In past posts (here, then followed up here,here, here, and here) I’ve talked quite a bit about the little problem we have in the Old Testament: God orders the armies of Joshua to kill every single Canaanite so the Israelites can live in their land. Deuteronomy 20 lays this out, and the deed is done in Joshua 7-12.

Most Christians are at least a little bothered by this, and various solutions are regularly put forward to reconcile a good and loving God with the idea of God as a killing machine in the OT—such as:

• the Canaanites were very wicked and deserved it;
• killing Canaanites is the good and loving thing to do for all concerned;
• it wasn’t really that bad;
• God doesn’t always kill foreigners;
• don’t worry, God sometimes kills Israelites, too;
• this is all part of God’s mysterious ways and we shouldn’t question it.

I go through these sorts of explanations in the links above.

My own approach is simply to acknowledge that the Israelites were an ancient tribal people and thought of God the way other ancient tribal peoples did–as a fierce warrior who goes to battle with his people, assured of victory if they are on good terms with the deity but suffering defeat if not. This biblical portrait of God is already critiqued to a certain extent in Israel’s own writings (e.g., the book of Jonah) and is put to rest in the gospel, where Jesus says we don’t kill people to take their land anymore.

I realize, of course, that not everyone will warm up to that approach because it appears to “not take the Bible seriously.” I would protest that I am in fact taking it quite seriously by allowing the text to speak in its historical context rather than bringing to the text my own agenda or twisting to text to ease theological discomfort.

But I digress. For those seeking a more “biblical” way out of having to accept that Israel’s God was an ancient version of Megatron, these passages, straight out of the Bible, may suggest a way forward.

Exod 23:27-31

²⁷ I will send my terror in front of you, and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. ²⁸ And I will send the pestilence in front of you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. ²⁹ I will not drive them out from before you in one year, or the land would become desolate and the wild animals would multiply against you. ³⁰ Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land. ³¹ 

Lev 18:24-28

²⁴ Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, for by all these practices the nations I am casting out before you have defiled themselves. ²⁵ Thus the land became defiled; and I punished it for its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. ²⁶ But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and commit none of these abominations, either the citizen or the alien who resides among you ²⁷ (for the inhabitants of the land, who were before you, committed all of these abominations, and the land became defiled); ²⁸ otherwise the land will vomit you out for defiling it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 

Lev 20:22-23

²² You shall keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and observe them, so that the land to which I bring you to settle in may not vomit you out. ²³ You shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them. 

You see it?

In Exodus 23, it looks like a pestilence of some sort (famine? locusts?) by God’s hand is what will drive out the Canaanites: it will throw them into confusion and so they will turn their backs on the Israelites. This process, we are told, will happen gradually. But note there is no word of annihilating the Canaanites by war.

In Leviticus, we see another side to all this. Note the use of the past tense in these passages. Even though these words from God are spoken on Mt. Sinai, i.e., before Israel entered Canaan 40 years later, the expulsion of the inhabitants of Canaan issomething God did. The Canaanites are vomited out of the land already.

These passages present an alternate view on how the Canaanites were ousted from the land (expulsion, either already or in the future) than what we find on Deuteronomy and Joshua (annihilation). The Bible carries with it multiple traditions of how the Israelites came into the land. (see also Numbers 33:50-56, which speaks only of “displacing” the Canaanites, not annihilating them).

Note, too, that the gradual displacement of the Canaanites in Exodus 23 coheres somewhat with the picture given in Judges as opposed to the rapid Blitzkrieg victory tour depicted in Joshua 7-12 (e.g., Joshua 11:23, “So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war.”).

On the one hand, this is good news if you want to think of Israel’s settlement of Canaan in biblical terms that also takes the edge of the violence. On the other hand, this is bad news if you want to follow the Bible, since the Bible explains how the Canaanites ceased living in their land in two mutually exclusive ways–i.e., the Bible does not speak with “one voice,” which I know for some is more troubling than the thought of God killing off a population.

You can’t have everything.

If you want to read more about this, see Baruch J. Schwartz, “Reexamining the Fate of the ‘Canaanites’ in the Torah Traditions (pp. 151-70, Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume : Studies in the Bible and the Ancient Near East, Qumran, and Post-Biblical Judaism, Eisenbrauns, 2004).

“the God of the Old Testament is a psychopathic monster” 

God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites

In the 1930s and 40s, the Nazi regime committed state-sponsored genocide of so-called “inferior races.” Of the approximately nine million Jews who lived in Europe at the beginning of the 1930s, some six million of them were exterminated. The Nazis murdered approximately one million Jewish children, two million Jewish women, and three million Jewish men. The Jews were starved, gassed, and experimented on like animals. In addition, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime slaughtered another three million Poles, Soviets, gypsies, and people with disabilities (see “Holocaust,” 2011 for more information). Most sane people, including Christians and many atheists (e.g., Antony Flew, Wallace Matson), have interpreted the Nazis’ actions for what they were—cruel, callous, and nefarious. 

Some 3,400 years before the Holocaust, the God of the Bible commanded the Israelites to “destroy all the inhabitants of the land” of Canaan (Joshua 9:24). They were to conquer, kill, and cast out the Hittites, Girga****es, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Exodus 23:23; Deuteronomy 7:1-2; Joshua 3:10). After crossing the Jordan River, we learn in the book of Joshua that the Israelites “utterly destroyed all that was in the city [of Jericho], both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword…. [T]hey burned the city and all that was in it with fire” (Joshua 6:21,24). They also “utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai” (Joshua 8:26), killing 12,000 men and women and hanging their king (8:25,29). In Makkedah and Libnah, the Israelites “let none remain” (Joshua 10:28,30). They struck Lachish “and all the people who were in it with the edge of the sword” (10:32). The Israelites then conquered Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor (10:33-39; 11:1-1). “So all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took and struck with the edge of the sword. He utterly destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded” (Joshua 11:12). 

God had the Israelites kill countless thousands, perhaps millions, of people throughout the land of Canaan. It was genocide in the sense that it was a planned, systematic, limitedextermination of a number of nation states from a relatively small area in the Middle East (cf. “Genocide,” 2000; cf. also “Genocide,” 2012). But, it was not a war against a particular race (from the Greek genos) or ethnic group. Nor were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.

