The Children Repeat Rebellion and Receive Severe Consequences

I said unto their children in the wilderness

Walk ye not in the statutes of your fathers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with their idols: I am the LORD your God; walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the LORD your God.

Notwithstanding the children rebelled against me: they walked not in my statutes, neither kept my judgments to do them, which if a man do, he shall even live in them; they polluted my sabbaths: then I said, I would pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness. Nevertheless I withdrew mine hand, and wrought for my name's sake.

I lifted up mine hand unto them also in the wilderness, that I would scatter them

Because they had not executed my judgments, but had despised my statutes, and had polluted my sabbaths, and their eyes were after their fathers' idols. Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live; and I polluted them in their own gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth the womb, that I might make them desolate, to the end that they might know that I am the LORD.

These verses are difficult and must not be smoothed into 'God calls evil good.' They do not authorize child sacrifice. Read them as severe judgment-language: being given over to deadly practices already chosen, or as a hard saying whose alternatives remain visible, not as a command to copy fire. Divine judgment is not simple here, and no preacher may baptize the killing of children.