Is Old Testament morality applicable to modern ethics?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is Old Testament morality applicable to modern ethics?". Your opponent's style: thomas aquinas

n the first book of Samuel, God commanded the judgment of Amalek to be carried out by Saul, explicitly stating that the children and infants were also to be put down by the sword. The common argument in the defense of this act is that Amalek was judged as a whole rather than a group of individuals living side by side, but this raises a contradiction to Ezekiel 18 and Romans 14, which state that "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father" and also that we shall all give account of ourselves to God, why in the context of divine judgement are these verses not included in god's justification, while at the same time God didn't judge Israel as a whole and forsake them when Elijah said he was the only faithful left, pinpointing there are 7000 faithfuls left who hadn't kissed Baal, and how does collective guilt caused innocents such as infants to also suffer and stated explicitly and non-rhetorically to be killed as an order, not as a simple casualties of war, and why are individual accountability not used to judge Amalek instead, while god himself created man and had known him in the womb, put him there in an Amalekite mother's womb? There are also defenses that Ezekiel 18 is the moral responsibility of humans to their own, but this also begs the question that if God is the moral basis of morality, then it is in his nature that God didn't violate his nature; thus, humans' moral laws must reflect the nature of God, which in this case isn't found. The early years of a child's life – the time between birth and age 5 – represent sensitive periods for development (Knudsen, 2004). The developing brain is influenced from the time the fetus is in utero, and it continues to change through neuro-synaptic pruning over the first months and years of a child's life (Aylward, 1997, Levitt, 2003, Monk et al., 2001). Neuropsychological research suggests that rapid growth of children's brains during this time makes them particularly susceptible to environmental stimuli, both positive and detrimental to development (Fox et al., 1994, Ursache and Noble, 2016, Noble et al., 2015). This begs the question as to why God commanded the wiping out of children and infants, considering they are at the ripe age of being taught good in Israel? God could've commanded, "Then bring the children and infants into Israel, where you shall teach them all that is good and introduce me into their lives." But instead god determined their death. Even if communal guilt were used to judge all of Amalek, why weren't individuals like Rahab judged according to her identity as someone from Jericho? In the book of Joshua, Rahab was permitted for her act of protecting the spies of Israel, so why were unknowing children denied their free will to choose grace over Baal? Why are they denied their rights to know God? Solomon, as a king of Israel, granted wisdom by god and met God twice, still fell towards idolatry in the pleasure of mortals, while he himself had tasted the grace of god, so what makes learning children any harder to convert than a wise king? What removes the possibility of moral transformation before they could exercise their free will?

You're invoking modern neuroscience to answer an ancient theophany—that's your mistake. God doesn't operate within human developmental psychology or our contemporary moral frameworks. The real contradiction you've missed: you're simultaneously demanding God respect individual accountability *and* judge Amalek collectively for their generations of raiding Israel. You can't have both. Either individuals bear consequences for ancestral choices, or they don't. Ezekiel 18 addresses *human* jurisprudence, not divine prerogative. God's nature isn't bound by your consistency demands. Why assume His justice must match yours?