Still, many find God’s commands to conquer and destroy the Canaanite nation states problematic. How could a loving God instruct one group of people to kill and conquer another group? America’s most well-known critic of Christianity in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Thomas Paine (one of only a handful of America’s Founding Fathers who did not claim to be a Christian), called the God of the Old Testament “the Mars of the Jews, the fighting God of Israel,” Who was “boisterous, contemptible, and vulgar” (Paine, 1807). Two centuries later, Richard Dawkins (arguably the most famous atheist in the world today), published his book The God Delusion, which soon became a New York Times bestseller. One of the most oft-quoted phrases from this work comes from page 31, where Dawkins called God, a “racist, infanticidal, genocidal…capriciously malevolent bully” (2006). According to one search engine, this quote (in part or in whole) is found on-line approximately one million times. The fact is, critics of the God of the Bible are fond of repeating the allegation that, because of His instruction to the Israelites to kill millions of people in their conquest of Canaan, the God of the Bible has (allegedly) shown Himself to be an unruly, shameful, offensive, genocidal, “evil monster” (Dawkins, p. 248; cf. Hitchens, 2007, p. 107).

WAS GOD’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST CANAAN IMMORAL?

How could a supremely good (Mark 10:18), all-loving (1 John 4:8), perfectly holy God (Leviticus 11:44-45) order the Israelites to slay with swords myriads of human beings, letting “none remain” in Canaan? Is such a planned, systematic extermination of nations not equivalent to the murderous actions of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s, as atheists and other critics of Christianity would have us believe? In truth, God’s actions in Israel’s conquest of Canaan were in perfect harmony with His supremely loving, merciful, righteous, just, and holy nature.

Punishing Evildoers is Not Unloving

Similar to how merciful parents, principals, policemen, and judges can justly administer punishment to rule-breakers and evildoers, so too can the all-knowing, all-loving Creator of the Universe. Loving parents and principals have administered corporal punishment appropriately to children for years (cf. Proverbs 13:24). Merciful policemen, who are constantly saving he lives of the innocent, have the authority (both from God and the government—Romans 13:1-4) to kill a wicked person who is murdering others. Just judges have the authority to sentence a depraved child rapist to death. Loving-kindness and corporal or capital punishment are not antithetical. Prior to conquering Canaan, God commanded the Israelites, saying,

You shall not hate your brother in your heart…. You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…. And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself (Leviticus 19:17-18,33-34; cf. Romans 13:9).

The faithful Jew was expected, as are Christians, to “not resist an evil person” (Matthew 5:39) but rather “go the extra mile” (Matthew 5:41) and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39). “Love,” after all, “is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10; cf. Matthew 22:36-40). Interestingly, however, the Israelite was commanded to punish (even kill) lawbreakers. Just five chapters after commanding the individual Israelite to “not take vengeance,” but “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), God twice said that murderers would receive the death penalty (Leviticus 24:21,17).

The Wickedness of the Inhabitants of Canaan

The Canaanite nations were punished because of their extreme wickedness. God did not cast out the Canaanites for being a particular race or ethnic group. God did not send the Israelites into the land of Canaan to destroy a number of righteous nations. On the contrary, the Canaanite nations were horribly depraved. They practiced “abominable customs” (Leviticus 18:30) and did “detestable things” (Deuteronomy 18:9, NASB). They practiced idolatry, witchcraft, soothsaying, and sorcery. They attempted to cast spells upon people and call up the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).

Their “cultic practice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious” (Unger, 1954, p. 175). Their “deities…had no moral character whatever,” which “must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,” including sensuous nudity, orgiastic nature-worship, snake worship, and even child sacrifice (Unger, p. 175; cf. Albright, 1940, p. 214). As Moses wrote, the inhabitants of Canaan would “burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:30). The Canaanite nations were anything but “innocent.” In truth, “[t]hese Canaanite cults were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees” (Unger, 1988). They were so nefarious that God said they defiled the land and the land could stomach them no longer—“the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25). 

The Longsuffering of God

Unlike the foolish, impulsive, quick-tempered reactions of many men (Proverbs 14:29), the Lord is “slow to anger and great in mercy” (Psalm 145:8). He is “longsuffering…, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Immediately following a reminder to the Christians in Rome that the Old Testament was “written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,” the apostle Paul referred to God as “the God of patience” (Romans 15:4-5). Throughout the Old Testament, the Bible writers portrayed God as longsuffering.

Though in Noah’s day, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth” and “ever intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), “the Divine longsuffering waited” (1 Peter 3:20). (It seems as though God delayed flooding Earth for 120 years as His Spirit’s message of righteousness was preached to a wicked world—Genesis 6:3; 2 Peter 2:5.) In the days of Abraham, God ultimately decided to spare the iniquitous city of Sodom, not if 50 righteous people were found living therein, but only 10 righteous individuals.

And what about prior to God’s destruction of the Canaanite nations? Did God quickly decide to cast them out of the land? Did He respond to the peoples’ wickedness like an impulsive, reckless mad-man? Or was He, as the Bible repeatedly states and exemplifies, longsuffering? Indeed, God waited. He waited more than four centuries to bring judgment upon the inhabitants of Canaan. Although the Amorites were already a sinful people in Abraham’s day, God delayed in giving the descendants of the patriarch the Promised Land. He would wait until the Israelites had been in Egypt for hundreds of years, because at the time that God spoke with Abraham “the iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). [NOTE: “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient inhabitants, as they are here” (Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, 1997).] In Abraham’s day, the inhabitants of Canaan were not so degenerate that God would bring judgment upon them. However, by the time of Joshua (more than 400 years later), the Canaanites’ iniquity was full, and God used the army of Israel to destroy them.

Yes, God is longsuffering, but His longsuffering is not an “eternal” suffering. His patience with impenitent sinners eventually ends. It ended for a wicked world in the days of Noah. It ended for Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham. And it eventually ended for the inhabitants of Canaan, whom God justly destroyed.

What About the Innocent Children?

The children of Canaan were not guilty of their parents’ sins (cf. Ezekiel 18:20); they were sinless, innocent, precious human beings (cf. Matthew 18:3-5; see Butt, 2003). So how could God justly take the lives of children, any children, “who have no knowledge of good and evil” (Deuteronomy 1:39)? The fact is, as Dave Miller properly noted, “Including the children in the destruction of such populations actually spared them from a worse condition—that of being reared to be as wicked as their parents and thus face eternal punishment. All persons who die in childhood, according to the Bible, are ushered to Paradise and will ultimately reside in Heaven. Children who have parents who are evil must naturally suffer innocently while on Earth (e.g., Numbers 14:33)” (Miller, 2009). [NOTE: For a superb, extensive discussion on the relationship between (1) the goodness of God, (2) the contradictory, hideousness of atheism, and (3) God bringing about the death of various infants throughout history, see Kyle Butt’s article “Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” (2009).]

