The “Holy War” passages in the Bible that describe the Israelite Conquest of Canaan are surely some of the most disturbing – and disturbingly misused – passages in all of Scripture.

In Deuteronomy 7:2, for instance, Moses tells the Israelites that when they enter the Land of Canaan, which God had promised to give them, they will encounter its current inhabitants whom they “must destroy totally.” And then in the description of the conquest in Joshua we find these instructions carried out in a sweeping manner. For instance, in Joshua 6, after God collapses the walls of Jericho, the Israelites “devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” The Hebrew word here translated “devoted” is herem and it’s a technical term in a variety of such Old Testament passages describing things (and people) that Israel was supposed to “devote” to the Lord, often devotion through destruction: “Herem War.”

Some refer to the Conquest of Canaan as “genocide,” since the term means the “killing of a people,” which is exactly what’s described in the Book of Joshua. God’s covenant people were to be holy, and the rationale of the Conquest seems to have been that the whole Canaanite culture of worshipping false gods in the Land needed to be eradicated so that Israel would not be tempted to violate their covenant with God and themselves be destroyed (Deut. 7:4).

These passages certainly jolt modern readers, and undoubtedly they were intended to raise the eyebrows of their ancient near eastern readers as well. I have recently had some conversations about these passages, considering them in light of the character of God, the teaching of Jesus in the New Testament, and “holy war” themes in the modern geopolitical landscape. Of course, these are areas of disagreement among Christians, and tomes have been written on each of these issues. But here are a few things that have come up in conversation.

The Broader Drama of Redemption

First things first: it is important to remember that the Conquest of Canaan is one event in the broader drama of God’s war against sin and evil, and his mercy toward sinful humanity. Ultimately, ancient Israel, including the Conquest of Canaan, played an indispensable part in the story we now know climaxes in Jesus Christ, through whom salvation is brought to all nations of the earth. Our reading of the Conquest narratives should begin with this in mind.

In the course of redemptive-history, God’s justice and mercy always go together. Put bluntly and simply, in the broader biblical narrative, God both extends grace toward humanity by saving some and judges humanity in destroying others. The story of the Flood in Genesis is a gruesome example (Genesis 6-9). While we like to make it a cute story to depict on the wall of children’s nurseries, the story is about how God destroys just about every living thing on earth, because it had become so corrupt. The mercy of God is seen in his provision of salvation for a few through Noah and the Ark. This story highlights God’s willingness to judge human sin through destruction and shows God’s mercy by giving humanity a fresh start. This theme runs throughout Scripture, right up to the Final Judgment when the Messiah returns. When we take sin as seriously as God does, including our own, the horror of human destruction doesn’t diminish, but we gain a perspective unlike the modern presumption of human goodness and belief in a distant and benign Creator. God is very much involved in history; and God is both just and merciful in the face of human sin and rebellion.

The uniqueness of the Conquest of Canaan, then, seems not to be that God would destroy human beings but that (a) he would single out a particular people group for destruction and (b) he would use one people group as his instrument to destroy another. Hence, the term “genocide” applied to this instance.

Looking More Closely at Some Aspects of the Conquest

While I don’t think there is any way to avoid characterizing the biblical narrative of the Conquest as “genocidal,” there are several other important things to keep in mind. The biblical narrative of the Conquest does not simply focus on one ethnic group (Israel) wiping out another ethnic group (the Canaanites). True to the broader scope of redemption just mentioned, it really focuses on God (the primary “protagonist”) vs. sin and idolatry (the primary “antagonist”). We see this in the story in numerous ways.

The Canaanites are pictured as wicked and idolatrous, toward whom their Creator, who is owed perfect obedience, exercises forbearance (Gen 15:16). And when the Canaanites are destroyed, the biblical narratives go to great lengths to emphasize that God achieves their destruction, not the Israelite solders: it is God who collapses the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6), and it is God who “threw down huge hail stones from heaven” on the Amorites, and “there were more who died because of the hailstones than the Israelites killed with the sword” (Josh. 10:11).

That the drama is really about God vs. his enemies and not Israel vs. the Canaanites can also be seen in God’s willingness to punish Israel when they turn against him: he sends them into Exile (e.g. 2 Kings 17). In the story of the Conquest, God had chosen them to be his covenant people who would receive the gift of the Land in which they were to live in holiness. When they violate their covenant with God, the instrument of destruction becomes the object of wrath.

We can also see the primacy of the covenantal nature of the relationship and the less-than-“pure” ethnic identification by the fact that Canaanites could apparently be spared by repenting and turning to God, such as in the case of Rahab and her family (Josh. 2). God’s covenant people were not strictly defined by ethnicity but rather by covenant faithfulness.

Additionally, “the commander of the army of the Lord” who comes to Joshua in a vision refuses to identify himself with the side of Israel (Josh. 5:13-15). That would be a misconstrual of the situation. Israel has been brought onto God’s side and has been given a special role to play in God’s fight against sin and evil; God has not come to take up arms for Israel.

Further still, and very importantly, the special role given to Israel in fighting the Canaanites was in the end not for the sake only of the nation of Israel but was one part of God’s ultimate plan to use Israel as a blessing to all nations of the earth (Gen. 12:1-4).

To the above clarification about who is really doing the fighting and why, we should note that the “special role” that the nation of Israel was given in carrying out a policy of Herem War was strictly limited to the era of the Conquest. God gives no extension to the policy beyond that particular campaign.

