1In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, Moses wrote:
When Yahweh your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out 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 mightier than you, and when Yahweh your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of Yahweh will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.
Anti-Christian apologists, liberal scholars, and even some evangelical scholars interpret these words as if Moses were here commanding the unmerciful extermination of the seven nations listed because of their ethnicity — as if it were a command to genocide. Though on the surface, these five verses could be twisted to imply genocide, to interpret them so not only rips them out of the context of the Pentateuch, but also ignores the application of this command in the history of Moses’ successor, Joshua, who understood well what he was to do. Although I have never consulted with Joshua about this, I think we can be certain that he paid attention to the details and remembered the history of Israel from the beginning to his own day. Genocide would not have been in his mind.
I believe I can demonstrate that. Let’s see if we can read these verses from Joshua’s perspective. First, we need to consider how Joshua would have heard these words when Moses spoke them and as he meditated on them in preparation for the conquest. Second, we need to consider how he actually applied these words when he led Israel over the Jordan to fight against the Canaanites.
To begin with, there is no question about the fact that Israel was commanded to conduct holy war. The question concerns the nature of holy war, its righteousness. When Joshua heard Moses instruct Israel to conduct a holy war, he would have remembered the Scriptures and the history recorded from Genesis to Numbers, a history in which he participated from the time of the Exodus.
Thus, Joshua would remember that it was God Himself who conducted the first and foundational holy war: “And behold, I Myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life; everything that is on the earth shall die” (Genesis 6:17). There is no actual word to describe judgement this comprehensive. Should it be “panicide”?
For Joshua and for a Christian, the problem is not how widely judgment is applied; the problem is justice. Principled opposition to holy war would simply be opposition to the notion that the Creator has the right to judge the world according to His holiness. This is the opposite of the Old Testament and Christian teaching in the Psalms, where we are actually called to joyfully testify about Yahweh’s war against evil.
Say among the nations, “Yahweh reigns;
The world also is firmly established,
It shall not be moved;
He shall judge the peoples righteously.” (Psalm 96:10)
Joshua would have also remembered the curse on Canaan pronounced by Noah not long after the flood: “Cursed be Canaan” (Genesis 9:25), though holy war is not there declared against Canaan. More significant would have been the Abrahamic background. Yahweh promised Abram that he would have a seed without number and that he would inherit the land, but not until 400 years later because “the iniquity of the Amoritesis not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). Here, the Amorites are representative of a group of nations who would be dispossessed (see 15:19-20). However, as Yahweh explains to Abram, judgment on the iniquitous nations would not come until the proper time. Yahweh gave the nations a 400 year period of grace.
Joshua knew well what Abram, Isaac, and Jacob did during that period of grace. They did not passively wait for judgement. Abram traveled throughout Canaan, building altars and wells, publicly worshipping Yahweh as a missionary to the peoples dwelling in the land of Canaan. Yahweh had given Canaan years of grace, so Abram preached the grace of Yahweh to the Canaanites. So did Isaac and Jacob. During the time of grace, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob sought for Yahweh’s blessing on the nations of Canaan because Abram’s ultimate calling was to bring blessing to all the nations of the world (Genesis 12:3).
Joshua also would have remembered that Jacob had twelve sons, who, in contrast to Jacob himself and with the exception of Joseph, all apparently took their wives from the Canaanites. In fact, it was a Canaanite woman who committed incest with her father-in-law, Judah, who became one of the great heroines of the patriarchal history — so great that David named a daughter after her (Genesis 38; 1 Samuel 13:1). Racial antipathy toward the Canaanites is definitely not part of the Biblical story, nor would it have been part of Joshua’s mindset.
In addition, Joshua would not have forgotten that holy war against the Canaanites began with the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah — fire from heaven instead of water, local instead of universal, but nonetheless undeniably, holy war. But we must note that this judgment near the beginning of the four hundred years of grace was Yahweh’s covenantal warning for the rest of Canaanites, calling them to repent. It was not merely a blast of wrath from the sky.
Considering the record from Genesis, clearly, the subject of holy-war judgment would not have left Joshua feeling squeamish. God’s judgments were righteous and essential to His saving work, crushing the head of the serpent so that the seed of the woman could be saved.
In the controversial passage quoted above, there is a key issue that modern readers seem to miss. I doubt that Joshua missed it. Note Deuteronomy 7:4: “For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods . . .” Intermarriage with men and women who serve other gods would undermine Israel’s faith and loyalty to Yahweh. The example of the sons of Seth — the sons of God — in Genesis 6 made this abundantly clear. Joshua would not have thought of the problem of the seven nations as a problem of ethnicity, but as a problem of faith and worship, a problem of love to the true God, Yahweh. Balaam’s conspiracy to bring a curse on Israel relied exactly on the tactic of using idolatrous Midianite women to lure Israelite men into false worship so that they would be cursed. He could not curse Israel directly, but, with Satanically inspired wisdom, Balaam found a way to curse Israel. We know, as Joshua did not, that the problem of intermarriage between believers and idolators plagued Israel’s history, even bringing down her wisest king, Solomon. His sin is detailed in Biblical history with direct allusion to our passage in Deuteronomy (1 Kings 11:1-8).