CONCLUSION

Though the enemies of the God of the Bible are frequently heard criticizing Israel’s conquest of Canaan, the fact is, such a conquest was in complete harmony with God’s perfectly loving, holy, and righteous nature. After patiently waiting for hundreds of years, God eventually used the Israelites to bring judgment upon myriads of wicked Canaanites. Simultaneously, He spared their children a fate much worse than physical death—the horror of growing up in a reprehensible culture and becoming like their hedonistic parents—and immediately ushered them into a pain-free, marvelous place called Paradise (Luke 16:19-31; 23:43).

REFERENCES

Albright, William F. (1940), From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins).

Butt, Kyle (2003), “Do Babies Go to Hell When They Die?” Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=1201.

Butt, Kyle (2009), “Is God Immoral for Killing Innocent Children?” Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=11&article=260.

Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

“Genocide” (2000), The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin), fourth edition.

“Genocide” (2012), Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide.

Hitchens, Christopher (2007), God is Not Great (New York: Twelve).

“Holocaust” (2011), Encyclopedia.com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Holocaust.aspx#1.

Jamieson, Robert, et al. (1997), Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Bible Commentary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).

Miller, Dave (2009), “Did God Order the Killing of Babies?” Apologetics Press,http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=2810.

Paine, Thomas (1807), “Essay on Dream,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/paine/dream.htm.

Unger, Merrill F. (1954), Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan).

Unger, Merrill F. (1988), “Canaan,” The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).

Commandment for Genocide?

By

David Steinberg

david@adath-shalom.ca

http://www.houseofdavid.ca/

In Ethannan, Ekev and Shoftim there are unambiguous divine instructions to wipe out all the Canaanites[1] – men, women and children.  The operative verses are -

Deuteronomy, chapter 7

1: "When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir'ga****es, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb'usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 
2: and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. 
3: You shall not make marriages with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. 
4: For they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 
5: But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Ashe'rim, and burn their graven images with fire. 
6: "For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. 
16: And you shall destroy all the peoples that the LORD your God will give over to you, your eye shall not pity them; neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.

Deuteronomy, chapter 20

16: But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 
17: but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per'izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb'usites, as the LORD your God has commanded; 
18: that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God.

Also relevant is the following from Joshua, chapter 11

10: And Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and smote its king with the sword; for Hazor formerly was the head of all those kingdoms. 
11: And they put to the sword all who were in it, utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed, and he burned Hazor with fire. 
12: And all the cities of those kings, and all their kings, Joshua took, and smote them with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded. 
13: But none of the cities that stood on mounds did Israel burn, except Hazor only; that Joshua burned. 
14: And all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, the people of Israel took for their booty; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, and they did not leave any that breathed.

Given the importance of this issue in the post-Holocaust period, I had expected Etz Hayim to deal with it seriously and at length.  Regrettably the treatment in Etz Hayim is inferior even to that in the old, pre-Holocaust, Hertz Humash. This is astonishing as its prime source for Deuteronomy - the JTS Commentary by Tigai - has a whole excursus (pp. 470-472) on the subject.

Plaut does a rather better job (Following is quoted from The Torah: A Modern Commentary by W. Gunther Plaut)

“The Treatment of Conquered Nations

“The Torah instructs the Israelites to "doom" the idolatrous nations in Canaan and to show them no pity. This provision is in stark contrast to the pervasive humaneness of the book, and therefore attempts of various kinds have been made to explain or defend this harshness and to make clear how a loving and caring God could be seen to issue such edicts.

“An early attempt was made in Talmudic days. The Hebrew for "show them no pity" (lo teHannem) was read as "do not grant them [land]," as if the text read lo taHnem), that is, do not sell real estate to "them-a rendering which leaned on the warning in Exod. 23:33 not to let them dwell "in your land". But even if one would deem this interpretation feasible (which. it is not, in view of the clear Masoretic text), one could not argue away the provision of Deut. 20:16 which, using another word, unequivocally says, "You shall not let a soul remain alive."

“The text has further been defended on the grounds of necessity: unless the native people were done away with, they would ensnare Israel with their idolatrous practices, and the maintenance of the Sinaitic covenant was a task overshadowing all else. God's plans for humanity could not and cannot be measured by human considerations. To emphasize this point, S. R. Hirsch interpreted the twice issued injunction of verses 2 and 16 to show that repetition was needed because it went so much against the sensibilities of the Israelites. However, no student of history can easily accept such a reading, for all too many humans have fallen victim to inquisitors and crusading warriors who pretended to act out of the highest religious motives. And already in talmudic times the notion was rejected that an Almighty God would agree to wipe idolatry off the face of the earth, though He had the power to do so.

“One comes closer to an understanding of the Torah if one abandons efforts to shield it from criticism and sees it in the light of its own time, its values, and standards.  "The custom to 'dedicate' an enemy to the deity, or to ban him, or after a victory to annihilate him, is told us of various Near Eastern nations as well as of the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Germans. Since the sensitivities of the ancients were not offended by the rigor of this procedure, Moses could use this harsh war practice as a means to shield Israel from pagan infection" .

“But even this interpretation does not do the text full justice, for it ascribes to Moses a point of view which may not have been his at all. Moreover, and most important: the unyielding tenor of these provisions stands in sharp contrast to the fact that such a policy of annihilation was, never carried out-the Canaanites were not annihilated. In fact, in Judg. 3:1, God himself is said to have abrogated His original command (see above, at verse 22). Later, in retrospect-taking Deuteronomy to be a post-settlement and not a Mosaic document-the reader was told that the rampant idolatry which characterized Israel's history for centuries could have been avoided had the native peoples been destroyed. Note that the sermon warns the Israelites not to intermarry with the idolaters -the very idolaters who were supposed to be doomed!

“A proper understanding, then, would view these passages as retrojections of what could and might have been, and the sentiments were acceptable in view of the common practices of the times.”

This last view is well stated by G H Davies in Peake’s Commentary on the Bible (Nelson 1962)

“Israelites and their Neighbours- The Levitical preacher returns to his transition theme and takes his hearers back in imagination to the eve of their entry into the promised land. He instructs his people in the duties proper to that situation. They are to destroy their idolatrous neighbours, to have no dealings of any kind such as commerce or matrimony, and they are to destroy the shrines and their contents. The command to destroy utterly, that is to put to the ban, the different peoples of Canaan seems at first to be a blot upon the humanitarian outlook of Deuteronomy. This command is given in order to prevent idolatry. Now for Deuteronomy idolatry can only have one outcome and that is the destruction of Israel. It is through idolatry and only through idolatry that Israel can destroy itself and thus bring to naught God's purpose for Israel. The choice before Deuteronomy then was either to live with these peoples of Canaan, which would inevitably bring about idolatry and so the death of Israel, or to destroy these peoples and so remove the greatest cause of idolatry. It is more evil to be idolatrous than to slay these peoples. Thus the real meaning of idolatry for Deuteronomy begins to be clear for us, even though many moral difficulties in the command remain.

