DOES THE BIBLE APPROVE THE GENOCIDE OF THE CANAANITE NATIONS?
When Joshua led the people of Israel into the land of Canaan, the walls of Jericho fell. We even sing about this event in Sunday schools, yet many view it as the beginning of ethnic cleansing or the genocide of the Canaanite nations.
God commanded the Israelites to completely wipe out the Canaanites from the face of the earth so that they could take possession of the land.
The books of Joshua and Judges recount the sequence of wars and how the Israelites carried out God’s commands.
At the same time, many come to the following conclusion: if a good God exists, He would not have commanded something as cruel and merciless as genocide. This conclusion has led many people to lose their faith, and many atheists raise this question at the earliest opportunity.
Before we address the Israelite invasion of the land of Canaan, let’s look at a key event that took place 400 years earlier.
In Genesis 12:1–3, God promises Abraham that all the tribes of the earth will be blessed through his descendants. As a result, Abraham became the forefather of the Israelite nation and, ultimately, of Jesus Christ Himself. Part of this blessing included the eventual inheritance of the land of Canaan. This is stated in Genesis 15:18–21:
“On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: ‘To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates — the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.’”
When the time came to take possession of the land, the Canaanite tribes were already living there. Historical records tell us that these nations were extremely depraved.
In Leviticus 18:20–30, God declared that they were guilty of many abominations, including adultery (sexual immorality), child sacrifice, homosexuality, incest, and bestiality (sexual intercourse between a person and an animal). Then come the Lord’s warning words to His people:
“Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants” (Lev. 18:24–25).
God further says that these vile deeds were practiced by those nations:
“…for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled, lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people” (Lev. 18:27–29).
But here we can clearly see that the Lord warns His own chosen people not to commit these abominations; otherwise, they too will be destroyed, just like any other nations that commit such deeds. We know the history of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah very well, and we know their end. This tells us a lot about God’s character, which is holy.
Before addressing the question of whether the arrival of the Israelites constituted genocide, let us turn to the dictionary for a definition. Genocide is the extermination of certain groups of the population or entire nations for political, racial, national, ethnic, or religious reasons (the term comes from the German language and, in turn, was borrowed from the Greek: “genos” means “clan” or “origin,” and Latin “cedere” means “to kill”). In plain language, it is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
Was this command from God political in nature? Racial, national, or ethnic? As we read about this, we see that it was not. Was religion the reason? You might think, “It looks like that.” Even so, no—it was not. Just consider this: the Israelites were surrounded by numerous nations and tribes who worshiped various kinds of idols, yet God did not give such a command concerning those nations. Apparently, the reason for this command had to be weighty—and that reason was an abomination. It is one thing to worship idols and lead a peaceful, fairly moral life; it is another when abominations cross all the boundaries of human dignity.
In addition to all those abominations, the Canaanite nations practiced idolatry, witchcraft (magic), and fortune-telling. Deuteronomy 18:9–14 tells us about this:
“When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.”
They were literally mired in the occult—so deeply that they began to pass their children through the fire. In other words, having reached a state of insensibility and callousness in their hearts, they practiced human sacrifice, and not of strangers, but of their own children. Knowing this today, we would demand justice by punishing such cruel criminals.
Of course, God did not want His people to settle in such a morally fallen and corrupt society. He intended to settle Israel in the Promised Land in order to fulfill the purpose of Christ’s coming to redeem all mankind. He wanted to physically, morally, and theologically separate them (holiness) in order to convey the message of the True God hundreds of years before Christ came. Yet, unfortunately, Israel often fell into sin, imitating the customs of those nations.
By virtue of corruption and moral decline, God thus carried out His judgment on them, giving a command that confuses many:
“But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.” (Deut 20:16-18)
Judgment was carried out on the inhabitants of Canaan. This did not, however, imply any racial or ethnic superiority of the Jewish people over those tribes. This is clearly stated in Deuteronomy 9:5: “It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Since God knows the future, He knew that the time of inheriting the Promised Land coincided with the time of the fulfillment of His judgment on those nations.
Now, based on this, was God’s command cruel and immoral?
Many Christians are troubled by this question because genocide is associated with events such as the Holocaust, carried out by brutal dictators. Was it immoral? What was the motive?
Even in our civilized world, in a country like the United States of America, the death penalty is still practiced. Many people approve of judges imposing death sentences on sinister criminals. And if there is a just God, then all the more so, He has the authority and the right to carry out His judgment on sinners.
As we see in the Bible, the Lord judged these nations because of their sins. It was not an undeserved act of killing innocent people, as happens in the world when humans initiate genocide.
Skeptics hate this kind of logical reasoning. It is repulsive to them to hear it at all. Yet the skeptics themselves do not live the way they “preach.” They approve of homosexual marriages and sometimes even defend pedophiles, claiming that they were born that way and should be allowed to satisfy their desires. Then the question arises: “What would you do if your daughter or son became the victim of rape by a pedophile?”
Therefore, the Perfect God has the right to render such judgment, while people do not. Only God can judge fairly because He knows the heart of man.
Skeptics might ask, “So why destroy every single one? Were the Canaanites the most terrible people that they deserved such extermination? They were not guilty; they only followed what their parents taught them. Wouldn’t God have given them more chances to repent? If the parents were so corrupt, why blame the children?”
Only God knows the depth of the corruption of the human heart and whether such people would ever repent—or whether they would commit abominations with even greater insatiability. When God destroyed the world with water, He said, “…every intent of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart was only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5). When you study all the abominations and atrocities ever committed in human history, you can only wonder how cruel we can become without knowing God—His morality, holiness, goodness, mercy, and love. It is because of His love and mercy for us that He carries out His judgment, so that such nations do not spread their outrageously depraved culture and cause even more children to suffer.
In Genesis 15:16, God told Abraham that several more generations would pass before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, saying, “But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” In other words, there is a certain point at which God begins to execute His judgments. We see this in the Old Testament, in the book of Revelation, and in Acts in the case of Ananias and Sapphira. We are not heart-discerning enough to determine whether it was right for God to act in this way.
Often, even in Christian circles, people deny, do not want to know, or even refuse to recognize the just side of God, since He can be a Jealous God, a Consuming Fire, and even a Destroyer (Ex. 34:14; Heb. 12:29; 1 Cor. 3:17; Ezek. 7:9).
If it were not for the justice of God, nothing would compel nations to reconsider their ways and turn to good. Take note: without God, a person does not know what is right and what is wrong. Human history repeatedly bears witness to this fact. Only the fulfillment of God’s judgments stops people from committing atrocities. Imagine what would happen to us today—and what the world would look like—if tyrants achieved their intended goals.
May we accept God as the Scripture reveals Him to be!
Max Volkov in Christ
