https://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=12&article=4660
God's Just Destruction of the Canaanites
In
the 1930s and 40s, the Nazi regime committed state-sponsored genocide
of so-called “inferior races.” Of the approximately nine million Jews
who lived in Europe at the beginning of the 1930s, some six million of
them were exterminated. The Nazis murdered approximately one million
Jewish children, two million Jewish women, and three million Jewish men.
The Jews were starved, gassed, and experimented on like animals. In
addition, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime slaughtered another three million
Poles, Soviets, gypsies, and people with disabilities (see “Holocaust,”
2011 for more information). Most sane people, including Christians and
many atheists (e.g., Antony Flew, Wallace Matson), have interpreted the
Nazis’ actions for what they were—cruel, callous, and nefarious.
Some 3,400 years before the Holocaust, the God of the Bible commanded
the Israelites to “destroy all the inhabitants of the land” of Canaan
(Joshua 9:24). They were to conquer, kill, and cast out the Hittites,
Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites
(Exodus 23:23; Deuteronomy 7:1-2; Joshua 3:10). After crossing the
Jordan River, we learn in the book of Joshua that the Israelites
“utterly destroyed all that was in the city [of Jericho], both man and
woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the
sword…. [T]hey burned the city and all that was in it with fire” (Joshua
6:21,24). They also “utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai”
(Joshua 8:26), killing 12,000 men and women, and hanging their king
(8:25,29). In Makkedah and Libnah, the Israelites “let none remain”
(Joshua 10:28,30). They struck Lachish “and all the people who were in
it with the edge of the sword” (10:32). The Israelites then conquered
Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor (10:33-39; 11:1-1). “So all the
cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took and struck with
the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant
of the Lord had commanded” (Joshua 11:12).
God had the Israelites kill countless thousands, perhaps millions, of
people throughout the land of Canaan. It was genocide in the sense that
it was a
planned,
systematic, limited
extermination of a number of
nation
states from a relatively small area in the Middle East (cf. “Genocide,”
2000; cf. also “Genocide,” 2012). But, it was not a war against a
particular race (from the Greek
genos) or ethnic group. Nor
were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations
if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive
out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted
the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a
particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.
Still, many find God’s commands to conquer and destroy the Canaanite
nation states problematic. How could a loving God instruct one group of
people to kill and conquer another group? America’s most well-known
critic of Christianity in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Thomas Paine
(one of only a handful of America’s Founding Fathers who did not claim
to be a Christian), called the God of the Old Testament “the Mars of the
Jews, the fighting God of Israel,” Who was “boisterous, contemptible,
and vulgar” (Paine, 1807). Two centuries later, Richard Dawkins
(arguably the most famous atheist in the world today), published his
book
The God Delusion, which soon became a
New York Times
bestseller. One of the most oft-quoted phrases from this work comes
from page 31, where Dawkins called God, a “racist, infanticidal,
genocidal…capriciously malevolent bully” (2006). According to one search
engine, this quote (in part or in whole) is found on-line approximately
one million times. The fact is, critics of the God of the Bible are
fond of repeating the allegation that, because of His instruction to the
Israelites to kill millions of people in their conquest of Canaan, the
God of the Bible has (allegedly) shown Himself to be an unruly,
shameful, offensive, genocidal, “evil monster” (Dawkins, p. 248; cf.
Hitchens, 2007, p. 107).
Was God’s Campaign Against Canaan Immoral?
How could a supremely good (Mark 10:18), all-loving (1 John 4:8),
perfectly holy God (Leviticus 11:44-45) order the Israelites to slay
with swords myriads of human beings, letting “none remain” in Canaan? Is
not such a planned, systematic extermination of nations equivalent to
the murderous actions of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s, as atheists and
other critics of Christianity would have us believe? In truth, God’s
actions in Israel’s conquest of Canaan were in perfect harmony with His
supremely loving, merciful, righteous, just, and holy nature.