“It must however be remembered that the preacher was only laying down what he considered to be the ideal policy, namely, extermination. In actual fact he was preaching to people who had long settled in the land, had long lived with these groups and had frequently been idolatrous. His words show the situation confronting him. He bids his hearers exterminate idolatry. That is what had not happened. He then bids his hearers to make no covenants or marriages with them. That is what in fact did happen. So Deuteronomy faces the problem of Israel's contemporary idolatry.

Accordingly his second solution is the destruction of Canaanite altars with their accompanying stone and wooden ('ashe'rim) symbols of deity and images. The sanctuaries are the centres of holiness, blessing amd life for the Canaanites, and to destroy them is to destroy the life and body of Canaanite religion.”

Tigay also has an interesting discussion in The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy by Jeffrey H. Tigay 1996

“The Proscription of the Canaanites (7:1-2, 7:16and 20:15-18)

“According to Deuteronomy 7:1-2, 7:16 and 20:15-18, when the Israelites enter the promised land they are to wipe out the Canaanites living there. The terms referring to this requirement are the verb haHarem, "proscribe," and the nounHerem, "proscription," "a thing proscribed." Deuteronomy states this as an unconditional mandate and leaves no room for sparing any Canaanites in the promised land. Modern critical scholars and traditional Jewish exegesis hold, each for different reasons, that at the time when Israel entered the promised land there was actually no such policy of unconditional proscription of the Canaanites. Traditional exegesis holds that Deuteronomy in fact does not requireunconditional proscription. Modern scholars hold that it does, but that this policy is purely theoretical and did not exist when Israel entered the land.

“In 7:1-2, 7:16, the command to doom the Canaanites is clearly unconditional and offering them terms of submission is prohibited. That 20:15-18 is also meant unconditionally is indicated by its opening clause, "Thus you shall deal with all towns that lie very far from you," that is, with foreign, non-Canaanite cities. "Thus" refers back to verse 10, which requires Israel to offer to spare cities that surrender. Verses 15-17 indicate that this offer is made only to cities outside the promised land and that the Canaanites in the land are to be denied this option. This interpretation of the law is consistent with Joshua 6-11(except for 11:19-20, mentioned below), according to which surrender was not offered to the cities of Canaan when Joshua conquered them.

“According to 20:18, the aim of this unconditional requirement is to rid the land of Canaanites, who might influence Israelites to adopt their abhorrent rites, such as child sacrifice and various occult practices (12:31;18:9-12). Note that it is particularly abhorrent rites, and not beliefs, that prompt this policy. By itself, worship of astral bodies and other gods by Canaanites and other pagans is not counted against them as a sin, since Deuteronomy holds that God assigned such worship to them (see 4:19; 32:8; and Excursuses 7 and 31). Exodus, too, requires ridding the land of the Canaanites to prevent them from influencing Israel, though it prescribes expulsion rather than annihilation. 1 The aim of these policies is defensive, and no action is prescribed against idolatry or idolaters outside Israelite territory. These policies are not based on ethnicity; Deuteronomy prescribes the same treatment for Israelite cities that lapse into idolatry (13:13-19).

“Modern scholars hold that this law is purely theoretical and was never in effect. In their view, the populations of only a few Canaanite cities were annihilated, but most were not. There is much evidence in favor of this view. Archaeology has found only a few Canaanite cities that seem to have been destroyed by the Israelites when they arrived in the land at the beginning of the Iron Age (ca. 1200 B.C.E.). As noted above, pre-Deuteronomic laws, in Exodus, speak of the Canaanites being expelled rather than annihilated, and the narratives of Judges, Kings, and Joshua 15-17 indicate that many were neither expelled nor annihilated but were spared and subjected to forced labor.3 Some scholars suggest that even Deuteronomy did not originally require annihilating the Canaanites. In their view, Deuteronomy's original law consisted only of 20:10-14, according to which all cities are to be offered terms of submission. They note that Joshua11:19,Joshua 15-17, and Judges all reflect this form of the law. In this view the following paragraph in Deuteronomy, verses 15-18, is a later supplement that modifies the original law by restricting the requirement to offer the option of surrender to foreign, non-Canaanite cities. This supplement is reflected in Deuteronomy 7:1-5, 16-26, and the narratives of Joshua 6-11 (except for Joshua 11:19-20), but it is based on a theoretical reconstruction, conceived at a later time when the Canaanites had ceased to exist as a discernible element of the population in Israel, to account for their disappearance.

“If this is the case, where did the idea of proscribing the Canaanites come from? The historical books, as noted, indicate that the invading Israelites did proscribe some Canaanite cities. Proscription was a well-known practice in the ancient world. One type of proscription was the religious practice of devoting property, cattle, or persons (perhaps the victims of sacrificial vows, such as Jephthah's daughter) irrevocably to a deity, that is, to a sanctuary and the priests, sometimes by destruction or killing. Another type was punitive proscription, which consisted of executing those who committed severe offenses against the gods. This type is prescribed by Exodus 22:17 for individual idolaters, and by Deuteronomy 13:13-18for idolatrous cities. Proscription of enemy armies and populations to the gods is known from various places in the ancient world. King Mesha of Moab proscribed the Israelite inhabitants of some towns in Transjordan to his god when he recaptured former Moabite territory there. Other parallels are known from Mesopotamia and ancient Europe. In the context of ancient warfare, in which the gods were believed to be the main fighters and human antagonists their enemies, proscription of the enemy's population seemed to be a natural way for an army to express devotion to a deity. A case in point is God's command to Saul to proscribe the Amalekites to avenge their ancient ambush of the Israelites. Proscription was not considered necessary or obligatory in most cases, but was something that an army might vow to do to induce divine aid in critical circumstances, such as before a crucial battle or a counterattack following a defeat. Examples of this are Israel's proscription of Arad and Ai after initial defeats by them, and the proscription of Jericho at the start of Israel’s campaign for the promised land.

“Deuteronomy appears to have inferred from cases like these that the disappearance of the Canaanites was due to a systematic policy of proscription.  Aware that there were no discernible Canaanites left in Israel, aware from Exodus and Numbers that the land was to be rid of them, aware of Exodus 22:17,which requires proscription of Israelite idolaters, and mindful of its own law requiring proscription of idolatrous Israelite cities, Deuteronomy must have assumed that God, in His zeal to protect Israel from exposure to pagan abominations, had required eliminating the Canaanites by the same means. It is interesting, however, that Deuteronomy never speaks of proscribing the victims to God. It uses proscription in a purely secular way, meaning simply "destruction." It is not a sacrifice to God but a practical measure to prevent the debasement of Israelite conduct.

