Violence in the OT: The Conquest of Canaan

How do we deal with the passages in the Old Testament where God commands the Israelites to kill everyone in the land - including women and children? This is a very difficult question to answer and I’m afraid I don’t have an ultimately good answer either. In fact, my church community group and I have been struggling with this one. What one can do is to hopefully provide context that may illuminate it ever so slightly but never completely:

1. We know in the Scripture that God is patient giving people the opportunity to repent. In the case of the Canaanites, God tells Abraham that his descendants will be slaves for 400 years before they come back to the land of Canaan because “the iniquity of the Amorites [Canaanites] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). There is apparently a time period that God gives these nations before He judges them.

2. When war is upon these nation-states, women and children usually flee leaving warriors to fight it out. So, it could be fair to understand that the killing of women and children could be at a minimum.

3. The primary purpose of ridding the land of the Canaanites is not to chase after them and utterly kill their race, although that did happen in some cases, but to clear the land to be ready for the Israelites. God is very concerned about the Israelites mixing with the local Canaanites for various reasons. One can also think of the strange laws in Leviticus about mixing certain types of things with other types of things. Perhaps this serves as a picture to the Israelites that God wants them to be separate from the other nations and peoples around them. Thus, one could not be allowed to mix Israelite religion with Canaanite religion that involved idolatry, prostitution (male and female; heterosexual and homosexual), sorcery, child sacrifice, and infanticide. Gleason Archer writes: “Much of the periodic spiritual decline and apostasy which marked the history of Israel during the time of the Judges is attributable to a toleration of the Canaanite inhabitants and their degenerate religion in the midst of the land.”

4. God is not Santa Clause. We need to incorporate our understanding that God is love with the fact that God is a Warrior (Ex. 15:3; Rev 19:11).

5. God creates human life and owns it as the Creator. If He sees fit, he is perfectly just to take our lives and do with it what He pleases because we are made from fallen clay (Rom 9:21). Thus, the ordering of the killing of the Canaanites is seen by God to be just. However, the killing of Jesus in the NT is not just. It would seem the ultimate injustice is perpetuated on God Himself. Thus, the same God behind the gifts of the Spirit is the same One who allows the ultimate injustice to occur to His own Son. I still have questions...but I trust God ultimately to have the answers even if I don't see them.

Sources:

Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Harper Collins, 2000), p. 121.Ibid., p. 122.

Charles F. Pfeiffer, Old Testament History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1973), pp. 69-77.

Gleason Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, Revised and Expanded Edition (Chicago: Moody, 1994), p. 299.