Is Killing Canaanites ‘Kosher’?

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Objection: Is Killing Canaanites ‘Kosher’?

When we think about the horrors that occurred in places like Auschwitz, Rwanda, or Bosnia, it is difficult to understand how any human could command such abhorrent acts of evil or follow such evil orders. It is evident that evil is real. But can the existence and persistence of evil be explained? The perceived problem of pain and suffering prevents many people from believing in the GOD of the Bible as being holy, loving, and perfect. Many people compare modern genocide with the destruction of the Canaanites ordered by GOD in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 7:1-2; 20:16-17). How is the complete slaughter of Canaanite men, women, and children any different from the ethnic cleansing acts or terrorist attacks that occur today? It is true that humans are sinful and have the free will to perform evil acts, but how is it that the GOD who is perfect and loving could command mass murders? If GOD is love, His command to completely destroy the Canaanites needs to be explained as an act of love. But can this be done?

A Reasonable Response

The reason behind GOD’s orders for the destruction of certain groups can be made in the following bulletin points:

• GOD is Holy and perfect and the absolute moral standard.
• Out of GOD’s love, GOD created humans for the purpose of a loving relationship with Him (Genesis 1:26-27; Psalm 8:5; Isaiah 43;7; Matthew 22:37-40; John 15:14-15; Colossians 1:16; Revelation 4:11).
• GOD’s love gave humans the great gift of free will.
• The great gift of free will allows for the possibility of evil.
• Humankind used free will to reject GOD and rebel, which is sin.
• Sin always separates from GOD because Holiness and sinfulness never mix.
• GOD’s Holy nature demands righteousness.
• GOD’s love demands mercy.
• GOD’s Law demands justice.
• Humankind, while living in their fallen and sinful state, chose to persist in rebellion of the absolute standard.
• GOD’s mercy allows the opportunity for repentance and restoration.
• Certain groups of humankind refused to repent and allowed pride to puff them up, thus separating them from the Savior.
• Though GOD is patient and merciful, justice must ultimately be served.
• When judgment comes, it is to serve as an act of justice, which is the loving thing to do.

The Bible And Warfare

Because the conquest of the Canaanites is an act of warfare, we must first understand what the Bible teaches us regarding warfare before we can examine the specific order against the Canaanites. The Bible has much to say about war and the right of the state to use lethal force. The Old Testament is full of examples of GOD directing Israel to go to war against certain groups. Those were special occasions, but even long before Israel’s war campaigns, GOD specifically gave Noah and future governments the justified right to shed man’s blood as punishment for murder (Genesis 9:5-6). Ultimately, warfare in the name of GOD is justice for sinful rebellion with a greater purpose in mind in order to eliminate evil. Because this sensitive subject can easily be misconstrued, it needs to be expounded upon in order to bring clarification to an otherwise confusing command.

Many agnostics and atheists alike take GOD to court with the allegation that religion is the cause of most wars and that the Bible and history books alike affirm this claim. But is that really true? Is religion the cause of most wars? In fact, it is not. First, what do we mean by “most” wars? According to the dictionary, most means a majority. If that’s the case, religion would need to account for at least 51% of all wars. But the truth is that only about 7% of wars have been religious in nature. The truth is that most wars have been created due to secular humans who desired to play the role of GOD.

In New Testament times, the apostle Paul wrote that government has a GOD-ordained right and responsibility to protect its people and to punish evildoers (Romans 13:1-5). The examples of both Noah and Paul relate primarily to keeping the peace within a nation, but may have application for war between nations.

Jesus had the heart of a peacemaker. Although He was not speaking about foreign policy, He taught that people should love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). Christian pacifists take this to indicate that all wars are unjust and should be avoided. The New Testament has little to say about international conflict, perhaps because the world of Christ and the apostles was under Roman occupation at that time and there were no serious threats to the Roman Empire.

Christians should not blindly support their nation’s causes in war. Our kingdom is not of this world. When military action contradicts biblical commands or morals, the Christian should refuse to support war no matter the consequences. Conversely, when the government is in the right to wage war, as when it protects itself against aggressors or when it seeks to protect other nations from aggressors, Christians should support it. Unless of course, as a pacifist, you truly believe that we shouldn’t have gone to war against Hitler and the nazi regime. However, in all cases, Christians should take the lead in seeking peaceful resolution to conflict between nations if at all possible.

