In the first Good Book post we looked at the subject of slavery, and saw that the Bible does not affirm or encourage the slave trade – it is decidedly against it. Another subject that causes people to think the Bible is an immoral book is the slaughter of the Canaanites in the time of Joshua. It is portrayed as an act of genocide – a tribal deity commanding ethnic cleansing. The image is disturbing, but it is distorted.
Before clarifying and
explaining what happened, let’s get rid of this notion of genocide and ethnic
cleansing. The issue was not the ethnicity of the people in the land of Canaan.
God has always been interested in the blessing of the whole world. Indeed, His
special relationship with the nation of Israel was with the intention of the
blessing of all nations (Gen. 12:3). We saw in our article about slavery that
God “loves the stranger” (Deut. 10:18).
Let’s lay out a few factors
that need to be kept in mind as we consider the destruction of the Canaanites.
They were wicked
The book of Genesis lays a
foundation that shows that God is not swift to judge. In the time of Noah,
there was no one outside of his family with any regard for God or
righteousness. Later on, Abraham knew that God was a righteous judge who would
not destroy the righteous with the wicked. In fact, God would have spared the
evil cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if there had have been ten righteous people
in it (see Gen. 18:17-33). This was established hundreds of years before the
conquest of Canaan and needs to be kept in mind. Added to that, God was
prepared to wait about 430 years (even though it meant the Israelites were
slaves in Egypt) because the sin of the Canaanites had not yet reached its
limit (Gen. 15:16). Only when the society had reached its tipping point did God
move in judgment. This makes it clear that God views these large-scale
judgments as a last resort.
It is clear from Scripture
that the Canaanites were guilty of unspeakable wickedness. For example, Leviticus
18 refers to all sorts of sexual sins and child sacrifice, and says that the
Israelites aren’t to engage in such practices, “for by all these the nations
are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled;
therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits
out its inhabitants” (vv. 24-25; see too Deut. 18:9-14).
But lest anyone thinks that
the Bible is libelling the Canaanites to justify Israel’s actions, there is
evidence outside of Scripture that shows that God was certainly not
exaggerating. Ancient papyri testify to the sexual perversions of the Canaanite
nations, and Plutarch reports that during Canaanite sacrifices, “the whole area
before the statue [of Molech] was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums
so that the cries of the wailing should not reach the ears of the people.”
According to UCLA researcher, Shelby Brown, “No other ancient people…regularly
chose their own children as sacrificial victims”.[1]
It is not the case that the Canaanites
were living in peace and paradise before the Israelites came. The land flowed
with milk and honey, but there were also a lot of tears and blood mixed in.
They were warned
This was not a surprise
attack on unsuspecting nations. They had advanced warning that the Israelites
were coming. The Exodus from Egypt, the defeat of Pharaoh’s army at the Red
Sea, and the battles that took place on the way to the Promised Land were all
known to the inhabitants of the land. This is made clear by what Rahab said to
the two Hebrew spies (Josh. 2:9-11):
I know that the
Lord has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that
all the inhabitants of the land are fainting because of you. For we have heard
how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of
Egypt, and what you did to the two kinds of the Amorites who were on the other
side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we
heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more
courage in anyone because of you, for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven
above and on earth beneath.”
The right response to this
display of God’s power would have been repentance and unconditional surrender.
The Old Testament testifies to the fact that this always results in mercy (see,
for example, Jer. 18:7-8 and the book of Jonah).
They were
warriors
The cities that were
destroyed in the book of Joshua were, according to archaeological evidence, not
civilian populations, but military strongholds. “That means that Israel’s wars
here were directed toward government and military installments; this is where
the king, the army, and the priesthood resided. The use of ‘women’ and ‘young
and old’ was merely stock ancient Near Eastern language that could be used even
if women and young and old weren’t living there. The language of ‘all’ (‘men
and women’) at Jericho and Ai is a ‘stereotypical expression for the
destruction of all human life in the fort, presumably composed entirely of combatants.’
The text doesn’t require that women and you and old must have been in these
cities.”[2]
They were
welcome
The experience of Rahab
shows that the Canaanites were welcome to become part of God’s covenant
community. They could have repented of their wickedness and renounced their
idolatry. Rahab was received into the nation, and even became part of the
promised line from which the Messiah came (Matthew 1:5).
They were
withdrawn
The language of destruction
and slaughter is used, but it is often used in a context in which expulsion
from the land is clearly meant, for example, Deuteronomy 9:3-5:
Therefore
understand today that the Lord your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming
fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive
them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has said to you.
Do not think in
your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying,
‘Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land’;
but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving
them out from before you. It is not because of your righteousness or the
uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of
the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from
before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your
fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
When Moses spoke to the
Israelites before they entered the Promised Land he told them how they could
enjoy God’s blessing in the land and also warned them of the conduct that would
result in their expulsion and exile. In his summing up and final appeal he said,
“I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before
you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you
and your descendants may live” (Deut. 30:19). The point he was making is that
life is synonymous with enjoying the blessing of the Promised Land.
Moses held out
to the people life and death, blessings and curses, and urged them to choose
life – which meant, quite specifically, living in the promised land as opposed
to being sent into the disgrace of exile.[3]
Thus, being put out of the
Promised Land is called death and described as destruction. The Lord’s
intention was the cleansing of the land from the defilement of the nations. It
needs to be remembered as well that God warned the Israelites that if the
Israelites followed the path of the nations then the same fate would be visited
on them, and it was – exile from the land. So, the language of complete
destruction of every living thing is ancient near eastern rhetoric for complete
victory, and what was demanded by God was eviction, not annihilation.[4]
Conclusion
God is the author of life
and has the right to take it whenever He sees fit. He is also the source of
moral value, and as such, everything He does is, by definition, right, even if
we don’t understand it. In addition, these were instructions that were given
for a specific occasion, and there is no normative command to engage in
physical warfare in God’s name. He used the nation of Israel as His instrument
of judgment on the evil Canaanites (just as He used the Babylonians as His
instrument of judgment against the Jews centuries later). This shows there was
no genocide, there was no ethnic animosity. There was righteous recompense on
wicked and unrepentant nations. It is still terrifying, but “Aslan is not a
tame lion.”
“Aslan is a lion
– the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he
quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion” … “Safe?"
said Mr Beaver… “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s
good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
[1]
Clay Jones, We Don’t Hate Sin So We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites,
https://clayjones.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/We-Dont-Hate-Sin-PC-article.pdf.
I refrain from going into more detail, but the disgusting, degrading practices
of the Canaanites are on record, as Jones shows.
[2]
Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, Baker Books, 2001, p. 176. The only
women likely to be in such places would have been those in the same profession
as Rahab.
[3] N.
T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, SPCK, 2003, p. 92.
[4] For
more on this, see Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?.
