Joshua 6 - How to Deal with Genocide in the Bible
A Heavy Matter: Reconciling the Conquest
Good evening, church. If you have your Bible with you, I want to invite you to turn to Joshua chapter six. My name is Mike, and if I haven’t had the privilege to meet you yet, I want to share something personal. In twenty years of having the privilege of handling the Word of God here at this church, I have never spent more time preparing for a message. This has literally been a three-month process for me of working through what we’re going to look at tonight.
It is a heavy matter. As you remember in our journey through Joshua, we’ve seen the picture of our faithful God. Chapters one through five have been about the idea that before we have conquest, we must have consecration. Our hearts and our posture need to be in the right place. As we now turn a corner into chapter six, we begin to talk about the conquest of the land, covering chapters six through twelve. We are about to walk into Jericho and fight what is perhaps the most famous battle involving the Israelites.
But before we do, we need to deal with an issue. It is an issue that, if you’ve read through Joshua before, is a bit troubling for Christians. I want you to look down at verse 21 just to get an idea of this issue that we’re going to see all throughout these chapters regarding the conquest of Jericho. This is what God commands regarding the people.
Joshua 6:21 (NASB)
They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.
As I fast forward to chapter 11, it says that the sons of Israel took the spoil and cattle as plunder, but they struck every man with the edge of the sword until they destroyed them. They left no one who breathed.
Joshua 11:11 (NASB)
They struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying [them]; there was no one left who breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire.
We wrestle with this as Christians. We ask, “How do we reconcile this?” Isn’t Jesus the one who said we need to love our enemies? In fact, the well-known atheist Richard Dawkins, regarding this specific issue, said that the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. He calls Him a jealous, petty, unjust, vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, and a genocidal, megalomaniac bully. That is a strong description of the God we bow to and worship.
If we’re honest, much is at stake here. God has been accused of being a “moral monster” based on these passages. Can we trust Him? Is He good? Do these commands violate His nature and character? Did God command the genocide of an entire people group and thereby condone these atrocities? Our goal tonight is to understand what it means when God called His people to “utterly destroy” the people in the land.
Understanding the Iniquity of the Canaanites
To understand what God has asked, we first need to understand who was in the land. We’ve talked about the iniquity of the Amorites and the Canaanites, but I want you to turn back to Leviticus chapter 18—the place where Bible reading plans often go to die. Here, God describes what He wants His people to look like, and He mentions the people currently there. The Canaanites were guilty of two significant sins: moral corruption and child sacrifice.
In terms of moral corruption, the Canaanites fell deeply in the area of sexuality. God warned the Israelites not to do what was done in Egypt or what was being done in the land of Canaan.
Leviticus 18:2-3 (NASB)
’Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ’I am the LORD your God. ’You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes.
God is saying the people in the land are living apart from His design, and He doesn’t want Israel to mimic them. He then goes into detail, using the phrase “uncover nakedness” seventeen times, which refers to sexual relationships. He sets boundaries that we might think should be obvious, but were being routinely violated in Canaan.
Leviticus 18:6 (NASB)
’None of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness; I am the LORD.
God tells them not to have sexual relations with their mother, their stepmother, their sister, their granddaughter, their aunt, their daughter-in-law, or their neighbor’s wife. He forbids homosexuality and even bestiality, calling it a perversion. You might ask, “God, did we really need to write these things down?” But notice how God summarizes these commands.
Leviticus 18:27 (NASB)
(for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled);
This isn’t a hypothetical. God is saying the Canaanites are currently guilty of all these abominations. Their sin knew no bounds. They had been in the land for six hundred years since Abraham’s time, and they had not repented. Their sin had only gotten worse because the leash was off; they were unrestrained in their ability to do evil.
Beyond sexual deviance, there was the horror of child sacrifice. God specifically warns the Israelites not to offer their offspring to Molech.
Leviticus 18:21 (NASB)
’You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the LORD.
Molech, Chemosh, and Milcom were gods worshiped by taking an infant and laying them on the burning arms of an idol to appease the god for rain or a good harvest. God tells them in Deuteronomy that these nations even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
Deuteronomy 12:31 (NASB)
’You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.
God wants to keep Israel from sexual deviance and child sacrifice. They were to eradicate this morality and these false gods. The question is: how did Israel understand the command to “utterly destroy” them?
