Why did God command the
ancient Israelites
to wipe out other nations?
"Why did God command the Israelites to completely conquer and destroy
the other nations who inhabited the land of Canaan, stealing their land
and murdering even women and children to the point of genocide? How can
we serve a God like that or call Him loving?"
Of all the moral challenges to the Bible, this is certainly the hardest
to answer, or more correctly put, the hardest to make people understand.
The first part of the question is easier, the question of a God who
would command war. God states some pretty good reasons for this in the
Scriptures and it is possible for people to track with them. The second
part, on a first glance, seems impossible to explain and outrageous in
its scope. The very idea of a God who would tell anyone to exterminate
an entire race, including women and little babies, reminds us of the
kinds of things Nazis did.
A fair beginning
The easier part of the question is the natural place to begin. It is
true that after delivering the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage and
bringing them to a new home across the desert, God did command the
Israelites to wage war against the nations that inhabited the land of
Canaan (to which Moses and later Joshua led them to).
"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. Otherwise they will teach you to follow all the detestable things
they do in worshipping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD
your God" (Deut. 20:16-18).
The reason is stated quite clearly: "lest they teach you to make any
such abominable offerings as they make to their gods and you thus sin
against the Lord your God"(18).
It was common in those days to worship gods by placing babies on the
alter, killing them and burning them as an offering. Ironically, the
very wars cited by people to accuse the Biblical God of a disregard for
life were waged against the evil religions and their abominable human
destructions that concerned the true loving God. We see this same
problem stated in Leviticus where God commands his people to have
nothing to do with evil worship.
"Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you
must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD" (Lev. 18:21).
The LORD said to Moses. "Say to the
Israelites;
‘Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of
his
children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community
are to stone Him. I will set my face against that man and I will cut
him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has
defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. If the people of the
community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to
Molech and they fail to put him to death, I will set my face against
that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and
all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech. " (Lev.
20:1-5).
Let me now share an extremely important observation: It does not make
sense that this same God who wants to deliver the babies would then
turn around and say to the Israelites (instruments of His justice), "To
rescue these babies I want you to kill the entire populace, including
all women and children, thus annihilating even more babies." Probably
that is not what happened. In all likelihood, there is something we are
not catching here, something which does not immediately meet the eye.
Moving on to the harder part
Now that we have established some background, let us return to the
second part of the original question: Why did God command the
Israelites to completely wipe out the nations of Canaan ?
In a nutshell: He didn’t. Or at least, a very good case can
be
made that He didn’t. When God commanded the destruction of
certain nations, He seems to have meant "displace them as a people" as
opposed to "completely exterminate." For one thing, these people all
continued to exist hundreds of years later at the time of Solomon:
All the people left from the Hitties,
Amorites,
Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites (these people were not Israelites)
that is, their descendants remaining in the land, whom the Israelites
had not destroyed-these Solomon conscripted for his slave labor force
as it is to this day (2 Chronicles 8:7-8).
Notice that every nation listed in Deuteronomy 20 as targets for
destruction is listed here with the exception of the Canaanites. Since
Canaan was a double term, referring both to the entire land of Canaan
as well as an individual nation within the land, the author of II
Chronicles may have felt it unnecessary to repeat the term. In any
event, we know that people of Canaanite nationality survived as well
(Matt. 15: 22). From this provocative passage in Chronicles we can
reach two very safe conclusions:
a) The Israelites obviously did not exterminate these people, for if
they had, there would have been few, if any, survivors. Obviously, this
is a description meaning more than a handful of fleeing refugees, as
these are people settled in the land, entrenched enough to retain some
of their national identity, all the way up through Solomon’s
time
several hundred years later.
b) Solomon himself did not feel he had to exterminate them to "finish
the job."
We conclude that conquering the land and enforcing the servitude of the
people is all that the Israelites did and all that they understood God
commanding them to do.
"Then how do we explain extreme words like ‘completely
destroy?’ "
The Hebrew word destroy is Charan and means "the irrevocable giving
over to God." That can include destruction, but it does not necessarily
mean destroy in the sense we know the word.
There is also an explanation in the way ancient Hebrews and others
talked back in those days. They used extreme exaggerated phrases and
spoke somewhat poetically a great deal of the time.
The following quote is from Dr. Samuel Davidson, a scholar familiar
with the ways of the ancient near east.
He who does not remember the wide
difference between
the Oriental and Occidental mind must necessarily fall into error. The
luxuriant imagination and the glowing ardor of the former express
themselves in the hyperbolically and extravagant diction where as the
subdued character and coolness of the latter are averse to sensuous
luxuriance. 1
So, at times, the commands of God (as regards war) were written in a
style that the Hebrews themselves would have taken as exaggerated and
poetic. But at other times, the details of the war (sparing women and
children) were spelled out. In Deuteronomy 20 we seem to see both used
together.
"When you march up to attack a city,
make its people
an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people
in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall now work for you. If
they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to
that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to
the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the
livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as
plunder for yourselves" (Deut. 20:10-14).
