Many ask the question, “Did God really command the Israelites to kill the children of Canaan?” The simple Many ask the question, “Did God really command the Israelites to kill the children of Canaan?” The simple answer is yes, the Israelites were told to destroy the culture of Canaan entirely. Notice they weren’t told to literally kill all Canaanites since they spared Rahab from Jericho and her family because she submitted to the God of Israel. Besides Rahab, the Gibeonites gave themselves to Israel as slaves in Joshua 9, so they were spared. Lastly, Joshua and Caleb led the charge against Canaan after Moses died. Ever notice that Caleb’s father was a Kenizzite (Num 32:12, Joshua 14:14), which means he was half Canaanite (Gen 15:18-21); yet, God used him to fight for Israel against the Canaanites. This shows that not all Canaanites were destroyed, which means God isn’t “racist” as some may say. Everyone has a choice between repentance and pride, and only a few were repentant. The Israelites’ goal was to get rid of the Canaanites’ sinful culture, which was manipulated by spiritual darkness. This was not absolute genocide, but a cleansing of the land from sin.
The first thing to understand is linguistic context. Many ancient conquest narratives, including the Bible, employ idioms and hyperbole to describe the downfall of another nation. So it is not that these people were literally deleted from existence, but rather their community and cultural identity were destroyed. Like when people say “it’s raining cats and dogs”. In the Bible, some exaggerations involve saying things like “and they were completely destroyed”, even though there were many survivors of these sieges, some of whom were taken as slaves. Deut 28:7 says Israel’s enemies “will scatter from them in seven directions.” Verse 25 has the opposite (the curse) saying that Israel will flee from their enemies in seven directions. It doesn’t mean literally every battle ends with the loser fleeing in seven specific directions. More examples: Lev 26:7-8, when God promises victory in battles, he says, “5 of you will chase 100, and 100 of you will chase 10,000!” This does not mean five people will literally always chase 100 people, or 100 will chase 10,000. When Peter asks Jesus how often we must forgive others, Jesus says 70×7 times (Matt 18:21-35). That doesn’t mean you can count to 490 and then stop forgiving. In fact, Jesus said in verse 35, as well as in Matthew 6:15 and Mark 11:25-26, that if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us. In scriptures like Ex 23:27-30 and Deut 9:1, we see the terms “driving out” rather than extermination. That means their death was not absolutely required, but rather, they had to be removed from the land. Many Canaanites were alive in cities like Hebron and Debir (Joshua 10:36-39, and Joshua 15:35-15), but fortresses like Jericho, Ai, and Hazor were destroyed.
Ultimately, God used the Israelites to execute judgment against the Canaanites as a society, much like he used a flood to wipe out the world in Noah’s days, so children died in the process. Just like firstborn sons in Egypt died during Passover (Exodus 12). God explains in Deut 9:4-6 that he is not giving Canaan to the Israelites because they deserve it, but because the Canaanites are very wicked and he made a promise to their ancestor Abraham. God wasn’t discriminating against them because of who they were, but instead was simply executing judgment against wicked behavior and fulfilling a promise to a man of faith. A lot of God’s laws in the Torah are warning Israel not to be like Egypt or Canaan (Lev 18:1-5, Lev 20:22-24), so their sins warranted their destruction. Furthermore, the Canaanites were sacrificing their children to idols, so many of those children were as good as dead anyway. If you look back at Genesis 15:16, it mentions how God delayed punishment for Canaan because the sins of the Amorites didn’t warrant their destruction. The Amorites assisted Abraham in rescuing Lot in Genesis 14. This means that at the time of Abraham, Canaan wasn’t as bad, but it got worse over time. God foresaw all of this and planned to use the Israelites to judge them.
It is clear throughout scripture that Canaan is being destroyed because of their sins. Sodom and Gomorrah were the worst, so they were destroyed first by God Himself in Genesis 19, at the time of Abraham. The Israelites would later be exiled for breaking the Laws of God and continuing the wicked customs of Canaan. In Numbers 33:55-56, God even promised to exile the Israelites if they didn’t drive out the Canaanites. God punishes the Israelites by using the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, only preserving the righteous in exile. It’s only fair that God uses external nations to judge them since He used them to judge the Canaanites. God held them to the same standard by which he used them to judge Canaan.