“Traditional Jewish commentators, as mentioned, do not believe that Deuteronomy means to proscribe the Canaanites unconditionally. The Sifrei and other halakhic sources reason that since the express purpose of the law is to prevent the Canaanites from influencing the Israelites with their abhorrent religious practices (v. 18), if they abandoned their paganism and accepted the moral standards of the Noachide laws they were to be spared. Maimonides holds that verse 10 requires that Israel offer terms of surrender to all cities, Canaanite included. In his view, when verse 15says "thus you shall deal" with non-Canaanite cities, it is not referring to, and limiting, verse 10, but verse 14, which calls for sparing the women and children of a city taken in battle. In his view this means that all cities must be given the option of surrender; the difference between Canaanite and foreign cities is only that if foreign cities reject the offer, only their men are to be killed, but if Canaanite cities reject the offer, their entire population is to be killed. This view is compatible with Joshua 11:19,which implies that Canaanite cities could have saved themselves by surrendering: "Not a single city made terms [hishlimah] with the Israelites; all were taken in battle."

“These arguments notwithstanding, it is clear from 7:1-2 and 16 that Deuteronomy's demand for proscription of the Canaanites is indeed unconditional. The rabbis' rejection of this view is a reflection of their own sensibilities. As M. Greenberg has observed, they must have regarded this understanding of the law as implausible because it is so harsh and inconsistent with other values, such as the prophetic concept of repentance and the prediction that idolaters will someday abandon false gods, and the halakhic principle that wrongdoers may not be punished unless they have been warned that their action is illegal and informed of the penalty. In effect, they used interpretation to modify and soften the law in deference to other, overriding principles.”

Annex

Ethically Unacceptable Elements in the Scriptures of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Personally, I have grave doubts whether the Quran, the Torah or the New Testament can be truly seen except against the social, cultural and political contexts of their origin.  It is not just cultural distortions of pure, primitive, Judaism, Christianity or Islam and their respective scriptures that have caused these groups to have become oppressive within themselves (e.g. in the unfair treatment of women), in how they have treated minorities etc.  On the contrary, within their very scriptures are the seeds of such oppression and hence you can have a serious Islamic scholar approving of terrorism.  It might similarly be possible for serious fundamentalist Christian or Jewish scholars to do the same under the right circumstances. To mention a very few examples where scriptures license acts which would be unconscionable to most people  – the Torah’s demand that the Israelites exterminate the Canaanites (see above); the New Testament’s anti-Jewish passages[ii] (Matthew 23; John 5:37-40, 8:37-47; Acts 7:51-53; Gal. 4:21-31; IThes. 2:13-16; Rom. 9:1-33); and the Quran’s anti-Jewish passages (e.g. Allah stamped wretchedness upon the Jews because they killed the prophets and disbelieved Allah's revelations)

As long as the three Abrahamic religions hold on to various forms of scriptural verbal revelation or inerrancy, as is the case with Orthodox Judaism, many varieties of Christianity, and generally in Islam, it will be hard to develop a rationale for rejection of these hateful teachings.  Conservative and Reform Judaism and many Catholic and Protestant groups have rejected verbal revelation or inerrancy seeing scriptures as the work of human authors, who may have been inspired but nevertheless could not but import many of their cultural views into their writings.  Such a view of scripture makes it much easier to reject elements in scripture that conflict with modern ethical sensitivities.  Of course, the flip side of this approach is the creation of crises of authority with the religious communities throwing away old certainties.

5. Diplomacy was the usual method

When Israel would go to war with another nation, they would usually offer a peace treaty first. Deuteronomy 20:10 states: “When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace.” If the people surrendered, they were not to be harmed. However, they would become laborers in Israel. This might seem harsh, but don’t forget the ancient Near Eastern context. When the Ammonites surrounded one of the cities of Israel, they required every citizen to gouge out one of their eyes, as a term of peace and surrender (1 Sam. 11:1-2)! This is why the neighboring nations considered the Hebrew kings to be “merciful kings” (1 Kings 20:31).

This peace treaty was not offered to these seven people groups in Canaan (e.g. Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jubusites), as Deuteronomy 20:16 makes explicit. This was probably because the Jews originally came to King Sihon (of the Amorites) with “words of peace” (Deut. 2:26), but the king was “not willing” to let them even pass through his land (Deut. 2:30). However, those willing to abandon Canaan were probably spared. For instance, Rahab’s entire family was spared from judgment (Josh. 2:13), because she surrendered to the Jews. The remaining Canaanites were killed because they chose to stay.[12]

6. Images in Joshua were mild compared to the ancient Near East

In the book of Joshua, we read,

(Josh. 10:24-27) When they brought these kings out to Joshua, Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with him, “Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings.” So they came near and put their feet on their necks.25 Joshua then said to them, “Do not fear or be dismayed! Be strong and courageous, for thus the LORD will do to all your enemies with whom you fight.” 26 So afterward Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees; and they hung on the trees until evening. 27 It came about at sunset that Joshua gave a command, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves, and put large stones over the mouth of the cave, to this very day.

When moderners read this passage, many are horrified. This looks more like a scene out of the movie Braveheart, rather than a passage from the Bible! And yet, when we compare this with the ancient Near East, we see that this was actually quite tame. Copan writes,

The Neo-Assyrian annals of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) take pleasure in describing the flaying of live victims, the impaling of others on poles, and the heaped up bodies for show. They boast of how the king mounded bodies and placed heads into piles; the king bragged of gouging out troops’ eyes and cutting off their ears and limbs, followed by his displaying their heads all around a city.[13]

War was a bloody part of the ancient Near East. Yet in Joshua 10, we read that these kings were not tortured or humiliated. Instead, they were given a quick, military execution. By hanging their bodies, Joshua was giving an object lesson for the people that these evil men were going to be judged by God for their cruelty (Deut. 21:23). That is, he was emphasizing that this was not human judgment—but divine judgment.

7. “Utterly destroy” might not be absolute language

When God gave the command to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites, it is possible that this was akin to ancient Near Eastern war-rhetoric or hyperbolic language. There are several reasons for believing this:

First, some Canaanites survived the war, even though Joshua claimed that they were “all” destroyed. Joshua records:

“Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings. He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded… Thus Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negev, all that land of Goshen, the lowland, the Arabah, the hill country of Israel and its lowland” (Josh. 10:40; 11:16).