Jesus taught that we should turn the other cheek on personal matters. Now suppose that the United States had an official policy to always turn its cheek to evil and oppressive governments. A government that allowed its people to be persecuted and killed by invaders would be irresponsible and immoral. For evil to succeed, overcome, and conquer, people who desire good need only to do nothing.

It is arguably the case that a strong, able and available defense is the best option as an offense for keeping the peace since would-be aggressors will think twice before starting hostilities against nations who are able and available to resist and rise above. A parallel is found in a father’s responsibility to protect his family. If an intruder comes into his home, he is justified in using violence in order to protect his wife and children. But if the would-be intruder possesses foreknowledge that the father is armed and willing to defend his family, that home is less likely to be invaded. Just as we see in nature, evil typically preys upon the weak.

The overall message of the New Testament is one of peace – this is true. But in John 2:13-22, when Jesus made a whip, ran people out of the Temple, and overturned the tables, He basically told everyone, “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I will not tolerate evil in my Temple.” Even when war is justified, it should be fought in a just manner with a goal of achieving peace as well as making minimal impact on human life and the environment. When the nations of the world learn that another nation is suffering under a cruel, murderous dictator, world leaders must decide how best to stop the evil aggressions. Christians should encourage their leaders to seek peaceful solutions first, but in the event that such solutions are not possible, it seems biblically permissible to support a war whose aim is to put an end to evil.

Out With The Old And In With The New?

Some people find these Old Testament accounts of orders for warfare so disturbing that they reject them altogether. They say that the warfare stories are not accounts of the acts of GOD in history, but mere myths and legends. Does that mean we should apply the popular saying “out with the old, in with the new” to the Bible? Although it would certainly be convenient, doing so really wouldn’t make sense. For one thing, when we look closely at the New Testament, we find some passages (Revelation 6-8) that are just as bloody as the Old Testament warfare passages. Ultimately, either all Scripture is GOD-breathed or it isn’t. We cannot simply pick and choose the passages of Scripture we like and throw out the ones we don’t like. The Bible is not a buffet where you get to pick and choose only what you want. That would be both illogical and inconsistent.

People often say that the Bible is contradictory because the GOD of the Old Testament is violent and cruel while the GOD of the New Testament is loving and merciful. But the truth is that GOD’s character is consistent throughout the Bible and GOD does not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8). Yes – GOD is love – we hear people emphasize His love all the time. And they should. After all, that’s true. But remember, GOD is also absolutely pure and holy, which means He cannot ignore sin. But many atheists argue that GOD’s order to destroy the Canaanites was a direct contradiction of His sixth commandment for the people not to murder. While it is true that the act would have been considered to be murder without GOD’s divine order, it was GOD’s divine order that made it lawful and therefore acceptable. Understandably so, many atheists will argue, “This is the problem with religion! Anything goes as long as some nutcase believes God told him to do it!”

The Problem Is Perspective

Because the story of our salvation through the Savior is told from Genesis to Revelation, we simply cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament. Like a covenant marriage, the two become one. If we try to understand the reasoning behind GOD’s order to destroy a certain group of people by magnifying the wrong area, the search team is going to come up empty handed in their investigative efforts. An investigative team needs to search the right area if they’re going to find the evidence for which they’re seeking. Also, even if one is magnifying something with meaning, that something of meaning can lose its meaning if you’re too close to consider the context. Think about it: If I were to put a penny under a microscope and have you look at the magnified image, you wouldn’t be able to tell me that what you’re looking at is a penny by simply examining a magnified image unless you had prior knowledge that you were looking at a penny. Sometimes we need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Likewise, placing our focus solely on Deuteronomy 20:16-17 will not show us the entire picture. We need to zoom out so we can discover what area we truly need to magnify. Verse 18 even provides a good clue that we need to expand the area of our search.

The Bigger Picture

In order to understand GOD’s order to destroy a certain group of people, we must zoom out and view the bigger picture from an eternal perspective. The consequence of sin is death (Romans 6:23). When GOD caused the great flood in Noah’s days, He did so in order to cleanse the land from a wicked people who chose to contaminate the land with evil (Genesis 6:11-13). The Canaanites’ evil deeds originated from Ham, who gave birth to Canaan, who was considered evil (Genesis 9:18-27). Just as it is true in our present day that the influence of sinful parents typically leads children to follow their pattern of behavior, the same was true in the past. A parent’s adultery, substance abuse, manipulation, or other dysfunctional behavior establishes a pattern that children typically model as they mature. The results can be a repetition of their parents’ emotional brokenness leading to conflict, divorce, poverty, or other conditions that make their children’s, and even their grandchildren’s, lives difficult. Like ripples spreading across a pool of calm water, our actions have consequences for generations to come. Perhaps that’s why the Bible imparts some wisdom to us that we should from the very beginning direct our children on the right path so that they will walk in righteousness in their adult lives (Proverbs 22:6). The sad reality documented in the Bible is that the Canaanites – who came under GOD’s judgement – were wicked and refused to abide by GOD’s absolute moral standard.