Lastly, they were only told to wipe out the Canaanites, not every gentile nation in the world. In Deuteronomy 20:17, seven specific groups are named: the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. In Deuteronomy 20:10-18, they were instructed not to make peace with the local Canaanite nations and to wipe them out, thereby avoiding the adoption of their practices. Meanwhile, for non-Canaanite nations that were further away, they could offer peace and subjection, and were only to fight if that nation refused to submit. When fighting faraway nations, they were told to kill only the men, and they could keep the plunder and livestock, as well as the women and children as captives. However, they were to kill everyone among the local Canaanites (that didn’t flee and leave the land), both humans and livestock (the livestock was likely defiled because they were dedicated to false gods). God was explicitly condemning the Canaanites, and Israel was simply the instrument of condemnation; those Canaanites who didn’t flee from the land would have been executed. The children themselves were learning these disturbing practices, so they were killed off as well, plus the boys would have grown up and revolted to avenge their families. There are some special exemptions made to God’s rules regarding non-Canaanite nations, where the Israelites were told to take out women and children, but even those are limited in their destruction. In Numbers 31:15-20, Moses scolds the Israelites for letting all of the women and children live after defeating the Midianites, and then he tells them to take out the mothers and children and only leave virgins alive as captives. In Numbers 22-24, Balaam was hired to curse Israel by the Moabite King Balak. Balaam cannot curse or bless without God’s permission, and God made it so that he could only bless the Israelites. He explained to King Balak of Moab that no one can curse whom God has already blessed, but Balaam devised a way around it. He knew that God’s covenant was conditional, so if they committed a sin like idolatry, they would break the covenant and be vulnerable. So Balaam told the Moabites to use Midianite shrine prostitutes to seduce the Israelite men, which caused them to worship pagan sex gods. This caused a plague that killed 24,000 Israelites.
In Numbers 31, God condemns Balaam and the Midianites. Only virgins are spared because the non-virgins had pagan religious sex practices that would have turned the Israelite men away from God again. The virgin women were most likely little girls who had not learned the idolatrous sex practices of the culture yet. God showed mercy to the Midianite virgins likely because the Midianites descended from Midian, one of the sons of Abraham, from his second wife, Keturah (Gen 25:1-4). Moses’ first wife, Zipporah, was a Midianite; he married her while taking refuge in Midian for 40 years after fleeing Egypt. However, the Midianites, along with the prophet Balaam, are being judged in this chapter for the events described in Numbers 25. This meant the virgin women were likely allowed to live and be taken captive just like most non-Canaanite nations (Deut 20:10-18), in order to preserve God’s blessing on Midian as one of Abraham’s descendants. As a whole, God is judging them at the same level as the Canaanite nations for their seduction of his people. The virgin captives could either become wives for the Israelite men or be allowed to go free to live in another nation. Either way, this allowed them to preserve the lineage of Midia. If the Midianites hadn’t done what they did, they would have been left alone like any other non-Canaanite nation, especially since they are related to Abraham.
The Moabites and Ammonites hired the Midianites to seduce Israel, and the seduction of Israel got all three nations in serious trouble with God. Their punishment for the temptation of God’s people extended beyond Midian, and this is evident in Deut 23:3-8. Here, God says that the individual Moabites and Ammonites who move to Israel have to wait for 10 generations to intermarry with Israel because of their involvement with trying to curse Israel and tempt them by using the Midianites. In the same passage, it also states that Egypt and Edom had to wait for three generations, as they had actually treated Israel well at one point, but only sinned against them later. Egypt took the Israelites in as refugees and later enslaved them, while Edom was Israel’s brother and was on good terms with them while Jacob was still alive, but the Edomite king refused to help the Israelites while they were in the wilderness. The Moabites and Ammonites received a harsher punishment than Edom and Egypt, due to their role in turning the Israelites against God in Numbers 25. Jesus says in Matthew 18:6-7 and Luke 17:1-3 that anyone who causes the children (of Israel) to sin should have a millstone tied around their neck and cast into the sea. The Midianites did the dirty work, so they were to be treated like Canaanites and nearly wiped out, but the remnant of virgin women was spared for the sake of preserving the promise to Abraham for all of his children. Furthermore, this event is clearly targeted at a specific faction of Midianites that was involved in the temptation of Israel’s men, since there were plenty of Midianites left to challenge Israel in Judges chapters 6-7, which is many decades later; thus, not all Midianites in the world were exterminated. Either a large number of the men escaped, or there was a separate faction of Midianites living in a different part of the land of Canaan.