Punishing Evildoers is Not Unloving
Similar to how
merciful parents, principals, policemen, and judges can
justly
administer punishment to rule-breakers and evildoers, so too can the
all-knowing, all-loving Creator of the Universe. Loving parents and
principals have administered corporal punishment appropriately to
children for years (cf. Proverbs 13:24). Merciful policemen, who are
constantly saving the lives of the innocent, have the authority (both
from God and the government—Romans 13:1-4) to kill a wicked person who
is murdering others. Just judges have the authority to sentence a
depraved child rapist to death. Loving-kindness and corporal or capital
punishment are not antithetical. Prior to conquering Canaan, God
commanded the Israelites, saying,
You shall not hate your brother in your heart…. You shall not take
vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but
you shall love your neighbor as yourself…. And if a stranger dwells with
you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells
among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him
as yourself (Leviticus 19:17-18,33-34; cf. Romans 13:9).
The faithful Jew was expected, as are Christians, to “not resist an
evil person” (Matthew 5:39) but rather “go the extra mile” (Matthew
5:41) and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39). “Love,” after all, “is
the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10; cf. Matthew 22:36-40).
Interestingly, however, the Israelite was commanded to punish (even
kill) lawbreakers. Just five chapters after commanding the individual
Israelite to “not take vengeance,” but “love your neighbor as yourself”
(Leviticus 19:18), God twice said that murderers would receive the death
penalty (Leviticus 24:21,17).
The Wickedness of the Inhabitants of Canaan
The Canaanite nations were punished because of their extreme
wickedness. God did not cast out the Canaanites for being a particular
race or ethnic group. God did not send the Israelites into the land of
Canaan to destroy a number of
righteous nations. On the contrary, the Canaanite nations were
horribly depraved.
They practiced “abominable customs” (Leviticus 18:30) and did
“detestable things” (Deuteronomy 18:9, NASB). They practiced idolatry,
witchcraft, soothsaying, and sorcery. They attempted to cast spells upon
people and call up the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).
Their “cultic practice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious” (Unger,
1954, p. 175). Their “deities…had no moral character whatever,” which
“must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees and entailed
many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,” including sensuous
nudity, orgiastic nature-worship, snake worship, and even child
sacrifice (Unger, 1954, p. 175; cf. Albright, 1940, p. 214). As Moses
wrote, the inhabitants of Canaan would “burn even their sons and
daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:30). The Canaanite
nations were anything but “innocent.” In truth, “[t]hese Canaanite cults
were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating
and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees”
(Unger, 1988). They were so nefarious that God said they defiled the
land and the land could stomach them no longer—“the land vomited out its
inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25). [NOTE: Israel was an imperfect nation
(as all nations are), but God still used them to punish the Canaanites.
God warned Israel before ever entering Canaan, however, that if they
forsook His law, they, too, would be severely punished (Deuteronomy
28:15ff). In fact, similar to how God used the Israelites to bring
judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan in the time of Joshua, He used
the pagan nations of Babylon and Assyria to judge and conquer Israel
hundreds of years later.]
The Longsuffering of God
Unlike the foolish, impulsive, quick-tempered reactions of many men
(Proverbs 14:29), the Lord is “slow to anger and great in mercy” (Psalm
145:8). He is “longsuffering…, not willing that any should perish but
that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Immediately following
a reminder to the Christians in Rome that the Old Testament was
“written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of
the Scriptures might have hope,” the apostle Paul referred to God as
“the God of patience” (Romans 15:4-5). Throughout the Old Testament, the
Bible writers portrayed God as longsuffering.
Though in Noah’s day, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth”
and “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually” (Genesis 6:5), “the Divine longsuffering waited” (1 Peter
3:20). (It seems as though God delayed flooding the Earth for 120 years
as His Spirit’s message of righteousness was preached to a wicked
world—Genesis 6:3; 2 Peter 2:5.) In the days of Abraham, God ultimately
decided to spare the iniquitous city of Sodom, not if 50 righteous
people were found living therein, but only
10 righteous individuals.
