How Many People Did God Murder in the Bible? Genesis & Exodus
How many people and animals did God kill in the Bible? Let's try to count.
In the book of Genesis, God promises Adam and Eve that if they eat fruit from the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" they will die. They don't die that same day, but theologians say that it causes their spiritual death and/or that it causes their eventual physical death. I am not going to count this as it would include every human that was created. It could be argued that God created every human on earth and planned their deaths. That could be considered murder, but for the sake of this list, I will only include the deaths that are recorded as being a direct result of God in the storytelling of the Bible.
The worldwide flood is the first example of godly genocide in the Bible. But while the Bible mentions the number of people who were saved in the flood, it doesn't mention the number of people that God drowned. If you search around for apologists' calculations (people who actually believe the Bible to be literal and have tried to use population calculation tools to come up with an estimate), you'll find that these calculations often estimate a larger population than even the current world population. For the sake of argument, we will use the current world population as the estimate.
So, that would mean God killed 8 billion, 232 million, 10 thousand, 256 people in one act of murder. These were women, men, children and babies. They were grandmas, great grandmas, little boys, full grown men, 3 day old babies, 2 year old toddlers and 16 year old teenage girls. The Bible says the reason why these people were killed was because they were violent and evil. Some theologians also teach that this was because humans at this time had their blood corrupted by an evil godlike race of demons who had sex with women. Think that sounds crazy? Read Genesis 6:1-5.
The next genocide in Genesis was in Sodom and Gomorrah. Around 2000 BCE, cities often had a population of 2,000 - 50,000. Answers in Genesis (a major Christian apologetic organization) believes that the city of Bab edh-Dhra could potentially be the city that is called Sodom in the Bible. This city is thought to have had a population of 1,000. So, a low estimate for Sodom and Gomorrah would be around 2,000 people. That would be 2,000 people (women, men, children, babies, elderly) that were burned by fire and sulfur raining from the sky from God.
Genesis Running Total = 8,232,010,256 people killed by drowning, 2,000 people killed by burning
On to the 2nd book of the Bible: Exodus.
Exodus is the book of Moses. It describes his travels and how he led the Israelites out of Egypt where they were kept as slaves to freedom in the promised land. But before this could happen, Pharaoh had to agree to let them go. Now, you might think that God would his use magical powers to help convince Pharaoh to release his slaves. Nahhhhh. The exact opposite actually. The Bible says God made Pharaoh more stubborn and "hardened his heart," so that God could do some more murder. God wasn't going to give up this chance to bring 10 plagues. If Pharaoh had given up right away, what was God going to do with the remaining plagues he had planned?
1st Plague: God turned the water in the Nile river to blood, killing all the fish. There are currently over 128 known fish species in the Nile. Who knows how they got there after God killed them all? Why didn't the blood also kill other non-fish animals living in the Nile like the Nile crocodile, African softshell turtle, Nile monitor, African shoebill, African sacred ibis, African common toad, Dice water snake or Egyptian goose? Never mind.
Let's estimate the Nile fish murders. There are a lot of variables that affect fish density. However, in some cultivated river basins of the Nile, approximately 3,320 fish can be found per square mile. There is 745 miles of the Nile river in modern day Egypt. I don't know about ancient Egypt. And I have no idea if there are more or less fish now then there were then. Let's just say there were 100,000 fish. Ok? 100,000 fish.
5th Plague: The next plague that killed animals was the 5th. This plague was a disease that affected horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats and killed them all. I have absolutely no way to estimate these numbers. Apologists estimate that there were 2-5 million Egyptians in Egypt when Israelites left. Real anthropologists don't agree any of this happened. But let's ignore them. If every person had on average 1 traveling animal (horse, donkey, or camel) and 3 food providing animals (cattle, sheep or goats), then we can estimate 3.5 million traveling and 10.5 million food providing animals total. Where am I getting these numbers from? My butt. Let's keep moving.
10th Plague: The last plague that God sent to Egypt was killing every first born son of every Egyptian family. Every little boy, every grown man, every grandpa, if they were the first son, they were murdered. If we keep the same Egyptian population estimate of the apologists, 3.5 million, then we assume that every family had 5 children, that would be every 1/5 people dying. This brings the total 10th plague genocide to 700,000.
There is a benefit to being a woman ignored by God: less chance of him killing you.
The next mass murder is again a drowning. So much for the rainbow, huh? When the enslaved Israelites ran away from Egypt, Pharaoh decided he made a mistake and sent his soldiers out after them. This is when Moses parted the Red Sea by magically waving his hand over the water and the Israelites walked through the parted waters. But the Egyptians were drowned by the waves after the water walls came crashing down from Moses doing another magic wave as soon as the Israelites were safely across. Moses was doing the waving, but it was God's power and also God commanded it. So.
Again, Answers in Genesis provides a great resource when you're trying to pull numbers out of nowhere. They estimate 600,000 men of fighting age in Israel and an estimation of the total Israelite population at this time of 2.5 - 3 million. If we compare this to the Egyptian estimation of 3.5 million, then there may have been 700,000 men of fighting age in Egypt. If Egypt sent out their full force to try to capture Israel again, that would mean 700,000 men killed by drowning. The reasoning given in scripture for this killing was so God could "gain glory for himself" (Exodus 14).
Later on in Exodus (chapter 17), the Israelites are attacked by the Amalekites. Moses, in an effort to be of assistance in the battle, leaves the battle. He goes up on a hill and reaches his arms and his god-staff out towards the battle. And he finds that while he does this, the Israelites win the battle and when he stops they start losing. Moses is the guy at the Superbowl party who wears his old dirty jersey because he's pretty sure any time he washes it, his team loses the next game.
After this, God tells Moses to write in a scroll that he is always gonna have beef with the people of Amalek. And most people reading the Bible would say it was the power of God that was causing Israel to win through Moses' actions, but because it wasn't a direct act or command of God that the Amalekites died, I'm not going to count this.
There is a little foreshadowing for us later in Exodus 23:23, "My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out."
However, the next actual deaths are 3,000 Israelites that are killed by other Israelites after God commands it as punishment for making a gold calf idol. Here are the verses:
Exodus 32:27-29 "Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”
Amen.
In verse 35, it also mentions God striking the people with a plague as a second punishment for this same offense. However, it doesn't mention if anyone died from this or just suffered.
That's the total of the murder in Exodus. So, here is the running total including everything so far:
Exodus Running Total = 8,232,010,256 people killed by drowning, 2,000 people killed by burning, 100,000 fish killed by blood inhalation, 3,500,000 horses/donkeys/camels killed by disease, 10,500,000 cattle/sheep/goats killed by disease, 700,000 people killed by being struck down, another 700,000 people killed by drowning again, 3,000 people killed by being stabbing from their brother
I would laugh if I wasn't crying.
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