On the subject of soldiers taking slave women and such, these were not things God told them they must do, but rather things that were allowed to do. In the ancient world, it was common for women to dress up and look their best when they were being conquered, in the hope of winning the affection of their conquerors. The purpose was survival, so that they and their children could be protected from living in a desolate wasteland with no army or men to perform the typical male tasks, such as building structures and using heavy tools. Women in those days would rather marry their conquerors than live in poverty with no protection in the wilderness, so this allowance actually would have benefited the women, and Israel was allowed to do this because it was better than the alternative. Otherwise, these single mothers are responsible for their normal duties as mothers as well as protecting their families from the elements, poverty, and wild animals, all with no societal infrastructure, military protection, or economic security
Imagine being a single widow in a city with no men. There is no modern construction equipment to close the gap in physical prowess between the sexes, so it would be difficult to rebuild the city’s walls, let alone the dangers involved. In addition, one would have to fight lions and bears to defend one’s family, which is normally the men’s job. Likewise, they weren’t trained in men’s jobs, such as metallurgy, lumberjacking, or sailing and fishing, to support the local economy through special exports. Even if they could sail, who would watch the children while they were at sea? They were the last line of defense for their children. If they had teenagers, then there is a better chance of survival without their mothers because they are old enough to adapt and take care of their younger siblings, but young children would likely die without their parents, so the moms have to survive to raise the children. That means avoiding risky behaviors like fighting predators, sailing, and building massive structures. Men did these things because men are more expendable, and this is because of sex economics. If there is at least one man, society can more easily repopulate, even if that man dies, as long as he gets some women pregnant with sons beforehand. It makes sense in this scenario to marry your conquerors. Most women wanted to live a soft life, and the best way to guarantee that was to marry a man, so they could take the brunt of life’s hardships, even if it meant marrying their conquerors.
Check out this insight into God’s judgment from Ezekiel 18:23-24.
Ezekiel 18:23 says, (NLT) “Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign Lord. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live. 24 However, if righteous people turn from their righteous behavior and start doing sinful things and acting like other sinners, should they be allowed to live? No, of course not! All their righteous acts will be forgotten, and they will die for their sins.”
One thing to keep in mind with God’s judgment on sinners is that we must remember the victims crying out from the grave, asking for vengeance and justice. Like Abel (Gen 4:10) who Cain killed, the murder victims from the violence in Genesis 6:11, or all the rape and murder victims from Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18:20). God is doing what he’s doing for them because he’s the God of justice. We see this with the tribulation martyrs in Revelation 6:9-11, as they call out for justice, and God asks them to be patient a little longer. The perpetrators will initially be shown mercy, allowing God to permit their violence for a time, so that they may repent. This is why God sent Jonah to Nineveh to warn them of judgment (Jonah 1:2). When Jonah warned them, they repented (Jonah 3:10). Lastly, Isa 57:1-2 makes an interesting point; it says that the righteous who die early are being spared the suffering from a coming evil. This could apply to innocent children and righteous elderly people who die in mass before or at the beginning of a significant tragedy as a result of holy condemnation. They are being spared a harsher punishment for their nation.
This is one of those issues where the Bible skeptics call the God of the Bible an ultra-violent, murderous psychopath. However, we have to keep in mind that in context, these cultures are pretty savage and they’re sacrificing their children and doing all kinds of disturbing things, so God responded to their injustice and corruption in kind. In Genesis 4:19-24, Cain’s descendant Lamech started the “Murder Olympics”, and people started competing over who could kill the most people to get the “Mark of Cain” as a blessing; this likely included killing women and children. This is why God flooded the world, because it was filled with so much violence, according to Genesis 6:11.
