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Originally Posted by hewhoarisesinmight
Yes there was children on the Akallabêth (spelt it right this time  ) "and Numenor went down into the sea, with all its children and its wives and its maidens and its ladies proud" So Eru is a child killer and also do the Valar really need to kill every mariner who has the misfortune to accidently reach the undying lands? |
Ah. You got me there; it's been a while since I looked at the "long sentence" describing Númenor's destruction. But the fact that there were children in Númenor at the time does not invalidate my point!
I don't know if you read that whole long post of mine above, but one of my main points is that the Númenóreans weren't just sitting there happy and content when the Great Armament left.
Sauron was still in Númenor! And, as I said, because of his hatred of the Númenóreans and his desire to keep them from ever interfering with his purposes again, he would eventually have killed off all the remaining people (once the military power that had kept him from making a move was gone from the island) to keep their population from increasing again. And Sauron would not have been very nice in his methods, I think we can all agree. He was Morgoth's Chief Torturer, after all. And it was the
Númenóreans' fault for bringing Sauron to their land and giving him enough trust so that he could hurt them. They chose that for themselves and their children; the act of bringing Sauron to Númenor really can't be blamed upon the Valar or anyone else aside from the Númenóreans.
In light of that, there was no easy way out for the residents of Númenor. The options for dealing with that island were:
1. Nobody did anything, and Sauron was left to do with the Númenóreans as he wished. He would surely have tortured and killed them all now that the Númenórean army was gone. As I have tried to indicate, this is the
worst possible option, as far as their wellbeing is concerned.
2. There would be a long war between Sauron and the Valar. Probably the second-worst option, given how difficult it would be to defeat Sauron. Even if the Valar tried to evacuate the Númenóreans, they would have to build the ships (since most of the Númenóreans' were gone in the Great Armament), which would have taken years. By then, Sauron would have succeeded in killing most of them off anyway; see Option 1.
3. Númenor is suddenly destroyed, and
Sauron gets "punished" (though I still don't think it was active punishment, rather neglect) along with the society he helped corrupt. This is what happened, and I still think it was the best option out of a series of very bad ones.
The Númenóreans had put themselves in a situation beyond easy repair, is what I mainly want to illustrate. Defending Eru's action is only secondary to the sense of sympathy I have for the Númenóreans, who suffered so horribly under Sauron, and would have continued to do so if not for this act. It is because of that sympathy that I can see the mercy in this act.
In short, there
are worse ways to suffer than by dying suddenly and unexpectedly (which is, actually, one of the best ways to die). And if you don't believe that, if you think rather that any and all death is cruel punishment, then you are in the end bound to be incensed by this story. (As for myself, I too think it might have fared better if Tolkien continued to ascribe the deed to the Valar, as he did in the earlier versions of the story.)
And if you do indeed think that all death is an injust punishment, then why are you
defending the Númenóreans? Their society had been constantly dealing out death to innocent people for decades.