The Wickedness Of The Canaanites

To understand GOD’s order to destroy the Canaanites, we need only to examine their wickedness. A basic knowledge of Canaanite culture reveals its inherent moral wickedness. The Canaanites were a brutal, aggressive people who engaged in deviant sexual acts. Even more abhorrent, various Greek and Latin sources bear witness to Punic child sacrifice. They also attest to a great bronze statue of Kronos, in whose arms children were placed over a fire. Textual and archaeological discoveries align with the assertions in 2Kings 23:10 and Jeremiah 32:35 that children were sacrificed to Molech in Topheth in the Valley of Hinnom. The Canaanites’ sin was so repellent that GOD said, “The land vomited out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:24-28). Even so, the destruction was directed more at the Canaanites’ polytheistic religion than at the Canaanite people per se (Deuteronomy 7:3–5,12:2-3). The judgment was not ethnically motivated. Individual Canaanites – like Rahab in Jericho – discovered that mercy follows repentance (Joshua 2; Hebrews 11:31). Another example is the Canaanite woman of great faith found in Matthew 15:21-28.

Justice And Mercy

The slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior. And unlike Islam who uses conquest in order to convert people into their religion by force, the Israelites were not converting people to Judaism; rather, they were administering judgment, which was an act of justice. GOD demands just laws and just rulers. GOD’s desire is that the wicked turn from their sin rather than die (Ezekiel 18:31-32, 33:11).  GOD literally pleaded with people to repent of their unjust ways that He might not judge them. When the Lord announced His intention to judge Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, Abraham boldly asked GOD if He would destroy the righteous right along with the wicked. In Genesis 18:23-33, we see that GOD would spare a multitude of wicked people in order to save a few righteous people. But the Canaanites were wicked; consequently, justice was necessary.

Understandably so, many people question the reasoning behind GOD’s order to destroy the whole group of people, including ‘innocent’ children. First, everyone is born into sin and is a sinner (Psalm 51:5; 58:3); no one but GOD is good (Psalm 53:3; Romans 3:12; Mark 10:18); and all sinners deserve death (Romans 6:23). Second, if we believe – as I do – that GOD’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. The Kingdom of GOD belongs to such little ones (Matthew 18:1-10; Mark 10:13-16). Third, we should recognize that we are so invested into an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for Heaven’s incomparable joy.  Therefore, GOD did not wrong these children for taking their earthly lives. The children merely received a ‘fast-pass’ into eternal joy. And finally, we need to remember that these children were spared from growing up in the evil-infested community of the corrupted Canaanite culture where they might not have made it beyond child sacrifice anyway. And even if they managed to escape being sacrificed as children, how many of them would have grown up with a false belief that they needed to seek revenge on the Israelites for killing their parents? They wouldn’t have known the true evil of their parents, only that their parents had been taken away from them.

The Moral Argument Boomerangs Back Against Atheism

It’s ironic that atheists often present evil to be a problem and then ask why GOD never prevents evil or stops it. Yet when GOD does put a stop to evil, atheists try to call GOD evil for putting a stop to evil. Why do so many atheists raise up the flag to call out the flagrant foul of a moral atrocity? In fact, the weapon they aim at GOD backfires on themselves. The claim that GOD should not have issued such a command to destroy ‘innocent’ children doesn’t falsify or undercut either of the two premises in the moral argument as defended:

1. If GOD does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, GOD exists.

In fact, insofar as the atheist thinks that GOD did something morally wrong in commanding the extermination of the Canaanites, he/she only affirms premise #2. The truth is that if an atheist is to live consistently with the naturalistic belief of survival of the fittest, the atheist should approve of and applaud any action taken in order to advance oneself – even if that means taking the life of someone else. But GOD did not do anything morally wrong. The truth is that GOD is the Creator of all life and He gives life and can take it away at will. GOD has the right to take the lives of the Canaanites if He sees fit to do so. How long they live and when they die is up to Him. In fact, no one actually dies – we all get moved from a temporary setting to an eternal destination of either Heaven or Hell. So, don’t allow yourself to flounder and fret over the so-called finality of death.

