What is mankind?

Since we brought up Saul’s failure to completely annihilate the Amalekites in the previous post , the time has come for a look at the topic of conquest in the Bible. When God commanded the destruction of the nations that were occupying Canaan—infants and children along with grown men and women—was that a glitch in the Bible’s pro-life ethic?  Let me say at the outset that I’m not going to attempt to explain why God, in general, allows the innocent to die. I could not answer that question any more than I could say why He allowed Bethlehem’s innocent babies and toddlers to die in Jesus’ place, or why He chose to have the sinless Son of God die for guilty sinners. Some things are not only beyond the scope of this post but also beyond our understanding (Deuteronomy 29:29; Job 42:3; Isaiah 40:13-14, 55:8-9; 1 Corinthians 2:11, 13:12).  I’m also not going to look into it in terms of “genocide.” Others have capably done that, for instance, David M Howard, Jr. in “Destruction and Disp...