Re: Does the Lord kill children?

Hi Rudy,

Great question. Things like this have bothered me as well. I heard someone explain this to me once and it made sense. Since I don't know how to read Hebrew yet, I am fairly settled on this particular explanation for this particular setting, until I see further light on it.

The "children" were not really children at all, but teenage youth, gang types who were up to no good. As you are probably well aware, these types of youth can be very detrimental to society, causing a lot of harm to themselves and others, even killing others (I work in an environment where 15-year-olds bring loaded guns to school). They were being very threatening and aggressive to one of Yahweh's prophets, no doubt at the behest of the evil one, in order to prevent Elisha from carrying out a mission for Yahweh. They might have killed Elisha, had the she-bears not intervened. Why 42 of them had to be "torn", I don't know.

I am also interested in other folks' knowledge about this. Thanks.

B