Why didn't God wipe Canaanites Himself? | Genocide in the Bible series (Part 9)

It certainly seems that if God does exist, and if He were to have morally sufficient reasons for decreeing the destruction of a group of people, then the means by which he carries it out would be somewhat inconsequential. Whether God chose famine, wild beasts, pestilence, or sword (Ezek. 14:12-23), if the authority to destroy is there, then the means of judgment is incidental. Thus, if it was right for God to command the conquest, it seems right for Israel to obey the command.

But was God right? I’ve already shown that if God needed morally sufficient reasons for killing the Canaanites, he had them in abundance. However, if God is God, does He even need to justify what He does with His creation?

There’s no question that God could’ve destroyed the Canaanites directly. Some of the methods by which God destroyed people directly in the Bible:

The ground swallowed them (Num 16:31-32)

·         Plague (Exodus 32 : 35)

·         Snakes (Num 21: 6)

·         Kill directly (Num 8:17)

But he chose not to do this to the Canaanites, in order to test the Israelites:

“I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the LORD as their fathers did, or not.” So the LORD left those nations, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua. (Jdg 2:21-23).

They failed the test too:

So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD. They forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. (Jdg 3:5-7).

Secondly, making the Israelites the instruments for His judgement on the Cananites, God also passed on a message to the Israelites as to what will be their outcome when they repeat the sins of the Cananites. They would have witnessed first-hand and therefore have no excuse. Israel’s response to Canaanite sin is a parable of how their own sinfulness empowered them to ape the sin of the Canaanites and thereby procure God’s judgment on them. For God does not show favoritism. Israel was warned not to let the Canaanites live in their land, but to completely destroy them (Exod. 23:33; Deut. 20:16–18), lest the Israelites learn the Canaanite ways (Exod. 34:15–16). If they did not destroy them, the land would “vomit” them out just as it had vomited out the Canaanites (Num. 33:56; Lev. 18:28; Deut 4:23–29, 8:19–20).

Instead, the Israelites worshiped the Canaanites’ gods and “did evil” (Judg. 10:6; 1 Kings 14:22; 2 Kings 17:10). They had “male shrine prostitutes” (1 Kings 14:22), committed acts of “lewdness,” adultery, and incest (Jer. 5:7; 29:23; Hos. 4:13–14; Ezek. 22:10–11; Amos 2:7), and even Solomon set up an altar to Molech (1 Kings 11:5, 7–8). But instead of repenting when things went badly, they concluded that their misfortune was because they stopped burning incense to “the Queen of Heaven,” Inanna/Ishtar (Jer. 44:18). So the Lord said that Israel became “like Sodom to me” (Jer. 23:14). In short, Israel was Canaanized.

Although prophets warned the northern kingdom (usually referred to as Israel or Samaria) of impending doom, they didn’t repent, and in 722 BC the king of Assyria killed or deported most of them, and filled the land with conquered peoples from other nations. Similarly, the southern tribes (usually referred to as Judah) were deported when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem beginning in 586 BC. Just as God had demonstrated his knowledge of who would repent in the Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, before he destroyed Jerusalem He told Jeremiah that if He could find even one righteous person He would spare the entire city (Jer. 5:1).

(... To Be Continued in Part 10)