Biblical Oddities: The Evil Eight-Year-Old

People today love to say that children are innocent. Children don’t understand good and evil, they claim; since they’re young, God doesn’t hold them responsible for the things that they do. God holds adults responsible, but not children.

If you believe that, then you might find this verse a bit shocking:

II Chronicles 36:9: “Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.”

An eight-year-old “did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord”. An eight-year old. Let that sink in for a minute: God Himself called an eight-year-old child evil.

How could God do such a thing? Because God is no respecter of persons. Nowhere in the entire Bible does God ever say that children are incapable of sin or that God doesn’t hold children responsible. In fact, He says quite the opposite:

Proverbs 20:11: “Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right.”

This idea that “children don’t sin”, or that if they do “God doesn’t hold them responsible”, is not at all Biblical. A graphic illustration of this can be found in 2 Kings. Elijah had just been taken up to Heaven, and Elisha encountered a mob of little children. These children told Elisha that they wanted him to “go up” as Elijah had – in other words, they wanted him to die. God’s response to this was quite brutal:

2 Kings 2:23: “And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

In other words, these “little children” mocked one of God’s prophets and told him that they wanted him to die. In response, God sent two bears to tear the children limb from limb. I repeat: the passage says that these were little children – and God brutally slaughtered them for their sin.

This idea that God doesn’t hold children responsible for what they do is utter nonsense. God did not hesitate to call an eight-year-old child evil, nor did He hesitate to judge the sins of children who were threatening Elisha. It’s high time that we started believing what the Bible actually says about children, instead of just making things up.

(I have written more about the mythical “age of accountability” here.)