The modern era is filled with examples of genocide, the effort to wipe out an entire people group. There are Armenia, Cambodia, Sudan, Rwanda and Darfur. These are tragedies which are worthy of our sorrow and grief. And yet, some ask if the God of the Bible is really any better when He commanded the Israelites to wipe out all the Canaanites.
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.
Deuteronomy 20:16-17
How do we understand God’s commandment to “completely destroy?” How could this be remotely compatible with the God who is loving and compassionate to all people? Admittedly, this is a challenging issue and question. To understand, it is necessary to frame this command in four perspectives.
Perspective # 1: The Canaanites had persisted in centuries of unthinkable acts of evil.
The Canaanite culture had a high degree of depravity and barbarism. The foremost act of depravity was infant sacrifice. Harvard Old Testament scholar and archaeologist, G. Earnest Wright explains, “Worship of these gods [Canaanite gods] carried with it some of the most demoralizing practices then in existence. Among them were child sacrifice, a practice long since discarded in Egypt and Babylonia…” Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham writes, “Molech [a Canaanite god] sacrifices were offered especially in connection with vows and solemn promises, and children were sacrificed as the harshest and most binding pledge of the sanctity of a promise.”
The scriptural testimony affirms this:
Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord… Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the foreigners residing among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.
Leviticus 18:21, 24-27
You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
Deuteronomy 12:31
When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire… Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you. You must be blameless before the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 18:9-10, 12-13
Apologist Clay Jones explains how children were sacrificed to Molech:
Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity represented as an upright, bull-headed idol with human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death…. And it was not just infants; children as old as four were sacrificed….A bronze image of Kronos was set up among them, stretching out its cupped hands above a bronze cauldron, which would burn the child. As the flame burning the child surrounded the body, the limbs would shrivel up and the mouth would appear to grin as if laughing, until it was shrunk enough to slip into the cauldron.
In Canaan there were, also, rampant acts of incest, rape and bestiality.
Perspective # 2: The judgment was not an ethnic cleaning but an ethical cleansing.
Referencing this as a genocide is inaccurate on several levels. At the most basic of them is that the term “genocide” is a compound word consisting of the words “race” (gene) and “killing” (cide). But this was not an ethnic cleansing in any way. First, the Canaanites and Israelites were closely related. Jonathan Laden, writing for the Biblical Archaeological Society, explains this intriguing discovery:
After examining the DNA of 93 bodies recovered from archaeological sites around the southern Levant, the land of Canaan in the Bible, researchers have concluded that modern populations of the region are descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Most modern Jewish groups and the Arabic-speaking groups from the region show at least half of their ancestry as Canaanite.
Second, God warned that the exact same judgement would come upon the Jews if they engaged in the same practices as the Canaanites.
And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
Leviticus 18:28
Third, God spared non-Israelites who turned to him. The rescue of Rahab and her family shows that this judgment was not an ethnic cleansing. Moreover, when the Israelites renewed their covenant with God, we read that foreigners and native-born (Canaanites) were there:
All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.
Joshua 8:33
It is clear that if a Canaanite turned to God they were spared.
Perspective # 3: The Canaanites rejected peace and wanted war.
God waits patiently for people to turn to him, and he is slow to anger. This is shown to be core to God’s character.
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7
God’s patience and forgiveness is affirmed through the entirety of scripture. In fact, God allowed the Israelites to suffer greatly in slavery for 400 years so that the Canaanites could have an opportunity to change. He didn’t judge them immediately because the sins of the Canaanites did not reach the “full measure.” The full measure means they went beyond the point of no return.
Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there…In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
Genesis 15:13, 16
Before the Israelites entered Canaan, they had seen the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:1-29) giving them clear evidence of what God can do. When the Hebrews were on the border of Canaan, the spies who were sent in heard this testimony from Rahab, showing there was an awareness of the power of God:
Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 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 Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.“
Joshua 2:8-11
Before this, they had the ability to change, but at this point they were unwilling. Understanding the power of God, they refused to surrender.
Perspective # 4: Joshua didn’t engage in cruel and unusual practices.
This is the only offensive war that God ever commanded. All other wars in which Israel engaged were defensive. With that said there are three ways we can put this war in context.
Exaggerated Language: God’s command to “utterly destroy” is likely hyperbolic or exaggerated language. To utterly destroy means a comprehensive victory. Paul Copan uses the analogy of a modern sports fan saying that his team “slaughtered” or “killed” their opponents, which is not to be taken literally.
For example, Joshua 10:20 reads:
So Joshua and the Israelites defeated them completely, but a few survivors managed to reach their fortified cities.
God warned the Israelites not to intermarry with the Canaanites. But why would God command this if all of the Canaanites were “utterly destroyed?”
But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you.
Joshua 23:12-13
Surely these warnings would be useless unless the Canaanites were not utterly destroyed. This exaggerated language applies when it states that women and children are to be killed. There is not record of the destruction of women and children.
Removal not extermination: Some scholars point out that the goal was to drive out the Canaanites. If any fled, their lives would be spared; only those who remained would be killed. Notice the “drive them out” language:
Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.
Exodus 23:30
As for all the inhabitants of the mountain regions from Lebanon to Misrephoth Maim, that is, all the Sidonians, I myself will drive them out before the Israelites. Be sure to allocate this land to Israel for an inheritance, as I have instructed you…
Joshua 13:6
Theologian and philosopher, William Lane Craig clarifies:
The Canaanite tribal kingdoms which occupied the land were to be destroyed as nation states, not as individuals. The judgment of God upon these tribal groups, which had become so incredibly debauched by that time, is that they were being divested of their land. Canaan was being given over to Israel…If the Canaanite tribes, seeing the armies of Israel, had simply chosen to flee, no one would have been killed at all. There was no command to pursue and hunt down the Canaanite peoples.
Restricted fighting: Old Testament scholar Richard Hess argues that the killing in the book of Joshua was restricted to military battles which did not involve civilians. While the accounts of the conquest of Jericho and Ai appear to involve the defeat of a settled city full of civilians, Hess shows how each part of this description could be interpreted in other ways. There is no archaeological evidence of civilian populations at Jericho or Ai. Given what we know about Canaanite life in the Bronze Age, Jericho and Ai were military strongholds.
Conclusion
This was in NO WAY a genocide. That label is a gross misrepresentation. This war was conducted in such a way that gave the Canaanites every chance to turn or flee. It was a war of last resort. God has never commanded a war like this before or since. It was done for the purposes to stop the spread of horrible evils and advance salvation to the world.
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