Repeatedly, Joshua states that he fulfilled the command to utterly destroy the Canaanites “just as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded” (Josh. 11:12, 15, 20). Yet repeatedly, we also read that Joshua did not take all of the land (Josh. 13:1-5), and he did not dispossess all of the people (Josh. 13:13). Joshua states that he had “utterly destroyed” the Anakim people (Josh. 11:21-22), yet later in the book Caleb asks permission to drive out the Anakim (Josh. 14:12-15; 15:13-19). Judges records that “the Canaanites persisted in living in that land” (Judg. 1:21) and “they did not drive [the Canaanites] out completely” (Judg. 1:28). Later in Solomon’s day, we read that the “Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites” still existed in the land, because “the sons of Israel were unable to destroy utterly” them (1 Kings 9:20-21).

Furthermore, Moses writes that a future generation of Israelites “will be utterly destroyed” (Deut. 4:26). Of course, the nation of Israel survived being “utterly destroyed.”

Take another example. God commanded King Saul, “Go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (1 Sam. 15:3). Of course, Saul complies with this command, and he “utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword” (1 Sam. 15:8). Yet later in the same book, David’s men fought against a number of tribes, including the “utterly destroyed” Amalekites (1 Sam. 28:8; cf. 1 Chron. 4:43). These are not errors in the text. Instead, we may be misinterpreting the text, when we hold that these are absolute statements.

Even after the war with Canaan, the Jews were still warned about intermarriage and following after these people (Josh. 23:12-13; Deut. 7:2-5). These warnings would be useless, unless there were still survivors.

This provides evidence for the interpretation that the absolute language of this war may not be absolute. Instead, this could be a case of hyperbolic language, whereby the author uses all-encompassing language for effect. We might say, “Everyone has heard the new Kanye West song” or “The whole city was in uproar after the news report.” The Bible uses hyperbolic language when saying that “the whole world” (Rom. 1:8) has heard of Christ, the “world” experienced a famine (Acts 11:28), or “every nation under heaven” came to Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:5).

Second, war-rhetoric was common in the ANE. Copan cites usages in Egypt’s Tuthmosis III, Hittite king Mursilli II, Ramses II, the Merneptah Stele, Moab’s king Mesha, and the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib.[14] Each of these kings uses language that is similar to Joshua. While the king claimed that “all” were killed, some still survived. Put another way, this war-rhetoric was used to describe utter destruction of the nation, rather than of each individual person. We shouldn’t consider these statements false; we would consider them hyperbolic.

Third, the focus of this war was to destroy the religious life of the Canaanites and their military strongholds (Deut. 12:2-3). This is why Achan was killed for pilfering goods from the city of Ai (Josh. 7:20-26), but no one was killed for sparing civilian life—even though there were clearly survivors. OT scholar Richard Hess writes, “The stress is upon the leadership, the kings, and not the towns. The ruling elite were opposed to Joshua. Nothing is said of the citizenry of these towns and their attitude.”[15]

Fourth, Moses and Joshua use a variety of words to describe this war. Consider the usage of these terms below:

Dispossess: Moses had “dispossessed the Amorites” in his day (Num. 21:32). Yet later he writes, “You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you” (Deut. 9:1; 11:23; 18:14; 19:1; etc.).

Drive out: Moses writes that God will “send My terror ahead of you, and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you… I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land” (Ex. 23:27, 30). This teaches that the war would be a process—not an overnight event. It also implies that many of the people who left would be left alive. The same language of being “driven out” describes Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:24), Cain (Gen. 4:14), and David (1 Sam. 26:19)—all of whom were left alive.

Perish and destroy: Moses states that God would “make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land” (Deut. 28:63). Yet when this event occurred, those who fled the city were spared (Jer. 38:2, 17).

At first glance, all of these terms seems to refer to an absolute destruction of the people. Yet when we see their other usages in the Bible, we discover that these are not absolute expressions.

8. What about the women and kids?

As we have already seen, the command to “utterly destroy” could have been hyperbolic language, which was consistent with ancient Near Eastern war-rhetoric. However, a few more points can be made about women and children.

First, these cities were military fortresses. They were not for civilians. That is, these cities may not have contained a lot of women and children. Copan writes,

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… The use of ‘women’ and ‘young and old’ was merely stock ancient Near Eastern language that could be used even if women and young and old weren’t living there. The language of ‘all’ (“men and women”) at Jericho and Ai is a ‘stereotypical expression for the destruction of all human life in the fort, presumably composed entirely of combatants.’ The text doesn’t require that women and young and old must have been in these cities.[16]

The only example of a woman in one of these cities is Rahab, and she was spared (Josh. 2). Therefore, it is possible that women and children weren’t there, or if they were there, the innocent life was spared.

Second, the Canaanite women were far from innocent. In Numbers 25:1-2, we read that the Midianite women were culpable for seducing the Israelite men. This act was more than simply sleeping around. These men were seduced into Baal worship, as a result (Num. 31:16-18). Remember, Baal worship was not an innocent or innocuous religion; it was a child-sacrificing abomination! Atheist Richard Dawkins criticizes, “This merciful restraint by his soldiers infuriated Moses, and he gave orders that all the boy children should be killed, and all the women who were not virgins… Moses was not a great role model for modern moralists.”[17]

At first glance, this story seems barbaric. Dawkins apparently misses the point. The virgin women were spared, because they hadn’t seduced the men (remember Num. 25:1-2). Therefore, the culpable ones were killed, and the innocent ones were spared.

Third, what about the Canaanite children? Why did God kill the kids? As we have already pointed out, children were most likely outside of the judgment on Canaan. Joshua may have been using military war-rhetoric, and these attack sites were military fortresses—not civilian cities. However, even if children were killed, this may have been an act of God’s mercy. If these Canaanite children had grown up in this society, they could have become forced-prostitutes, murderers, or even child sacrifices, roasting on burning altars to Baal! Moreover, they would have most likely been separated from God eternally after death—given their surroundings. Because these Canaanite children died before the age of accountability (and the Bible teaches infant salvation),[18] they were taken to be directly with God at death. Therefore, while the immediate action may seem barbaric, these children would have been sent into the immediate presence of God—rather than their horrific and barbaric surroundings.

9. God has the right to judge—as the Author and Sustainer of life

All people are going to die at some point. The question is not that they will die; instead, the question is when they will die. God takes every life in the end. This is called death. Since God is the author and sustainer of life, he has rights over human life that we do not. Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked I shall return there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away…” (Job 1:21). It is God’s business how and when he decides to end our life—not ours. We live here on Earth—not as a right—but by the mercy of God. We have a sense of this, when we say that a doctor was “playing God” by reviving a patient in a hospital. Therefore, God wasn’t evil by ordering the destruction of the Canaanites. He was merely acting on the prerogatives that rightly belong to him as the author and sustainer of life.

Further Reading

Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011.

Wenham, John William. The Goodness of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1974.

Jones, Clay. “Why We Don’t Hate Sin so We don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ‘Divine Genocide’ Arguments,” Philosophia Christi n.s. 11 (2009).