And what about prior to God’s destruction of the Canaanite nations? Did
God quickly decide to cast them out of the land? Did He respond to the
peoples’ wickedness like an impulsive, reckless mad-man? Or was He, as
the Bible repeatedly states and exemplifies, longsuffering? Indeed, God
waited. He waited more than four centuries to bring judgment upon the
inhabitants of Canaan. Although the Amorites were already a sinful
people in Abraham’s day, God delayed in giving the descendants of the
patriarch the Promised Land. He would wait until the Israelites had been
in Egypt for hundreds of years, because at the time that God spoke with
Abraham “the iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet complete” (Genesis
15:16). [NOTE: “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in
Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient
inhabitants, as they are here” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, 1997).] In
Abraham’s day, the inhabitants of Canaan were not so degenerate that
God would bring judgment upon them. However, by the time of Joshua (more
than 400 years later), the Canaanites’ iniquity was full, and God used
the army of Israel to destroy them.
Yes, God is longsuffering, but His
longsuffering is
not
an “eternal” suffering. His patience with impenitent sinners eventually
ends. It ended for a wicked world in the days of Noah. It ended for
Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham. And it eventually ended for
the inhabitants of Canaan, whom God justly destroyed.
What About the Innocent Children?
The children of Canaan were not guilty of their parents’ sins (cf.
Ezekiel 18:20); they were sinless, innocent, precious human beings (cf.
Matthew 18:3-5; see
Butt,
2003). So how could God justly take the lives of children, any
children, “who have no knowledge of good and evil” (Deuteronomy 1:39)?
The fact is, as Dave Miller properly noted, “Including the children in
the destruction of such populations actually spared them from a worse
condition—that of being reared to be as wicked as their parents and thus
face eternal punishment. All persons who die in childhood, according to
the Bible, are ushered to Paradise and will ultimately reside in
Heaven. Children who have parents who are evil must naturally suffer
innocently while on Earth (e.g., Numbers 14:33)” (
Miller,
2009). God, the Giver of life (Acts 17:25; Ecclesiastes 12:7), and only
God has the right to take the life of His creation whenever He chooses
(for the righteous purposes that He has). At times in history, God took
the life of men out of righteous judgment. At other times (as in the
case of children), it was taken for merciful reasons. [NOTE: For a
superb, extensive discussion on the relationship between (1) the
goodness of God, (2) the contradictory, hideousness of atheism, and (3)
God bringing about the death of various infants throughout history, see
Kyle Butt’s article “
Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” (2009).]
CONCLUSION
Though the enemies of the God of the Bible are frequently heard
criticizing Israel’s conquest of Canaan, the fact is, such a conquest
was in complete harmony with God’s perfectly loving, holy, and righteous
nature. After patiently waiting for hundreds of years, God eventually
used the Israelites to bring judgment upon myriads of wicked Canaanites.
Simultaneously, He spared their children a fate much worse than
physical death—the horror of growing up in a reprehensible culture and
becoming like their hedonistic parents—and immediately ushered them into
a pain-free, marvelous place called Paradise (Luke 16:19-31; 23:43).
REFERENCES
Albright, William F. (1940),
From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins).
Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?” Apologetics Press,
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=1201.
Butt, Kyle (2009), “Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” Apologetics Press,
http://www.apologeticspress.org/article/260.
Dawkins, Richard (2006),
The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).
“Genocide” (2000),
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.
“Genocide” (2012),
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide.
Hitchens, Christopher (2007),
God is Not Great (New York: Twelve).
“Holocaust” (2011),
Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Holocaust.aspx#1.
Jamieson, Robert, et al. (1997
), Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Bible Commentary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).
Miller, Dave (2009), “Did God Order the Killing of Babies?” Apologetics Press,
http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=2810.
Paine, Thomas (1807), “Essay on Dream,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/paine/dream.htm.
Unger, Merrill F. (1954),
Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).
Unger, Merrill F. (1988), “Canaan,”
The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).
U.S.
House Representative Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican, was attacked
earlier this month for his strong stand for the biblical model of
Creation as opposed to evolution. LiveScience.com painted
Congressman Broun as ignorant of the scientific facts, which according
to them, prove that the Universe could not be as young as Broun says it
is (i.e., “about 9,000 years old,” Pappas, 2012).