Later on, Europeans used the stories of Israel’s conquests out of context to justify colonization and enslavement. The conquest of Canaan is the ONLY command to conquer in the Bible. Jesus said in Matt 28:18-20 that we were to teach all nations, not conquer them. The way Christianity was spread was not always the most effective method, nor did it always follow Jesus’ actual instructions properly in many cases. Teaching means that some people will receive it and others won’t (Mark 4:1-20); those who reject the gospel are free to do so without being murdered (Luke 9:4-5). After all, you can’t threaten someone with good news. If they reject eternal life, then they lose. Jesus experienced violence in order to save the world from violent tendencies and sinful nature; therefore, as Christians, we are supposed to continue what he started. Self-defense is permitted, as even Jesus instructed his disciples to arm themselves (Luke 22:36-38). However, overall, we are called to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9).
According to Joshua 11:19, most cities did not want peace with the Israelites except the Hivites of Gibeon. They are Canaanites who pretended to be non-Canaanites and tricked Israel into sparing them, and in exchange, they became slaves. In the end, God always warns even Gentile nations, through dreams (Genesis 20:3-7, Genesis 40 and 41, Daniel 2) or by sending prophets (1 Kings 18 and 22, Jonah 1). It’s made clear from Rahab’s words in Joshua 2:9-11 and from the Hivites of Gibeon in Joshua 10:24-25 that these nations already knew God was sending Israel to judge them. They were afraid of Israel because they heard what God did for them in Egypt and how He gave Israel victory over other nations they fought in the wilderness. How a person or nation responds to the warning will determine if they receive mercy or not. The Canaanites were a brutal group of savages and the rape hazing ritual in Sodom and Gomorrah should be evidence enough, considering they were taken out first. We must examine how they responded to God’s mercy and warnings; only the Gibeonites, Rahab, and possibly a few others were spared because they recognized the true living God’s power and Israel as His people. Judges 1:22-26 tells another story of a man whose family was spared for helping the Israelite spies; that man later moved to live among the Hittites and built a new city called Luz.
Besides, many of the cities the Israelites destroyed were actually military strongholds, not population centers, which is why cities like Jericho had huge walls. Destroying capital cities where the government and military power were centered was enough to topple a nation and make them submissive to Israel’s culture, governed by the Torah and God. Why else would God tell the Israelites multiple times not to mistreat foreigners living among them (Ex 22:20-21, and Ex 23:9)? In addition, many of the civil laws were applied to native-born Israelites and foreigners living among them, so obviously, various people groups were allowed to live among them including some Canaanites (as long as they relinquished idolatry). Judges 1:28 mentions some Canaanites who weren’t driven out by the tribe of Manasseh and became slaves to Israel. So God doesn’t hate every Gentile or even every Canaanite, but he needed to destroy corrupt cultures driven by sin and demonic forces and used the Israelites to do it. The goal was for them to show the world his ways and function as a nation of priests and example to the world (Exodus 19:6). However, they fell short of this and broke God’s commandments and got the same punishment they inflicted on Canaan, just as God promised in the curse of Deuteronomy 28. God couldn’t tell them to destroy one group for some bad behavior and then ignore that same behavior among His people; He held them to a higher standard. So he judged them with exile and conquest, famine and pestilence, war, and death (the four horsemen).
Resources:
Further reading on the invasion of Jericho specifically:
“God put firm boundaries on the extent of the conquest, and several of the tribes in the region were not to be harmed at all (Deuteronomy 2). God also put a time boundary on the conquest (Deut 7:22). This wasn’t an instant takeover—the conquest was to take a long time. God told them that he would drive the people out slowly over time.”
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Another Article on the subject:
“But one of the promises that God made to Israel in the Conquest was that he would give them “great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant” (Deuteronomy 6:10–11). God did not tell them to destroy cities, but to leave them structurally intact. While the Israelites did smite the inhabitants of many cities during their campaigns, there were only three cities that they completely destroyed: Jericho (Joshua 6:24), Ai (8:28), and Hazor (11:1312).”
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On the subject of Conquest and Slavery