God killing babies etc., I would very much like to put this into my own words but I think the writer would do a far better task than me, so I'm
going to quote his article directly (it's a bit of a read but well worth it),
According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the
land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1-2; 20.16-18). The destruction was
to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed. The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel’s carrying out God’s command in city
after city throughout Canaan.
These stories offend our moral sensibilities. Ironically, however, our moral sensibilities in the West have been largely, and for many people
unconsciously, shaped by our Judaeo-Christian heritage, which has taught us the intrinsic value of human beings, the importance of dealing justly
rather than capriciously, and the necessity of the punishment’s fitting the crime. The Bible itself inculcates the values which these stories seem to
violate.
The command to kill all the Canaanite peoples is jarring precisely because it seems so at odds with the portrait of Yahweh, Israel’s God, which is
painted in the Hebrew Scriptures. Contrary to the vituperative rhetoric of someone like Richard Dawkins, the God of the Hebrew Bible is a God of
justice, long-suffering, and compassion.
You can’t read the Old Testament prophets without a sense of God’s profound care for the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the orphaned,
and so on. God demands just laws and just rulers. He literally pleads with people to repent of their unjust ways that He might not judge them.
“As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ez. 33.11).
He sends a prophet even to the pagan city of Nineveh because of his pity for its inhabitants, “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jon. 4.11).
The Pentateuch itself contains the Ten Commandments, one of the greatest of ancient moral codes, which has shaped Western society. Even the
stricture “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was not a prescription of vengeance but a check on excessive punishment for any crime, serving
to moderate violence.
God’s judgement is anything but capricious. When the Lord announces His intention to judge Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, Abraham boldly
asks,“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place
and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the
righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18.25).
So then what is Yahweh doing in commanding Israel’s armies to exterminate the Canaanite peoples? It is precisely because we have come to
expect Yahweh to act justly and with compassion that we find these stories so difficult to understand. How can He command soldiers to slaughter
children?
Now before attempting to say something by way of answer to this difficult question, we should do well first to pause and ask ourselves what is at
stake here. Suppose we agree that if God (who is perfectly good) exists, He could not have issued such a command. What follows? That Jesus
didn’t rise from the dead? That God does not exist? Hardly! So what is the problem supposed to be?
I’ve often heard popularizers raise this issue as a refutation of the moral argument for God’s existence. But that’s plainly incorrect. The claim that
God could not have issued such a command doesn’t falsify or undercut either of the two premises in the moral argument as I have defended it:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
In fact, insofar as the atheist thinks that God did something morally wrong in commanding the extermination of the Canaanites, he affirms premise (2).
So what is the problem supposed to be?
The problem, it seems to me, is that if God could not have issued such a command, then the biblical stories must be false. Either the incidents never
really happened but are just Israeli folklore; or else, if they did, then Israel, carried away in a fit of nationalistic fervor, thinking that God was on their
side, claimed that God had commanded them to commit these atrocities, when in fact He had not. In other words, this problem is really an objection to
biblical inerrancy.
In fact, ironically, many Old Testament critics are sceptical that the events of the conquest of Canaan ever occurred. They take these stories to be part
of the legends of the founding of Israel, akin to the myths of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome. For such critics the problem of God’s
issuing such a command evaporates.
Now that puts the issue in quite a different perspective! The question of biblical inerrancy is an important one, but it’s not like the existence of God or
the deity of Christ! If we Christians can’t find a good answer to the question before us and are, moreover, persuaded that such a command is
inconsistent with God’s nature, then we’ll have to give up biblical inerrancy. But we shouldn’t let the unbeliever raising this question get away with
thinking that it implies more than it does.
I think that a good start at this problem is to enunciate our ethical theory that underlies our moral judgements. According to the version of divine
command ethics which I’ve defended, our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a holy and loving God. Since God doesn’t issue
commands to Himself, He has no moral duties to fulfill. He is certainly not subject to the same moral obligations and prohibitions that we are.
For example, I have no right to take an innocent life. For me to do so would be murder. But God has no such prohibition. He can give and take
life as He chooses. We all recognize this when we accuse some authority who presumes to take life as “playing God.” Human authorities arrogate
to themselves rights which belong only to God. God is under no obligation whatsoever to extend my life for another second. If He wanted to strike
me dead right now, that’s His prerogative.
What that implies is that God has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites when He sees fit. How long they live and when they die is up to Him.
So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like
commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding
someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli
soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong.
On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but
which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command.
All right; but isn’t such a command contrary to God’s nature? Well, let’s look at the case more closely. It is perhaps significant that the story of
Yahweh’s destruction of Sodom--along with his solemn assurances to Abraham that were there as many as ten righteous persons in Sodom,
the city would not have been destroyed--forms part of the background to the conquest of Canaan and Yahweh’s command to destroy the cities there.
The implication is that the Canaanites are not righteous people but have come under God’s judgement.
In fact, prior to Israel’s bondage in Egypt, God tells Abraham,
“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred
years. . . . And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites [one of the Canaanite clans] is not yet complete”
(Gen. 15. 13, 16).
Think of it! God stays His judgement of the Canaanite clans 400 years because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability! This is
the long-suffering God we know in the Hebrew Scriptures. He even allows his own chosen people to languish in slavery for four centuries before
determining that the Canaanite peoples are ripe for judgement and calling His people forth from Egypt.
By the time of their destruction, Canaanite culture was, in fact, debauched and cruel, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even
child sacrifice. The Canaanites are to be destroyed “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have
done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God” (Deut. 20.18). God had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan,
and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later God would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel.
But why take the lives of innocent children? The terrible totality of the destruction was undoubtedly related to the prohibition of assimilation to pagan
nations on Israel’s part. In commanding complete destruction of the Canaanites, the Lord says, “You shall not intermarry with them, giving your
daughters to their sons, or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods”
(Deut 7.3-4). This command is part and parcel of the whole fabric of complex Jewish ritual law distinguishing clean and unclean practices.
To the contemporary Western mind many of the regulations in Old Testament law seem absolutely bizarre and pointless: not to mix linen with wool,
not to use the same vessels for meat and for milk products, etc. The overriding thrust of these regulations is to prohibit various kinds of mixing.
Clear lines of distinction are being drawn: this and not that. These serve as daily, tangible reminders that Israel is a special people set apart for
God Himself.
I spoke once with an Indian missionary who told me that the Eastern mind has an inveterate tendency toward amalgamation. He said Hindus upon
hearing the Gospel would smile and say, “Sub ehki eh, sahib, sub ehki eh!” (“All is One, sahib, All is One!” [Hindustani speakers forgive my
transliteration!]). It made it almost impossible to reach them because even logical contradictions were subsumed in the whole. He said that he
thought the reason God gave Israel so many arbitrary commands about clean and unclean was to teach them the Law of Contradiction!
By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving
Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel.
The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible
illustration of Israel’s being set exclusively apart for God.
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was
actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth
for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.
So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of
judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the
apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified
woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.
End quote
Taken from - Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig.