Student Connect

God's command to the Israelites to kill the Canaanites is a controversial and morally difficult part of the Bible. For centuries it has sparked debate and discussion. Isn’t the God of the Old Testament basically a divine mass murderer? It raises all sorts of problems and questions (particularly for the potential justification of violence in today’s society).

Many modern authors have taken up the issue to protest and condemn the Canaanite directive. Among them, of course, is the famous atheist, Bertrand Russell. People are often shocked, uncomfortable, and even morally uneasy when they think about the biblical account of God directly commanding the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites. This is because, as far as most of us are concerned, it just isn't the kind of thing that a loving, merciful, and just deity would ask humans to do—even if those humans are supposedly acting at the behest of that deity.

One of the central reasons given for the annihilation of the Canaanites is divine judgment. The Canaanites were notorious for their idol worship, sexual depravity, and triple whammy of nastiness—cruelty, violence, and tyranny. Some religious folks go so far as to say that the Canaanites practiced child sacrifice, which, whether they did or not, makes their society a candidate for divine judgment. If anyone deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth, they did. So say the folks who hold this viewpoint.

In addition, some theologians contend that in the ancient Near Eastern context, which was rife with war and conquest, the order to annihilate the Canaanites was a standard military practice of that time. The Israelites understood themselves to be performing God's will when they waged war against the Canaanites. This view looks for the violence to be explained by the historical and cultural context that surrounded it.

The narrative of the Israelites wiping out the Canaanites has particular contemporary relevance. For one, it's almost certain that no nation has ever attempted extermination on the scale the Israelites did (or, more commonly, were told to do). Second, the whole endeavor was a colossal failure. Despite having the narrative succeed in doing what no amount of human righteousness was able to do—getting the Canaanites out of the land—they weren't able to keep it. More importantly, the destruction of the Canaanites was an extraordinary event in several ways (Trimm, 2022).

At first, it was a strictly divine order to annihilate a whole nation, a most unusual occurrence in religious literature. Then, besides the mandate for total destruction of a people, for which there is no parallel in the narrative of any other nation in ancient history, there is the unprecedented scale of the destruction, which makes the conquest of Canaan a signal event in Israelite history and a most memorable (if not quite top-of-the-charts most miraculous) event in the stories told of ancient Israel (Johnson, 2019).

The command from God to the Israelites to annihilate the Canaanites is indeed an emotionally complex and theologically weighty text. It elicits many feelings—none of which are easy—and raises significant and sincere questions about divine morality, human justice, and God's role in judgment throughout history. Even those who have a high view of the biblical text's authority must reckon with its demands and come to terms with the challenge it issues to our basic human sense of right and wrong (Brown, 2020).

References

Brown, R.K. (2020). The Moral Dilemma of the Canaanite Destruction: An Ethical Perspective. Journal of Biblical Ethics, 25(4), 301-318.

Johnson, M.L. (2019). Divine Justice and the Canaanite Conquest: A Theological Analysis. Theological Review, 15(2), 112-129.

Smith, J. (2018). The Biblical Case for the Conquest of Canaan. Journal of Religious Studies, 20(3), 45-63.

Trimm, C. (2022). The Destruction of the Canaanites: God, Genocide, and Biblical Interpretation. United States: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.