb, God Behaving Badly (2011), esp. chs. 4, 6, accessible engagement.
Eric Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior (2009); The Violence of Scripture (2012), sympathetic to a reading that takes the moral problem seriously.
Erich Zenger, A God of Vengeance? Understanding the Psalms of Divine Wrath (1996), major academic engagement with imprecation psalms.
Gregory Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (2017, 2 vols.), Christotelic-progressive-revelation approach to the entire OT-violence cluster.

Suggested missing concepts (flagged for future builds)

The hub surfaces several adjacent topics that deserve their own future hubs:

Tenth Plague and Passover, concept hub on the Tenth Plague specifically as judicial-with-substitutionary-provision pattern. Currently treated within this hub but the typological-Christological depth deserves dedicated treatment.
Imprecation Psalms, concept hub on the imprecation-psalm genre as substitution-of-prayer-for-violence. Important for engaging Ps 137:9, Ps 109, etc. on their own terms.
ANE Siege-Warfare Reality, historical-cultural hub on what siege-warfare actually looked like in the ANE world, providing context for prophetic-curse texts.
Children in OT Theology (or Children and the Kingdom), concept hub on the OT/NT theology of children, gift, image of God, blessing, kingdom-recipients. Currently scattered across many hubs.
Death of Infants, Eschatological Status, concept hub on the Christian theological tradition regarding children who die before moral-agency. Touches Catholic / Reformed / Orthodox positions; pastorally important; not currently hub'd.
Bethel, Apostate Cult Center, concept / entity hub on Bethel's role as the northern-kingdom apostate cult center across Kings. Useful context for Elisha's curse and other narratives.