Again, God’s precautions to avoid innocent casualties of war
is
noteworthy. Unfortunately the passage is harder when we read on:
"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. Otherwise they will teach you to follow all the detestable things
they do in worshipping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD
your God." (Deut. 20:16-18).
We must read this passage in the light of all that we have learned: 1)
The Israelites did not in fact completely destroy those nations but
instead displaced them as a people. 2) God does not punish children for
the sins of their parents. Indeed, it is out of a concern for children,
that He was using the Hebrews to conquer those people anyway. 3) The
sparing of women and children seems a standard practice issued by God.
4) The word for destroy could be interpreted as "completely give over
to God", a phrase compatible with the notion of conquering. 5) The
Hebrews often spoke in exaggerated phrases.
For all these reasons I have come to the conclusion that the sparing of
women and children, discussed in the first part of this passage, is
assumed in the second part. The contrast between the two commands is in
the fact that with some cities peace will be offered and men accepting
the offer can be spared, but in those cities inhabiting the land of
Canaan, peace will not be offered. The adult males of those cities are
to be executed, for from them, the practice of other religious worship
would spread, where as with women and children, the bondage and
servitude would be more readily accepted. The phrase "put to death
everything that breathes," extreme and poetic in its rythmn, would be a
way of saying, "Put to death, the males, the authorities, and in doing
so you are destroying the nation, for all intents and purposes."
Many dedicated Christians will disagree with my conclusion. Although
the idea of exaggerated Hebrew speech is a fact of history, it is not
always clear when these exaggerations are taking place, and I
therefore, completely respect those who read this passage differently.
It is also pointed out by many that if God wants to completely destroy
a nation, He is at liberty to do so. After all, He is a just God whose
decisions need to be trusted rather than criticized, and we with our
sinful natures may simply have a hard time seeing how a holy God
chooses to do things. This is an idea I can accept. My point above, is
that we don’t necessarily have to read some of those passages
as
we may have previously thought.
"But however we read the passages, even if we take the view that God
wanted the children spared, isn’t it true that in any war,
children are likely to die, even by accident. So by commanding these
wars, God knew that at least some children would die."
This very understadable question was expressed to me publically during
an open forum at Oregon State University. I knew that the student would
initially reject my answer, but I threw it out anyway. "According to
the New Testament (Matt12), all children who die at an early age go to
Heaven, and in Heaven they will continue to live with God. In fact,
they will be much better off than they were on earth living with evil
parents who sacrificed babies on the alter."
"Oh sure, that old cop out answer," the student complained. "Talking
about Heaven is a very convenient thing to say."
"When discussing Heaven," I replied, "you must ask yourself what you
truly believe. If you don’t accept the Bible as being factual
when it discusses Heaven, why accept the Bible as factual when it
discusses war?"
Once again, we return to our original premise, a moral question about
the Bible. These questions only remain fair within the boundaries of
their assumptions: Question: Assuming that the Bible is the word of
God, isn’t it unfair that God commanded wars in which
children
died? Answer: Assuming that the Bible is the Word of God, those
children are in Heaven, and they are very happy. They are not screaming
at God for bringing them there.
Modern day applications
"Couldn’t the belief in Old Testament Holy Wars inspire
Christians to do violence in the name of God?"
Christians are commanded to live by the New Testament, not the Old
Testament. Jesus made it clear that under this New Covenant, couriers
of the Gospel would be instruments of God’s mercy, rather
than
God’s wrath. He discouraged any kind of violent overthrow of
the
Roman empire (Matt. 22:21) and said, "..all who draw the sword will die
by the sword"(Matt. 26:52). God has always been a God of both mercy and
wrath. What has changed under the New Covenant is our rapport with God.
Previously, God used His people as instruments of His judgment, but
today we reflect the attribute of mercy as God saves His wrath for
judgment day. Jesus warned against merging the Old and New Covenant
together, comparing it to the mixture of new wine with old wineskins
(Luke 5:37-38).
Many disturbing events of church history, such as the Crusades and the
Inquisition, show the fallacy and horror of attempts to spread the New
Testament Gospel through Old Testament methods. However, as mentioned
in our discussion of hypocrisy in Chapter One, such deeds were done in
disobedience to the teachings of Jesus.
Conclusion
Although God did command the Israelites to make war upon the nations
living in Canaan, He did this to judge the evil in those nations. It is
unlikely that God commanded the genocide of the nations, and on the
bottom line, there was no such genocide because the nations continued
to exist. Still, there would have been some innocent casualties of war.
When we see such things, we are grateful for the hope of the
resurrection.
Footnotes:
1) Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introduction to Old Testament, p. 409.
More Questions
|
Have your own question?
questions@bobsiegel.net
This is a brief
excerpt from a larger book.
For a fuller treatment of this subject as well as a better context, see:
I’d Like To
Believe In Jesus, But…
(The harder, less frequently discussed questions)
By Bob Siegel
Published by CSN Books
Copyright © 2007 by Bob Siegel
All Rights Reserved
Published by
Campus Ambassador Press
Copyright © 1999 by Bob Siegel
All Rights Reserved
This article is not to be reproduced without written permission from
the author. |
