The Bible is full of many stories that are strange and rather alarming. If we had to give some of the stories a film rating from G to R, many of them would fall into the R rated category. The most challenging of these stories for many is found in the book of Joshua where God appears to be issuing commands of genocide to Israel. In the conquest story, the authors depict ancient warfare between Joshua and the people of Israel against the Canaanite nations dwelling in the Promised Land. There is often intense language utilized like, “Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword” (Josh 6:21 ESV), and troubling commands where Moses tells the people to “devote the city to complete destruction” (Deut. 20:16-18). What are we to make of the warfare language? Are we doomed to agree with the critics of the Bible that the God of the Old Testament is a moral monster and that He even allows/commands genocide today? Thankfully, no. While these are challenging passages there are good answers that we can provide to the charges levied against God and His character.
- Occasional vs General Commands
Within the Biblical story, we have to distinguish between commands that are universal for all people and commands that are only relevant at a given moment in history. There is good evidence to support the conclusion that the commands God gave to the Israelites are not something that apply outside the context of Israel’s entrance into the Promised Land (Deut. 20:16) and did not even apply to other nations dwelling outside the land (Deut. 2:4-5).
- Extermination or Dispossession?
The language of extermination isn’t actually accurate to what the Hebrew language is trying to communicate. What God orders for the Israelites to do is to dispossess or drive out the people from the land of Canaan, and this does not require literal extermination (Deut 9:1). We know this is true from how the word is used elsewhere in the text of Scripture. For example, the same word is used to describe Adam and Eve being dispossessed from the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:24). The hyperbolic language was the culturally common way that wars and battles were recounted in writing, i.e., it was not meant to be taken literally. This also makes sense because many of the same nations that in Joshua 7-12 are allegedly “wiped out” appear later in the story, so clearly the Canaanite nations that were allegedly completely destroyed were still posing a problem for Israel in the future.
- Are the Canaanites Portrayed as Innocent?
The notion that the conquest involved a merciless slaughtering of men, women, and children that is prescriptive for believers today is clearly problematic given the data we have presented. But one of the main criticisms of God’s commands and the Israelites’ actions is the supposed innocent nature of the Canaanites. However, the Bible paints a picture of the Canaanites that is not so innocent. In Gen. 15, when God makes a covenant with Abraham, He states that his descendants will not inhabit the land for 400 years because the “iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen 15:16). Acts such as child sacrifice, idolatry, and incest were common in Canaanite culture, because they were attached to their religious system. God did not want the Israelites to worship other God’s and be drawn into these practices (Ex 34:15-16) and yet he spares the people from this judgment for 400 years, giving them plenty of time to change their ways; but this does not happen. That is why there is such a strong emphasis on making sure the people of Canaan are not in the land that Israel is going to possess. There is also evidence that groups of Canaanites who conformed to Israel’s moral standards were spared in the case of Rahab and the Shechemites. To conclude, the Canaanites were not portrayed as innocent but people who experienced the righteous judgment of God through the Israelite people.
While we need to be sensitive to the ways in history that these passages have been used to justify terrible behavior, we can safely conclude that the God of the Bible is not commanding the extermination of people groups based on their ethnic identity. This was a very specific command for a period in history that involved dispossessing a group of people who were worshipping false gods and committing detestable sins in the land.
Written by Grant Gobezie