The above points at least help us to place the story in the broader plan of redemption and in the light of God’s justice and mercy. And though those who are prone to misuse biblical texts are not prone to careful exegesis, keeping these things in mind should also distance the biblical narrative from any contemporary programs of nationalistic violence and ethnic cleansing.

The Warrior God In the New Testament

In the New Testament, the picture of God as a Warrior is by no means left behind. In many ways God’s judgment on the Canaanites as Israel enters the Promised Land foreshadows the Final Judgment, where the “King of kings” comes “to strike down the nations” prior to establishing the New Heaven and Earth in which the saints will reign with Christ forever (Rev. 19-22). Indeed, in his first advent, Jesus the King came to earth to battle against God’s enemies, and the victory of God was achieved through the cross, which mysteriously defeats the powers of darkness (Col. 2:15), and through the Resurrection, which triumphs over death and destruction once and for all.

As God’s New Covenant people await Christ’s return, when that victory will be fully manifest on earth, we continue the battle through spiritual warfare as we witness to the reign of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul famously puts it: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). If in the “Old Covenant” (Old Testament) God’s covenant people took up physical arms for physical battles in the cause of God’s Kingdom, in the “New Covenant” (New Testament) the war enters a new phase of deep, spiritual intensity. God has fulfilled his promise to Abraham, that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed: God’s people are now not a “nation” but among all nations, and we conquer not by the sword by the proclamation of the Gospel that Jesus is already the reigning King who will come again.

This does not, however, mean that in this era, before Christ returns and takes up the sword himself (Rev. 19:15), that God has not given the power of the sword to anyone. In Romans 13, we read that God has given the power of the sword to legitimate “governing authorities” to be “the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” The “state” is supposed to reward righteousness and punish evil. In other words, they are to rule with justice, and they have been given the power of the sword in the service of justice.

And now for the question that I will take up in a day or two: can Christians then participate in the state’s God-ordained activity of ruling with justice by the sword? This is not entirely clear. In a subsequent post, I’ll write down some thoughts on Christian pacifism, which emphasizes Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence, and on just war theory, which emphasizes Christian responsibility to protect the lives of the innocent. In the meantime, here’s some reading to consider on the Conquest of Canaan and the politically charged yet biblical theme of God as a Warrior.

Some Suggested Reading on the Conquest of Canaan

The following are only a few suggestions. They are from authors who have what I would consider to be a “high view” of Scripture – in other words, they really try to deal with the theology of the Conquest narratives as they appear in Scripture, rather than setting them aside on the assumption that they merely represent a primitive religious consciousness in ancient Israel - though they represent a variety of approaches to the biblical narratives.

Goldingay, John. Israel’s Gospel. Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003. See pages 474-505 along with the postscript on the nature of historical narratives in the Old Testament. I found Goldingay’s treatment of the Conquest to be provocative, even if not entirely convincing. He embraces a pretty flexible understanding of the historicity of Old Testament historical narratives, and in the case of the Conquest he does a theology of the history of Israel instead of a theology of the Old Testament narratives. In other words, he makes what he admits is a “large exception” to his usual methodology, and attempts to go behind the text to the actual “history” of Israel and do his theology with that "history behind the text" in mind. Because there are so many different views on what that actual history is, the net effect of focusing on the “history” in this case is to make the meaning of the narratives a bit more ambiguous and less offensive for modern readers. While I find this tempting, in order to be really convincing I think he needs to make a stronger case for why we should employ a different methodology in dealing with the Conquest narratives than with most other “historical narratives” in the Old Testament.

Gundry, Stanley N., ed. Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. Here are four different “conservative” approaches to the Conquest narratives and how they relate to the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The one I agree with the most is Tremper Longman’s essay, where he argues for the “spiritual continuity” between the Conquest narrative and life as the New Covenant people of God.

Longman, Tremper. God is a Warrior. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995. A more extended version of his essay in the above book.

Wright, N.T. Evil and the Justice of God. Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2006. A very good little book, a biblical theologian’s approach to re-framing a classic theological and philosophical problem. I hesitate to offer a quote from the book, because you really need the larger framework within which he’s working in order to place it, but nevertheless here’s part of what he says about the Conquest:

“We look back from our historical vantage point – and post-Enlightenment thought has looked back from its supposed position of moral superiority – and we shake our heads over the whole sorry business of conquest and settlement. Ethnic cleansing, we call it; however much the Israelites had suffered in Egypt, we find it hard to believe that they were justified in doing what they did to the Canaanites, or that the God who was involved in this operation was the same God we know in Jesus Christ.

And yet ever since the garden, ever since God’s grief over Noah, ever since Babel and Abraham, the story has been about the messy way in which God has had to work to bring the world out of the mess. Somehow, in a way we are inclined to find offensive, God has to get his boots muddy and, it seems, to get his hands bloody, to put the world back to rights. If we declare, as many have done, that we would rather it not so, we face a counter-question: Which bit of dry, clean ground are we standing on that we should pronounce on the matter with such certainty? Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the primal sin of humanity consisted in putting the knowledge of good and evil before the knowledge of God. That is one of the further dark mysteries of Genesis 3: there must be some substantial continuity between what we mean by good and evil and what God means; otherwise we are in moral darkness indeed. But it serves as a warning to us not to pontificate with too much certainty about what God should and shouldn’t have done” (pp. 58-59).