[1] The war with Canaan is contained in three premier passages: the Jews departed from Sinai (Numbers 20-22), crossed the river and took over parts of southern Canaan (Josh. 6-10), and then took over northern Canaan (Josh. 11).

[2] Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 280.

[3] Wright, G. Ernest, and Floyd V. Filson. The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1945. 36.

[4] Wenham, John William. The Goodness of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1974. 126.

[5] Wenham, John William. The Goodness of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1974. 127.

[6] Clay Jones, “Why We Don’t Hate Sin so We don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ‘Divine Genocide’ Arguments,” Philosophia Christi n.s. 11 (2009): 61.

[7] Clay Jones, “Why We Don’t Hate Sin so We don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to ‘Divine Genocide’ Arguments,” Philosophia Christi n.s. 11 (2009): 61. See footnote.

[8] Wenham, John William. The Goodness of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1974. 124.

[9] Note, also, the relationship between the King and the Law in Israel. In the Pagan world, the king was the lawgiver and the commander-in-chief, who could break or revise the law at any time. When we look at OT narrative, however, we see that the king was not above the law of God; rather, he was beneath it. This concept of lex rex (“the Law is King) was utterly unknown to the Ancient Near East, which practiced rex lex (“the King is law”). For instance, Nathan confronted David about his murder and adultery on the basis of God’s law (2 Samuel 12). Elijah challenged Ahab’s murder of Naboth based on the law (1 Kings 21). Uzziah got leprosy for taking over the priestly role, which was outside of his legal jurisdiction (2 Chronicles 26).

[10] Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. 178.

[11] Even after this great and terrible judgment, the Canaanites continued to persecute the Jews (Judg. 3:13; 6:3; 7:12; 1 Sam. 15).

[12] In the same way, when Egypt was judged, many Egyptian civilians (“a mixed multitude”) were spared (Ex. 12:38). In fact, even some of Pharaoh’s people believed God and escaped judgment (Ex. 9:19-21).

[13] Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. 179.

[14] Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. 172.

[15] Hess, Richard S. Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996. 217.

[16] Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011. 175-176.

[17] Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 275.

[18] Isaiah writes that there is an age before a child is able to “know to refuse the evil and choose the good” (Is. 7:16). The children of Israel were not held responsible for the sins of their parents during the Wandering, because they had “no knowledge of good or evil” (Deut. 1:39). David believed in an afterlife, and he thought that he was going to be with God after death (Ps. 16:10-11; see also Rom. 4:6-8). Knowing this, it is interesting to point out that David said that he would go to be with his infant baby, who had died (2 Sam. 12:23). This demonstrates that his infant must be in heaven, too (see also Jesus’ teaching on the subject in Mk. 10:14; Mt. 18:3; 19:14; Jn. 9:41).

Bible passages that appear immoral today

Part 2 of 5: Mass murder and genocide

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Topics covered in this essay:

Acts of mass murder and genocide: The flood of Noah Genocide of the residents of Canaan Genocide of the Geshurites, Gezirites, and Amalekites

The flood of Noah:

Genesis 6:5-9:

"And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."

God is described as having created the earth, mankind, other living things, and the rest of the universe in the early chapters of Genesis. But he apparently was unable to foresee the future behavior of his creations. In particular, He did not predict the degree of wickedness that mankind would exhibit. He regretted his decision to create mankind. So he decided to commit the ultimate act of genocide, by murdering the entire human race: men, women, children, infants and newborns. God decided to exterminate people by drowning - a slow and painful way to die. He allowed Noah to survive, along with Noah's wife, his three sons and their wives. But the Bible states that the rest of the human race were wiped out, including young children and infants who had not reached the age of accountability.

In the 20^th century, the most serious acts of genocide involved less than 1% of the human population. Examples are: the extermination of the Armenian minority in Turkey, the extermination of Jews, Roma (Gypsies) and others by the Nazis, the extermination of the ethnic Albanians by the Serbs in Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia. The perpetrators have become the most hated of people. But the genocide resulting from the great flood is far more serious. It is recorded as having destroyed over 99% of the human race, leaving only eight humans alive. 

Genocide of the residents of Canaan:

The Israelites invaded Canaan and, under God's instructions, exterminated seven nations in widespread acts of genocide: the Girga****es, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites,  Hivites, and Jebusites. They continued to commit genocide against other groups.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2:

"... the seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."

Joshua 6:21:

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." 

This latter passage describes one event in the invasion of Canaan by the ancient Israelites. After the walls of the city of Jericho fell, the soldiers ran into the city, and murdered all its inhabitants: elderly men and women, mature men and women, pregnant women, youths, boys, girls, infants and newborns. Their goal was to entirely wipe out the Canaanite culture by destroying its people; this is one definition of genocide. Incidentally, the people were butchered by the edge of the sword, because the weapons did not have pointed ends.

Joshua 10:40-41:

"So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded. And Joshua smote them from Kadesh-barnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon." 

As recorded in Joshua 11:19-23, God had "hardened the hearts" of the Canaanites, so that all but one city attempted to fight the Hebrews in battle. The sole exception were the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. "As the LORD commanded Moses", all of the rest were defeated in battle; their cities and populations were destroyed. This included people of all ages: men, women children, infants and newborns. 

Genocides and other extreme atrocities are recorded in:

	Genesis 19: - Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for being: Uncharitable to their widows, children and poor Abusive to strangers. More details
	Joshua 8:24 - City of Ai
	Joshua 10:26 - Joshua murdered five defenseless kings of the Amorites in cold blood.
	Joshua 10:28 - City of Makkedah
	Joshua 10:29 - City of Libnah
	Joshua 10:31 - City of Lachish
	Joshua 10:33 - City of Gezer "...Joshua smote him and his people until he had left him none remaining."
	Joshua 10:34 - City of Elgon "They left none remaining."
	Joshua 10:37 - City of Hebron
	Joshua 10:38 - City of Debir
	Numbers 21:2-3 - City of Hormah
	Numbers 21:33-35: Land of Bashan "...they smote him, and his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive: and they possessed his land."
	Deuteronomy 2:21-24: The Ammonite, Horim, and Avim people.
	Deuteronomy 2:26-35 - Land of Heshbon "...we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain."
	Judges 4:16 - City of Sisera

Acts of genocide are condemned by all religions and secular groups and by the international community. 

Genocide of the Geshurites, Gezirites, and Amalekites:

1 Samuel 27:8-9:

"And David and his men went up, and invaded the Geshurites, and the Gezrites, and the Amalekites ... And David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the apparel. And David saved neither man nor woman alive"

The Living Bible translates verse 9 as saying "They didn't leave one person alive." David and his men apparently stole the animals and clothing, while killing all the people: the elderly, men, women, youths, children, infants and newborns.