Three Perspectives on the Conquest
There are three primary views on how we should understand these commands. The first is Radical Discontinuity. This is the idea that the Old Testament God of wrath has nothing to do with the New Testament God revealed in Jesus. People in this camp say God “matured” or that Joshua simply misunderstood God. This view attempts to get God “off the hook,” but it rejects biblical inerrancy and divorces the Old Testament from the New. It is essentially a first-century heresy that was rightly condemned by the church. It ignores that Jesus Himself spoke of the wrath of God and that, as we saw last week, it was the pre-incarnate Christ leading the battle in Joshua 5. We must cast this view aside as anti-Christian.
The next two views are held by those with a high view of Scripture and God’s character. The second is the Traditional View. This is what I learned in seminary. It argues that the word herem (utterly destroy) was a literal command for genocide because God’s heart was to protect His people from extreme moral corruption. In this view, the command is not intrinsically evil because a holy and perfect God commanded it for a specific, righteous purpose.
However, there are questions with this view. Joshua is commanded to both “utterly destroy” and to “dispossess” or “drive out” the people.
Numbers 33:51-53 (NASB)
’Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ’When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it.
If everyone is annihilated, there is no one left to dispossess. Furthermore, in Deuteronomy, God says to utterly destroy them, but then tells Israel not to intermarry with them.
Deuteronomy 7:1-3 (NASB)
’When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. ’Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons.
How can you intermarry with people who have been totally annihilated? This leads us to the third view: the Modified Traditional View. This view suggests that the book of Joshua uses ancient Near Eastern “war hyperbole.” We use this today. If my daughter says her sports team is going to “annihilate” the opponent, I don’t call the police; I know she means they are going to win decisively. Jesus used hyperbole when He said to gouge out your eye if it causes you to sin. God used it when He told Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand.
In this view, herem refers to drastic marching orders to defeat military strongholds. The primary command was to “drive out” the people. In fact, the command to “drive out” appears three times as often as the command to “utterly destroy.” When King Josiah recovered the Law centuries later, he tore down the altars and smashed the idols, but he didn’t go out and annihilate the people; he interpreted the command as removing the religious and moral influence.
The Gravity of Holiness
Whether you hold the traditional or modified view, the reality is that Israel failed miserably. A few hundred years later, they were worshiping the Baals and the Asherah. They even began sacrificing their own children to demons.
Psalms 106:34-37 (NASB)
They did not destroy the peoples, As the LORD commanded them, But they mingled with the nations And learned their practices, And served their idols, Which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
Israel became morally indistinguishable from the Canaanites. Consequently, God eventually did to Israel what He had done to the Canaanites: He evicted them from the land.
As we process this, we must remember three things. First, this “holy war” is not valid today. It was a unique situation for a specific time. Any modern attempt to use these verses to justify violence is inconsistent with Scripture. Second, we must hold to all of God’s attributes. He is loving and gracious, but He is also holy, just, and wrathful. We must not substitute darkness for light or judge God by our own shifting cultural standards.
Isaiah 5:20 (NASB)
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Third, God alone has the right to judge. We often live with an arrogance that puts us in the judge’s seat over God. When we question Him, we are like Job, whom God reminded had no idea what he was talking about.
Job 38:2 (NASB)
’Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge?
We are the clay, and He is the potter. He has the right to do what He wishes with the vessels He has made.
Romans 9:20-21 (NASB)
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
Our perspective is like seeing a thirty-second preview and trying to judge a two-hour movie. God’s ways are higher than our ways.
Isaiah 55:8-9 (NASB)
‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ’For [as] the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
The Final Judgment and the Gospel
Ultimately, the war against the Canaanites was an early phase of a battle that reached its climax on the cross and will reach its completion at the final judgment. God is patient, not wishing for any to perish, but judgment is coming.
2 Peter 3:9 (NASB)
The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.
The beauty of the gospel is that God must judge sin because He is just, but in His love, He took that judgment upon Himself. He took all the wrath, all the anger toward the destructiveness of sin, and instead of giving it to us, He placed it upon His Son on the cross.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB)
He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
One day, your sin will be judged. Either it will be judged on you, or it will be declared “paid for” because you have trusted in the provision of Christ. We serve a God who asks us to trust Him even through the hard parts of Scripture. He is holy, He is good, and He is trustworthy. If you are new to the Well, there is no greater delight we have than to introduce you to Jesus, who laid down His life so that you could find life in Him.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank You for even the hard parts of Scripture. They tell us so much about who You are. We choose to trust You. Help us to be honest about our own sin and thankful for the provision You made in Your Son. Thank You for our hero, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.