When most people think of the ultimate showdown between good and evil, they picture God as the benevolent protector and Satan as the merciless destroyer. But a careful reading of the Bible reveals a body count that might surprise you.

Biblical scholars and curious statisticians have actually tallied the deaths directly attributed to God throughout scripture. The numbers are staggering.

Counting the Divine Death Toll

Steve Wells, author of Drunk with Blood: God's Killings in the Bible, meticulously catalogued every death attributed to God in scripture. His count? Approximately 2.4 million people when using only numbers explicitly stated in the text.

But that's the conservative estimate. When scholars include deaths implied but not enumerated—like those in the Great Flood—the number skyrockets to around 25 million. Some estimates go even higher.

Satan's Surprisingly Low Score

And Satan? His total comes to exactly 10 people—the seven sons and three daughters of Job. Even then, he needed God's explicit permission to act.

That's not a typo. The figure Christians and Jews have called the embodiment of evil for millennia is responsible for 0.0004% of God's confirmed kills in scripture.

The Major Events

God's highest-casualty events include:

The Great Flood — potentially millions (Genesis 7)
Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah — thousands (Genesis 19)
The Ten Plagues of Egypt — hundreds of thousands (Exodus 7-12)
Various military campaigns — hundreds of thousands more

Many of these deaths are presented as divine judgment against wickedness, idolatry, or disobedience. Context matters to theologians, though the numbers remain what they are.

How Theologians Respond

Religious scholars have various interpretations of these statistics. Some argue that God, as the creator of life, has ultimate authority over it. Others point to the concept of divine justice—that these deaths served to punish genuine evil or protect the faithful.

Still others suggest that ancient texts reflect the violent worldview of their time, and that understanding these passages requires cultural and historical context rather than literal modern interpretation.

Why This Matters

This comparison isn't meant to make theological arguments but rather to highlight something genuinely surprising in texts that billions consider sacred. Most people assume Satan would dominate any "body count" comparison.

The data suggests otherwise. Whether you view these numbers as evidence of divine justice, ancient mythology, or something else entirely, they reveal that the Bible's narrative is far more complex than the simple good-versus-evil framework many assume.

Satan, as depicted in Judeo-Christian scripture, is more of a tempter and accuser than a mass murderer. God, meanwhile, is portrayed as taking direct action—sometimes catastrophically—throughout human history.

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