The backbreaker

[Catholic_Lady]

I don't think this is the message that is trying to get across. Even if you take the OT literally, which I certainly don't.   

Since the child was innocent of personal sins, we know that he/she would have been received into heaven immediately upon death. And in this way, the child was spared a lifetime of being mocked and scorned by the people of Israel who would have known that the child was the illegitimate son of David resulting from his adultery with Bathsheba.  

Basically, the child was not punished for what David did, as you seem to think. But rather, God showed mercy to the child by taking it to heaven. 

Respectfully, Cath, that's horse-hockey about the "lifetime of mockery". Solomon was the second child born of their liaison, and he ascended to the throne.


And whether or not that kid "ascended into heaven", it was still a *baby* who was tortured to death (via lingering disease) in order to punish his father. It clearly states that, A->B. 

It's either one of two things: God is real and a psychopath, or else God is imaginary and this stuff about disease being the wrath of a deity is as ignorant as the people who claimed lightning striking someone was the wrath of Thor.

I'm not saying it was right. And I don't believe any of this ever happened. I'm just saying, from my understanding the story goes that God killed the baby out of mercy, not to punish the baby for his father's sin.