Specify What To Magnify

This argument that the prosecution brought against GOD began by magnifying the wrongness of destroying a certain group of people. The act of magnification wasn’t wrong; what the prosecuting people chose to magnify was wrong because they placed their focus on the wrong area of concern, which is the deaths of many Canaanite people. But how many of these prosecutors would also take the feminists and extreme liberals to court over their murders of babies via abortions? So, what I’ve done in this argument for the defense is zoom out from the wrong area of concern in order to see the bigger picture. And now that we can see the bigger picture, we’re going to zoom in and magnify the area that will reveal the truth and the reasoning behind GOD’s order. The truth we will see is sin and the reasoning for the response is justice.

In Genesis 15:13-21, Scripture reveals to us that GOD told Abraham what would happen before it ever happened. Some scholars hold that Moses, or a later editor of Genesis, is projecting knowledge of later history into the narrative in the guise of advance prophecy. The logic is that no one could possibly have known in Abram’s time that Israel would be in Egypt for 400 years and that they would be enslaved and oppressed for most of that period. Such a perspective is rooted in an anti-supernatural bias that flies in the face of the predictive biblical prophecies that have been fulfilled in amazing detail. And the Israelites’ 400 years of slavery is not the only prophecy that was fulfilled in the Bible. Prophecy is real because GOD is real and speaks to His people. The proof of prophecy is just one of the many pieces of evidence in the entire collection of evidence which reveals that Christianity is the most reasonable of all beliefs.

Ponder on this: GOD waited 400 years before judging the Canaanites because their wickedness had not reached the point of intolerability until then! This is the long-suffering GOD we know in the Hebrew Scriptures. GOD even allowed His own chosen people to languish in slavery for four centuries before determining that the Canaanites were ripe for judgement and calling His people forth from Egypt. Which, by the way, that means that GOD gave the Egyptians 400 years to let the Israelites go from slavery and to do what was right. But they didn’t; consequently, plagues came and then people who persisted in evil pursued after the Israelites and ended up drowning in their own sin. That loving and patient GOD matches the loving and patient GOD from the New Testament (1Timothy 2:4; 2Peter 3:9).

By the time of their destruction, the Canaanite culture was, in fact, saturated in sin and developed deeds from all that is demonic, embracing such practices as ritual prostitution and even child sacrifice.  The Canaanites were to be destroyed so that they would not teach the Israelites to live according to all their abominable practices that they had done for their false gods (Deuteronomy 20:18). GOD had morally sufficient reasons for His judgement upon Canaan, and Israel was merely the instrument of His justice, just as centuries later GOD would use the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon to judge Israel for their sins. Israel was not exempt from sinning simply because they were the chosen people of whom GOD would use in the ultimate plan of salvation.

The bottom line is that Israel had to be set apart as GOD’s chosen people in order to fulfill prophecies so that Jesus could save us from ourselves and unite Creator and creation once again in a loving relationship. From the beginning of this argument, the prosecuting people brought forth that if GOD is love, the command of destroying the Canaanites needs to be explained as an act of love. I have shown that GOD’s order was an act of love for three vital reasons:

1. GOD’s love demands mercy. Because GOD was loving, He waited 400 years to see if the Canaanites would repent so that they may be restored. But they did not repent; instead, they chose to rebel and live a life of sin, which included child sacrifice. For 400 years, GOD actively chose to be patient; 400 years of dedicated patience is an awesome act of love.
2. GOD’s Law demands justice. GOD cannot be loving unless He serves justice for what is evil. Because the Canaanites were evil, the judgment served was justice served, which was an act of love.
3. GOD’s judgment was loving because it was part of a bigger plan for Jesus to come through a chosen people in order to eliminate evil and redeem us from the Fall.

Conclusion:

In response to the question, “If GOD is love, why would GOD order the destruction of the Canaanites?”, the answer is as follows: “GOD ordered the destruction of the Canaanites because GOD is love. The destruction of the Canaanites was not an evil act ordered by an evil GOD; rather, it was an act of justice ordered by a loving GOD in order to eliminate evil.” The bigger picture from an eternal perspective reveals that GOD is less concerned with a current circumstance of a temporary physical condition because He is more concerned about saving souls. Because GOD is love (1John 4:8,16), there simply cannot be evil within Him.

“The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”
(Psalm 92:15) -NIV