Why did God command the ancient Israelites to wipe out other nations?

The following 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.

“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 Charam 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:

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.