Killings In The Bible: The Hand of God?
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Aug 23, 2026
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Exploring the Tension Between the Violent God of Some Biblical Texts and the Nonviolent Jesus
Like it or not, there sure is a lot of killing in the Bible — especially the Old Testament part. I don’t know about you, but it makes me shift uncomfortably in my seat when non-Christians mention the unholy bloodlust that seems to emanate from our holy God.
And who can blame them for such a suggestion?
The fact of the matter is that the Bible is littered with a trail of disturbing tales of death and destruction attributed to God’s own hand.
In fact,
, author of ‘God’s Killing in the Bible,‘ has taken the liberty of doing the math on the number of people in the Bible apparently killed by God. Using only the numbers that the Bible itself provides, he came up with the impressive figure of 2,476,633.
Wow.
So, I have taken the liberty of compiling my top ten list of God’s most brutal and impressive smitings, with a particular focus on the poor individuals who were on the wrong end of God’s judgment stick. More importantly, I will have a crack at explaining how none of these stories — despite their brutality — change my opinion that God is a loving God. More on that later.
Here are my top ten brutal biblical smitings ranked:
Number 8: Nadab and Abihu
Nadab and Abihu were the sons of Aaron — and the nephews of Moses. As sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu were destined for the priesthood. In fact, God had personally set them apart to serve as priests. However, despite their rich pedigree and extensive preparation, in the end, their ordination process likely lasted longer than their respective ministries.
records:
“Then Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu made a mistake. They took their incense dishes and put some fire and incense in them. But they did not use the fire that was on the altar — they took fire from some other place and brought it to the Lord. This was not what he had commanded. So fire came from the Lord and destroyed Nadab and Abihu, and they died there in front of the Lord.”
Nadab and Abihu’s sudden death raises a number of questions: What exactly was this strange fire? Did they use the wrong incense? Did they make their sacrifice at the wrong time? Were they drunk (
)? Did they offer incense to a false god? We can’t be sure, but whatever they did, it sure seemed to annoy God.
Number 7: Ananias and Saphira
By the time we arrive at the book of Acts, the fledgling Christian church is absolutely pumping. People are coming to faith every day. The Christians are living out this kind of selfless faith where they were selling their possessions to help meet the needs of the poor within their number.
That is where we meet Ananias and Saphira, a husband-and-wife team who are swept along in the tide of early church momentum and, in a moment of spirited fervor, decide to sell some land they own and bring the proceeds to the Apostles to distribute to the poor.
The problem is that Ananias and Saphira, wanting everyone to believe that they are, perhaps, somewhat more generous than they actually are, decide to withhold a portion of the profits for themselves while allowing everyone else to believe that they had donated a hundred per cent of the proceeds. The Apostle Peter cottons onto the scheme after a gentle nudge from the Holy Spirit.
records the action:
“Peter said, “Ananias, why did you let Satan fill your mind with such an idea? You kept part of the money for yourself and lied about it to the Holy Spirit! 4 Before you sold the field, it belonged to you, right? And even after you sold it, you could have used the money any way you wanted. How could you even think of doing such a thing? You lied to God, not to us!”When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. Some young men came and wrapped his body. They carried it out and buried it. And everyone who heard about this was filled with fear.”
Saphira is given the opportunity to come clean on the whole scam, but on denying any wrongdoing, meets the same fate as he husband and finds herself dead at the disciple’s feet.
Number 6: Lot’s Wife
The infamously well-known Biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah has a tragic postscript. In
, when the people of Sodom and Gomorrah demand to have access to Lot’s surprise house guests for sexually exploitative purposes, the guests — who happen to be angelic visitors — warn Lot about the impending disaster facing these twin cities, so he gathers his family and flees posthaste.
However, in a moment of thoughtless dolor, the Bible records that Lot’s wife looks back on the city, and for this misdemeanor, God apparently turns her into a pillar of salt. Troublingly, the Bible doesn’t record Lot’s family being warned about the consequences of looking back, so this seems particularly harsh of God.
Maybe Lot’s wife wanted to see Sodom and Gomorrah get what was coming to it. Perhaps she was thinking wistfully of the things she had to leave behind. Maybe she wondered if she left the oven on. We’ll never know!
Number 5: Er and Onan
In
, God smites not one but two people within a few short verses. The first is a man named Er, the son of Judah and the nephew of Joseph of ‘coat-of-many-colors’ fame. Now, we don’t know much about this man called Er. The Bible simply records, “Er did many bad things. The Lord was not happy with him, so the Lord killed him.”
However, as was the custom of the day, when a man died without having children, the brother of that man was permitted and, in fact, encouraged to marry the widow and have some children on the deceased brother’s behalf.
Enter Onan — the younger brother of Er.
Judah comes along as says, “Oh dear, your brother has died without any kids! You can have his wife now and have some kids for him!” Apparently, Onan was not too keen on this idea.
records the unfolding drama:
“Onan knew that the children from this union would not belong to him. He had sexual relations with Tamar (Er’s wife), but he did not allow himself to stay inside her. This made the Lord angry. So he killed Onan also.”
Yes, you read that correctly. The Lord killed Onan for “pulling out.”
Number 4: The 42 Boys
Elisha, the Biblical prophet, was certainly not a man you’d want to mess with.
records a chance encounter that Elisha has with a group of young misfits. The story speaks for itself:
“Elisha went from that city to Bethel. He was walking up the hill to the city, and some boys were coming down out of the city. They began making fun of him. They said, “Go away, you bald-headed man! Go away, you bald-headed man!”
