Cyril the Great tells us why the God of the Holy Bible ordered the killing of infants and children.

1 And Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now therefore hear the voice of the words of the Lord.

2 Thus says the Lord of hosts: I have punished what the Amalekites did to Israel when they thwarted them in the way as they came up from Egypt.

3 Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have. Do not spare them, but put to death man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”

“When you approach a city to fight against it, then offer it an offer of peace.

11

If it makes peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it will be subject to forced labor and will serve you.

12

But if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.

13

And when the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, you shall put all the males of it to the sword.

14

But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city—all its spoil—you shall take as plunder for yourself. And you shall use the plunder of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you.

15

So you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not among the cities of these nations here.

16

But in the cities of these nations which the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.

17

But you shall utterly destroy them—the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.

Saint Cyril says that these children should have been killed because they would become strong men and enemies of the people of God and fight them, and the females should have been killed because they might become a stumbling block before the people of God.

This scan is the cover of an Arabic Christian book titled“رحلة في العهد القديم مع القديس كيرلس الكبير” — A Journey in the Old Testament with Saint Cyril the Great. The book is prepared by القس أثناسيوس عبد المسيح فرج. It is used here as the source for the later quotation attributed to Saint Cyril the Great regarding the Old Testament commands involving the killing of children and infants.

The highlighted passage attributes an explanation to Saint Cyril. It says that the ban or destruction was imposed because the children, if left alive, would grow up and become powerful enemies who would fight against the people of God. It also explains that the females were dangerous because they could become a stumbling block and a cause of temptation before the people, just as earlier seduction had led Israel into sin. The page therefore presents Cyril’s attempted justification for killing children and females: the males were killed because of what they might become in the future, and the females because they might become a source of religious and moral corruption.

The biblical commands include the killing of men, women, children, and infants.

Cyril’s justification is that the children could grow into future enemies, and that females could become a stumbling block.

So the problem remains: the text presents collective punishment and the killing of children as divinely commanded, then later Christian explanation tries to defend it by appealing to what those children or women might become.