Deniers of Christianity have often been tripped up by many things about the Christian faith, but none more than God’s command to the people of Israel regarding the Canaanites:
“But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded.” (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)
An outright annihilation of an entire race doesn’t seem to align as perfectly with the popular claim that ”God is Love.” How could God be loving, and even go as far as commanding us to be loving, and yet also command such an unloving deed? The charge to the nation of Israel seems to impinge so much on God’s character that some professing Christians, in trying to ‘save God’s character,’ resort to creating a distinction between the God of the Old and the God of the New Testament, suggesting a change.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Broadening the scope of Deuteronomy 20:16-17 reveals that God’s issue with the Canaanites specifically had to do with his holiness. The other nations the Israelites would face were to be treated differently from the Canaanites.
A More Lenient Judgment
A significant number of articles have wrestled with this command. The majority, by appealing to scriptures such as Genesis 15:16, attribute the destruction of the Canaanites to their sin. While I agree, one is still left to wonder why the sin of the Canaanites warranted a destruction peculiar to them, rather than the other nations. Deuteronomy 20:10-15 recommends that if the Israelites came across a nation that wasn’t an inhabitant of Canaan, they would first go the diplomatic route. They wouldn’t outright invade them; instead, they would offer peace. If their peace offer was accepted, the Israelites were told to subjugate them (Deuteronomy 20:11). If their offer was denied, then they had the right to go to war.
However, even their posture during the war was to be different. Unlike the Canaanites, they wouldn’t devote these other nations to utter destruction. It was only the men they were to kill. Because back then all men would go to war, the men weren’t killed for being men, but for going to war. On the other hand, the women and children would be left alive and taken as spoils of war (Deuteronomy 20:15).
The Role Their Sin Played
To some, therefore, God was merely genocidal against the Canaanites. Merriam-Webster defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” But a Tabletalk Magazine article clarifies that God didn’t disproportionately target the Canaanites. Instead, he targeted them because they were in the land that God had kept for the Israelites.
That is not to belittle their sin. Genesis 15:16 testifies that God had withheld his wrath from the Canaanites because their iniquity wasn’t yet complete. Their guilt was so great that Moses said one of the chief reasons for God devoting them to destruction was so that they would not infect the Israelites with their abominations (Deuteronomy 20:18). These many generations later, it is easy to assume the Canaanites were just a people group who committed minor offenses. The truth is they were anything but that. They were so heinous and despicable that most would recoil at some of their actions. In Deuteronomy alone, we learn that they were guilty of idolatry, child sacrifice, divination, and talking to the dead (Deuteronomy 12:29-31; 18:9-12).
Their actions deserved divine retribution. As did, in fact, the sins of every other nation, including Israel. Moses warned the Israelites against following the way of the nations, lest they too be destroyed (Deuteronomy 4:25-26).
The Holy Significance of Canaan
Yet for the Canaanites, in addition to their blatant sinfulness, God was also bent on wiping them out because the land they defiled was a land God considered holy (Joshua 5:15). This land of promise wasn’t just any land; it was a set-apart, promised land for God’s people.
That much is made abundantly clear in Joshua 5:13-15. Joshua, while looking at Jericho, saw a man with a flaming sword, an image that echoes the Garden of Eden. Ages back, after the fall of man and his subsequent removal from the Garden, God had placed there cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the Garden, lest man return and eat of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24).
No one, we may rightly infer, could simply occupy the land. The only reason that God hadn’t yet destroyed the Canaanites was because of his grace and mercy (Psalm 86:15, 2 Peter 3:9).
But finally, having proven times without number and with abominations without measure their unworthiness of the land God had set apart for his people, they were devoted to destruction. A holy God could not allow an unholy people to dwell on his holy land. Even the Israelites’ only merit was that Yahweh had set his love on them (Deuteronomy 7:7-11). Were they to also commit the same abominations as the previous occupants of the land, they would also be destroyed and driven out of the land (Deuteronomy 4:25-26; 28:63).
The Holy God Who Offers a Way Out for Us
Yahweh does regard highly what he has called holy. He may be patient with us as he was with both the Canaanites and Israelites. However, if you persist in wickedness, he will devote you to destruction.
But blessed be Yahweh, for he offers us a way out. By no means can we achieve the holiness he asks of us by ourselves (Leviticus 11:45). So he sent his Son, through whom we can be holy and righteous (2 Corinthians 5:21). He calls holy any that would, by faith, put their trust in Jesus. And this is for eternity (1 Peter 2:10, Hebrews 10:14).
So while some, stumbled by God’s judgment on Canaan, resort to rejecting God; we who believe see that same judgment for what it is: a portrayal of his absolute holiness, made possible for us only through the sinless and holy Christ.