Of course, Joshua himself experienced holy war as crushing the head of the serpent and delivering God’s people. With his own eyes, he saw Yahweh’s great judgment against the evil tyrant Pharaoh, who really did attempt genocide. Also, in the wilderness, when Balack and Balaam, attempted to curse Israel and joined with the Midianites in tempting Israel to sin, Joshua was certainly among those who fought, though he is not named (Numbers 25; 31). Later, he participated as an instrument in Yahweh’s holy war against Sihon and Og (Numbers 21:21-35), also wicked tyrants who hated Yahweh and His people.2
All of this and more is background for understanding how Joshua himself would have heard Moses’ instruction.
Next, we must consider how Joshua actually applied the command after he crossed the Jordan and began the holy war against the nations. What a surprise! We are confronted almost immediately with a story that seems to go against the command of Yahweh through Moses, for at the very beginning of the conquest, two spies sent by Joshua make a covenant with a Canaanite woman (Joshua 2:12-13) — a prostitute, no less!
The spies no doubt reported her words to Joshua:
I know that Yahweh has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you. For we have heard how Yahweh dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed. And as soon as we heardthese things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for Yahweh your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath (Joshua 2:9-11).
The implications of her confession are tremendous and they would not have been missed by Joshua. First, the 40 years of Israel wandering in the wilderness were, for the Canaanites, an extra period of grace. The Gospel of Yahweh’s destruction of Egypt was known, as Rahab testifies, because Egypt was not only the most powerful nation in that part of the world, but it was also the nation that controlled the cities of Canaan as vassal states. Until the Exodus, Egypt would have dominated the entire world of Palestine. The Gospel of Yahweh’s destruction of Egypt, repeated among Canaanites for 40 years, was an invitation for the Canaanites to repent. Rahab heard and believed. Only blind bias would lead us to assume that the same path was not open to the rest of the inhabitants of Canaan.
Second, what Joshua no doubt knew from the beginning would have become even more apparent: the Canaanites had three clear choices. First, like Rahab, they could repent and believe in Yahweh, the God of heaven above and earth beneath. Second, they could migrate. We should not forget that migration in the face of a powerful foe was common enough in the ancient world. Migration would not have been easy, but given what they knew about Yahweh’s judgment against Egypt, it would have meant the possibility of life in another place rather than certain death. Third, they could decide to follow Sihon and Og, of whom they knew, and reject Yahweh, to rebel against Him and fight to the death.
It would have been obvious to Joshua that Jericho decided on option three. But we should remember that even after the destruction of Jericho, all of these options were still available to the remaining cities and nations, as the story of the Gibeonites makes clear (Joshua 9:3-27). However, after the defeat of Ai, the “the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite,” having heard of Yahweh’s continued judgments, self-consciously united in choosing the third option (Joshua 9:1-2).
In conclusion, Joshua would have known and understood that the “the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than” Israel were not judged because of their ethnicity or just to give Israel living space. Like the world in the days of Noah and like Sodom and Gomorrah, they were condemned for their extreme wickedness — religious and moral abominations (Leviticus 18:27; Deuteronomy 18:9-12). Resolutely wicked men like Pharaoh fight against the one true God with an intensity of zeal that is fanatic. It was the Canaanites’ passionate devotion to their idols and their sins that provoked them to rebel against Yahweh, in spite of the Gospel of Yahweh’s destruction of Egypt. No doubt Joshua knew that if the Canaanites had had the chance, they would have nailed Yahweh to a cross and tortured Him to death.
Joshua and the people of Israel were Yahweh’s holy army bringing His righteous judgment in the world, for the sake of His glory and for the peace of His people. Of course, this also meant — and Deuteronomy emphasizes the point (Deuteronomy 28:15-68, etc.) — that if Israel followed the ways of the Canaanites, they would face the same judgment. Yahweh is a righteous Judge.
Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.
- This essay is my thoughts on Deuteronomy 7:1-5 after participating in a Theopolis podcast discussion of Deuteronomy 7 with Peter Leithart, Jeffrey Meyers, and James Bejon. I am sure I borrowed insights from others, but I am not sure what I borrowed from whom, so I am just footnoting the podcast. ↩︎
- Note that both Sihon and Og were the aggressors in their wars with Israel. They knew of the Exodus and the defeat of Pharaoh, but they were inspired by demonic hatred of Yahweh to engage in suicidal warfare. All who hate the true God love death (Proverbs 8:36). ↩︎