“Elisha looked back and saw them. He asked the Lord to cause bad things to happen to them. Then, two bears came out of the forest and attacked the boys. There were 42 boys ripped apart by the bears.”
Now, as a middle-aged, balding man, I applaud God for standing up for the similarly follically challenged prophet Elisha. You simply can’t have kids poking fun at the old and balding among us.
Jokes aside, it seems a little bit like overkill, doesn’t it?
Number 3: David & Bathsheba’s Son
King David’s most famous scandal was none other than his affair with the married Bathsheba. I suppose ancient contraception was not as efficient as modern-day, and sure enough, David gets Bathsheba pregnant.
What makes it worse is that while David has his way with Bathsheba, Bathsheba’s husband is off fighting in a war for David’s sake. But, rather than own up to his sin, David arranges for Bathsheba’s husband to be abandoned by his platoon in battle and left to meet his fate. Not surprisingly, he perishes by the sword, and King David is free to take the now-widowed Bathsheba as his wife.
His foolproof plan is foiled when the prophet Nathan rocks up and, in a moment of divine inspiration, confronts David about his hidden sin. Tragically,
records that the other innocent victim of the whole sorry saga, apart from Bathsheba’s former husband, is the little baby who dies shortly after being born.
Number 2: Uzzah
As we near the top of the list of Biblical slayings by God, we come to one that, to the casual observer, makes God seem especially harsh. In
, The Ark of the Covenant, the holy box that supposedly carried in it the very presence of God, has been recovered from the enemies of Israel and is sitting atop an ox-pulled wagon on its way back to Jerusalem where it belongs, to much celebration and fanfare. Then the
takes a tragic turn.
“When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, the oxen stumbled, so Uzzah reached out and grabbed the Ark of the Covenant. God blazed in anger against Uzzah and struck him hard because he had profaned the Chest. Uzzah died on the spot, right alongside the Chest.”
It seems like the kind of thing that any average person might do. The Holy Box was about to topple off the wagon, so poor Uzzah puts out a hand to steady it. The next moment, he is dead — struck down, in righteous anger by a holy God.
It seems unfair, doesn’t it?
How do we explain it?
Before I get to my number one, most brutal, God-ordained Biblical death, I want to pause and ask the obvious question.
How can we read stories like these and reconcile them with the Christian’s claim that God is an all-loving God? Sure, in a few of these stories, you might think that the protagonist got what was coming to them, but the rest of them, well… they sure make God look a little bit petty, narcissistic, and downright mean.
If these stories are meant to reveal the character of God, then we have a problem, because when I turn to Jesus, I find someone who seems remarkably different.
Jesus forgives his executioners while they are actively murdering him. He refuses to call down fire from heaven on people who reject him. He protects a woman caught in adultery from a violent religious mob. He teaches his followers to love their enemies rather than destroy them.
The contrast is difficult to ignore.
This is not a new problem. Christians have been wrestling with these texts for centuries. Some explain them as examples of God’s holiness and justice. Others argue that God’s ways are simply beyond our understanding. Still others suggest that God was forced to act differently in a more violent age.
Those explanations work for some people. For me, they create an even bigger problem: they leave me trying to explain why Jesus looks so different.
The alternative is to recognise that the Bible did not fall from heaven. It was written by human beings living in particular places, cultures, and moments in history. Like all people, they interpreted events through the lens of their own assumptions about God.
When someone died unexpectedly, how else were they supposed to explain it? They did not have coroners, medical imaging, or modern understandings of disease. If a king suddenly collapsed, if a child died, if a city was destroyed, the obvious explanation was that God had done it.
That does not mean the events never happened.
It means the interpretation of those events may tell us as much about the people writing the story as it does about God.
This is why I make a distinction between what is recorded in Scripture and what is attributed to God. The Bible faithfully records what ancient people believed about God. That does not necessarily mean they were always correct.
For Christians, the ultimate revelation of God is not a collection of ancient texts. It is a person.
The author of Hebrews says that in the past God was revealed in many ways through the prophets, but now he has been revealed through his Son. If I have to choose between a story about bears mauling children and a man who tells us to love our enemies, I know which revelation I trust most.
After all, the clearest statement about the nature of God comes to us not as words written in a book, but in the flesh as a human being.
And that brings me to the most brutal, God-ordained death in the entire Bible.
Number 1: Jesus Christ
We have finally arrived at the most brutal and radically unjust god-sanctioned death in the entire Bible. Yes, Jesus Christ — the preeminent teacher of love, grace, and compassion whose chief mission and purpose in life was to bridge the chasm between humanity and the divine — was allowed by God to be brutally murdered at the hands of the supposedly faithful leaders of his day.
While all the deaths in this article are infamous, there was nothing more evil than the combination of people, events, and attitudes that took Jesus to the cross. This was the death to end all death.
But, what sets this death apart from the rest of the deaths on this list is this: If you were to accredit all these deaths to the literal hand of God (which I already suggested that you shouldn’t), you would have to concede that in killing all these people, God was trying to prove some point about either his holiness, his righteousness, or his intolerance for sin.
Don’t some Christians love to go on and on about these things?
But in the death of Christ, we find that the motivation behind it was neither retribution nor punishment from God — because Jesus deserved neither. This was something entirely different. This was love expressed in willing sacrifice.
And that is the ultimate statement about what God is really like.
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