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Why did God kill Bathsheba's innocent baby for David’s wrongdoing?

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tonychanyt

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David had an affair with Bathsheba. She got pregnant. God judged David. Nathan delivered the message in 2S 12:

There would be a series of severe consequences.

It got even worse:

God used the condition of the sick child to punish David.

18 On the seventh day the child died.
Click to expand...
The child suffered for days before he died.

Why did God kill Bathsheba's innocent baby for David’s wrongdoing?

I don't know, but I know this: God is sovereign. He does whatever he pleases, and whatever he does is, by definition, just. I am not going to question God's infinite wisdom. I am glad that I am not God.
 

Mark Quayle

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God is altogether just. I wouldn't quickly call the child 'innocent' —such judgements are a little too easily human-driven. But even in that opinion we can still trust that the child, if God chooses to keep him for his own, will be more than compensated for his suffering. And if not, that it is better to suffer in this life, than in the next.

We also know that God did not punish the child for David's wrongdoing, but that the child suffered and died for God's own reasons —not as the child's punishment, but (as you said) as David's, as we see by the demonstration of David's agony of soul.

Another thought that seems to come to me more often these days: One reason God did what he did was so that we would have this very conversation!
 
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Mark Quayle

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tonychanyt said:
How do you know that?
Click to expand...
Not that a negative proves anything, but the text does not say that God punished the child, while it does imply that it is God's punishment of David for what he had done, (though apparently not punishment directly for sin, which Nathan told David was forgiven him —lol, echoes of 1 Jn 1:9 (already forgiven, contingent on confession?), but a necessary result of public sin done 'in secret', maybe pretended to cause no harm to God's people by the sin of their king.)

The hard things/suffering people go through are not always —maybe not even usually— punishment of the person going through it, but training, culling/trimming, shaping, growing, and otherwise using the person for God's own purposes.
 
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