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God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites

God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites. Was God Just To Destroy the Canaanites?. In the 1930s and 40s, the Nazi regime committed state-sponsored genocide of so-called “inferior races .”

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God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites

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  1. God’s Just Destruction of the Canaanites

  2. Was God Just To Destroy the Canaanites? • In the 1930s and 40s, the Nazi regime committed state-sponsored genocide of so-called “inferior races.” • 6 million Jews and another 3 million Poles, Soviets, gypsies, and people with disabilities were slaughtered. • Most sane people condemn such actions.

  3. 3400 years prior to the Holocaust Joshua 9:24 …God commanded His servant Moses to give you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you… Exodus 23:23 For My Angel will go before you and bring you in to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off. Deuteronomy 7:1-2 Joshua 3:10 And Joshua said, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites:

  4. Israel’s Conquest of Canaan Jericho – Joshua 6:21, 24 Ai – Joshua 8:25-26, 29 Makkedah and Libnah – Joshua 10:28,30 Lachish – Joshua 10:32 Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and Hazor – Joshua 10:33-39; 11:1-12

  5. Israel’s Conquest of Canaan It was genocide in the sense that it was a planned, systematic, limited extermination of a number of nation states from a relatively small area in the Middle East . It was not a war against a particular race or ethnic group. Nor were the Israelites commanded to pursue and kill the Canaanite nations if they fled from Israel’s Promised Land. The Israelites were to drive out and dispossess the nations of their land (killing all who resisted the dispossession), but they were not instructed to annihilate a particular race or ethnic group from the face of the Earth.

  6. Are these the actions of a just, loving God? • Thomas Paine – Called the God of the Old Testament “the Mars of the Jews, the fighting God of Israel,” Who was “boisterous, contemptible, and vulgar” (Paine, 1807). • Paine, Thomas (1807), “Essay on Dream,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/paine/dream.htm. • Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion, page 31, called God a “racist, infanticidal, genocidal…capriciously malevolent bully” (2006) • Dawkins, Richard (2006), The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin).

  7. Are these the actions of a just, loving God? Mark 10:18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 1 John 4:8 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Leviticus 11:44-45 For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy. Neither shall you defile yourselves with any creeping thing that creeps on the earth. 45 For I am the Lord who brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

  8. Punishing Evildoers is Not Unloving • Loving parents and principals have administered corporal punishment. • Proverbs 13:24 He who spares his rod hates his son,But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. • Merciful policemen have the authority (both from God and the government—Romans 13:1-4) to kill a wicked person who is murdering others. • Just judges have the authority to sentence a depraved child rapist to death.

  9. Before the Conquest of Canaan God Commanded: Leviticus 19:17-18 ‘You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:33-34 ‘And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 34 The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. Cf. Romans 13:9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

  10. God’s Expectations of His People • “not resist an evil person” (Matthew 5:39), • “go the extra mile” (Matthew 5:41) • “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39). • Romans 13:10; cf. Matthew 22:36-40 • However, compare: • Leviticus 19:18, Leviticus 24:17, 21

  11. The Wickedness of the Canaanites Deuteronomy 12:29-31 Deuteronomy 18:9-11 Leviticus 18:25For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. Leviticus 18:30 ‘Therefore you shall keep My ordinance, so that you do not commit any of these abominable customs which were committed before you, and that you do not defile yourselves by them: I am the Lord your God.’”

  12. The Wickedness of the Canaanites • Their “cultic practice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious” • Their “deities…had no moral character whatever,” which “must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,” including sensuous nudity, orgiastic nature-worship, snake worship, and even child sacrifice • “These Canaanite cults were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees” • Unger, Merrill F. (1954), Archaeology and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 175). • Unger, Merrill F. (1988), “Canaan,” The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft). God – Equal Opportunity Punisher Deuteronomy 28:15-68

  13. Our Longsuffering God Proverbs 14:29 He who is slow to wrath has great understanding,But he who isimpulsive exalts folly. Psalm 145:8 The Lordis gracious and full of compassion,Slow to anger and great in mercy. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us,not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. Romans 15:4-5

  14. Our Longsuffering God • Genesis 6:5 Then the Lordsaw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. • 1 Peter 3:20 …when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. • Genesis 6:3, 2 Peter 2:5

  15. Our Longsuffering God • What about the punishment of the Canaanites? • Genesis 15:13-16 • “The Amorites were so numerous and powerful a tribe in Canaan that they are sometimes named for the whole of the ancient inhabitants, as they are here.” • Jamieson, Robert, et al. (1997), Jamieson, Fausset, Brown Bible Commentary (Electronic Database: Biblesoft).

  16. What About Innocent Children? • They were not guilty of their parents’ sins. Ezekiel 18:20, Matthew 18:3-5, Deuteronomy 1:39 • “Including the children in the destruction of such populations actually spared them from a worse condition—that of being reared to be as wicked as their parents and thus face eternal punishment. All persons who die in childhood, according to the Bible, are ushered to Paradise and will ultimately reside in Heaven. Children who have parents who are evil must naturally suffer innocently while on Earth (e.g., Numbers 14:33)” • Miller, Dave (2009), “Did God Order the Killing of Babies?” Apologetics Press, http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=13&article=2810.

  17. What About Innocent Children? God, the Giver of life (Acts 17:25; Ecclesiastes 12:7), and only God has the right to take the life of His creation whenever He chooses (for the righteous purposes that He has). At times in history, God took the life of men out of righteous judgment. At other times (as in the case of children), it was taken for merciful reasons.

  18. Conclusion The skeptics are wrong to question God. God was just, loving and righteous in his judgment of the Canaanite nations. He was merciful to their children.

  19. Obey the Gospel Today! Believe – John 3:16 Confess – Matthew 10:32-33 Repent – Luke 13:3 Be Baptized – Mark 16:16 Be Faithful – Revelation 2:10

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