References used:

1. C.M. Laymon, "The Interpreter's one volume commentary on the Bible," Abingdon, (10\99), Page 158-159.
2. J.D. Douglas, Ed., "New commentary on the whole Bible: Old Testament volume," Tyndale (1991), Page 398

Copyright © 1997 to 2012 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Latest update: 2012-JAN-22
Author: B.A. Robinson

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Support for gnostic theologies[edit]

Gnosticism is a philosophy that has undergone waves of popularity, including some at the time that Christianity and Judaism were separating. A key notion is the division between the material world, which gnostics viewed as being created by a demiurge, and a spiritual world created by the true god.^[32] Perhaps the most famous example of an early Christian Gnostic was Marcion who characterized the "God of the Old Testament" as the demiurge, and dropped the Hebrew scriptures from his version of the Bible. Marcion saw the God of the Old Testament, the Demiurge and creator of the material universe. For Marcion, the God about whom Jesus spoke was an altogether different being, a universalGod of compassion and love, who looks upon humanity with benevolence and mercy.^[33]

Marcion's teaching was repudiated by Tertullian in five treatises titled "Against Marcion" and Marcion was ultimately excommunicated by the Church of Rome.^[34]

See also[edit]

• Religious violence
• Just war theory

References[edit]

Modern violence[edit]

Radical Zionists and settlers[edit]

The motives for violence by extremist Jewish settlers in the West Bank directed at Palestinians are complex and varied. While religious motivations have been documented,^{[55][56][57][58]} the use of non-defensive violence is outside of mainstream Judaism and mainstream Zionism.^{[59][60][61][62]}

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, urged that Jewish settlement of the land should proceed by peaceful means only.^[63]Contemporary settler movements, follow Kook’s son Tzvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), who also did not advocate aggressive conquest.^[63] Critics claim that Gush Emunim and followers of Tzvi Yehuda Kook advocate violence based on Judaism's religious precepts.^[64] Ian Lustick, Benny Morris, and Nur Masalha assert that radical Zionist leaders relied on religious doctrines for justification for the violent treatment of Arabs in Palestine, citing examples where pre-state Jewish militia used verses from the Bible to justify their violent acts, which included expulsions and massacres such as the one at Deir Yassin.^[65]

After Baruch Goldstein carried out the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in 1994, his actions were widely interpreted to based on the radical Zionist ideology of the Kachmovement, and was condemned as such by mainstream religious and secular Jews and praised as such by radical Zionists.^{[4]:6–11[66][67][68][69]} Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebronand Kiryat Arba in the southern West Bank and head of the "Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria" has made speeches legitimizing the killing of non-Jews and praising Goldstein as a saint and martyr. Lior also said "a thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail".^[70][71] Lior publicly gave permission to spill blood of Arab persons and has publicly supported extreme right-wing Jewish terrorists.^[72]

In July 2010, Yitzhak Shapira who heads Dorshei Yihudcha yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, was arrested by Israeli police for writing a book that encourages the killing of non-Jews. In his book "The King's Torah" (Torat Hamelech) he wrote that under Torah and Jewish Law it is legal to kill Gentiles and even in some cases to kill the babies of enemy forces.^[73][74] Later in August 2010 police arrested rabbi Yosef Elitzur-Hershkowitz - co-author of Shapira's book - on the grounds of incitement to racial violence, possession of a racist text, and possession of material that incites to violence. While the book has been endorsed by radical Zionist leaders like Dov Lior^[55] and Yaakov Yosef^[75]it has been widely condemned by mainstream secular and religious Jews.^[55]

Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin[edit]

The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir was motivated by Amir’s personal political views and his understanding of Judaism's religious law ofmoiser (the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew in to non-Jewish authorities, thus putting a Jew's life in danger^[76]) and rodef (a bystander can kill a one who is pursuing another to murder him or her if he cannot otherwise be stopped).^[5]:91 Amir’s interpretation has been described as "a gross distortion of Jewish law and tradition"^[77]and the mainstream Jewish view is that Rabin's assassin had no Halachic basis to shoot Prime Minister Rabin.^[14]

Extremist organizations[edit]

In the course of history there have been some organizations and individuals that endorsed or advocated violence based on their interpretation to Jewish religious principles. Such instances of violence are considered by mainstream Judaism to be extremist aberrations, and not representative of the tenets of Judaism.^[78][79]

• Kach (defunct) and Kahane Chai ^[80][81][82]
• Gush Emunim Underground (defunct): formed by members of Gush Emunim.^[83]
• Brit HaKanaim (defunct): an organisation operating in Israel from 1950 to 1953 with the objective of imposing Jewish religious law in the country and establishing a Halakhic state.^[84]
• The Jewish Defense League (JDL): founded in 1969 by Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City, with the declared purpose of protecting Jews from harassment andantisemitism.^[85] FBI statistics show that, from 1980 to 1985, 15 terrorist attacks were attempted in the U.S. by members of the JDL.^[86] The FBI’s Mary Doran described the JDL in 2004 Congressional testimony as "a proscribed terrorist group".^[87] The National Consortium for the Study of Terror and Responses to Terrorism states that, during the JDL's first two decades of activity, it was an "active terrorist organization.".^[85][88] Kahanist groups are banned in Israel.^[89][90][91]

Views on Violence against Islam[edit]

While Judaism contains commandments to exterminate idol worship, according to all rabbinic authorities, Islam contains no trace of idolatry.^[92] Rabbi Hayim David HaLevi stated that in modern times no one matches the biblical definition of an idolater, and therefore ruled that Jews in Israel have a moral responsibility to treat all citizens with the highest standards of humanity.^[92]

Following an arson incident in 2010, in which a mosque in Yasuf village was desecrated, apparently by settlers from the nearby Gush Etzion settlement bloc,^[92][93][94] the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger condemned the attack and equated the arson to Kristallnacht, he said: "This is how the Holocaust began, the tragedy of the Jewish people of Europe."^[95] Rabbi Menachem Froman, a well-known peace activist, visited the mosque and replaced the burnt Koran with new copies.^[96] The rabbi stated: "This visit is to say that although there are people who oppose peace, he who opposes peace is opposed to God" and "Jewish law also prohibits damaging a holy place." He also remarked that arson in a mosque is an attempt to sow hatred between Jews and Arabs.^[95][97]

See also[edit]

• Jewish religious terrorism
• Forcible conversion to Judaism
• Jewish ethics
• Judaism and peace
• Persecution of Jews
• Religious violence
  • Christianity and violence
  • Mormonism and violence
  • Islam and violence
  • Buddhism and violence

Bibliography[edit]