The answer he should have given should have been a quotation from Jesus and then a quotation from Ecclesiates.
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.
In other words, sometimes things just happen and there isn’t any spiritual judgment or divine retribution involved. Since pain and death are in this world, we will all be affected by them at some point.
One of my favorite passages from the Bible, and probably my favorite “book” of the Bible.
One could also add
Matthew 5:45
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust
So were the Mayans and Aztecs (in your opinion) worse than Sodom and Gomorrah?
Was ripping out the hearts of possibly hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries by both civilizations worse than Sodom?
If so, then why did no fire fall upon them?
I have often wondered about this. maybe there is no answer as to why.
And if God could warn Joseph about Herod, why didn’t he warn the other parents in the village of Bethlehem? If it was so scripture could be fulfilled, then God, knowing everything, could through divine providence make it so that there would be no massacre of the innocents and thus alter history before it ever happened and thus no need for anyone in the Old Testament to utter this prophecy that it would happen.