“Probably the most shocking example of how vicarious punishment was practiced in biblical times can be seen in Yahweh’s command that Saul, the first king of Israel, go massacre the Amalekites, including even children and babies, for an offense that had been committed 400 years earlier by the ancestors of the Amalekites contemporary to Saul (1 Samuel 15:1-3), so to the barbaric mindset of the Israelites living at that time, even four centuries were not too long to exact punishment from the descendants of those who had committed offenses. There is no doubt, then, that vicarious punishment was a cultural belief in biblical times.”