While I was away, a question was asked during one of our 1Stone Noonday events. The question had to do with murder, killing, war, etc. In essence, it seems that the question had to do with why killing/war seemed to be okay in the Old Testament but bad in the New Testament. Actually, the question seemed to be asked from the perspective of assuming that killing and war are always fundamentally wrong. I’m not really sure how the question was answered at the time, but let me reflect on it a bit here. Enjoy!
God is consistent when it comes to punishing sin. He uses various means, but the wages of sin has always been death (Gen. 2:17, Rom. 6:23). Sometimes those means are what we might consider supernatural, as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 20:23-29), Egypt (Ex. 7-12), or Herod (Acts 12:20-23). But at many other times, God uses human agents to carry out His punishment of sin. Examples of this abound in the Bible, including the entire book of Judges, scripture recounting the downfall and exile of the Israelites, and the execution of the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus. In each of these cases, God used human agents to mete out the punishment that the sins of other humans deserved (Lk. 23:41). Of course, the ultimate example of this is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In this case, God punished the only truly innocent person for the sin of humanity. And God used human agents (e.g. Roman soldiers, Jewish leaders, etc.) to carry out that punishment.
When people object to the conquest of the promised land, they usually do so without seriously reflecting on the entire Biblical narrative. First, they fail to see that most of the suffering and death recorded in the Bible is against the people of God. When various enemies attacked and oppressed the twelve tribes during the Judges period, when the Assyrians wiped out the northern kingdom, and when the Babylonians conquered Judea, they did so as agents of God’s wrath (Jer. 25:9). I’ve never heard a skeptic complain about this fact, but the reality is that God brought about the death of more Israelites than perhaps any other ethnic group in the Old Testament. Does this make God anti-Semitic? Of course not. But it does make clear that God takes sin very seriously and is committed to obliterating it.
Thus the conquest of Canaan must be understood as a case of God using the Israelites as his agents to carry out the punishment of the sin of the Canaanite people. This is exactly what the Scripture teaches. Note that in the Abrahamic covenant, God promises that Abraham’s descendents will inherit the land of Canaan. But God also says that they cannot inherit the land right away. They would have to wait for many years (over 400) for “the iniquity of the Amorites” was not yet “complete” (Gen. 15:16). That is, God made his chosen people wait hundreds of years (even in great suffering and exploitation), before finally punishing the inhabitants of Canaan (generally referred to as Amorites). To put it another way, the Canaanites had more than 400 years to repent from the time Abraham was living among them as a witness to the day Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan river.
Some people, of course, have a problem with God commanding the Israelites to conquer cities and regions, killing the inhabitants. But the only real difference between this and the Babylonian conquest of Judea is that the Israelites knew they were God’s instruments of punishment. And knowing this was simply a product of their covenant relationship with God -- the very relationship that the Canaanites had consistently rejected since the days of Abraham. To be sure, there were some Canaanites who repented of their sin. These were spared (e.g. Jos. 6:25).
Others may object to the fact that children were included among those who were killed during the conquest of Canaan. But this simply reflects the more collectivist worldview of the Bible versus a more Western, individualistic worldview. There are cases in the Bible when children were to be punished along with adults if the punishment was against an entire family or society. This could happen just as easily to the Israelites as to non-Israelites (e.g. Josh. 8:22-26).
It is important to state outright that these Biblical events should not be seen as a justification for genocide or for “holy war.” There is no standing command in the Bible that instructs the people of God to wage war against the unfaithful. The standing commands we have are to love our neighbor and to proclaim the way of salvation to all peoples and nations. At the same time, Jesus doesn’t represent a philosophical break with the God of the Old Testament. While it is tempting for us to view Jesus as a ultra-pacifist hippie that wants to “make love, not war," we must remember that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament. He specifically said that he came not to bring peace but a sword (Mat. 10:34), he was more commonly mistaken to be a radical revolutionary that would overthrow the Romans than an ascetic hermit that wanted everyone to just get along, and he was not above using violence to get his point across (Jn. 2:15). Jesus Christ hated sin and came into the world to destroy it.
Finally, let’s keep in mind that there is a difference between murder and killing. This is most clearly seen in Genesis 6 when we see that anyone who sheds the blood of another human will have his blood shed by a human. Surely this doesn’t mean that then the executioner will have to be executed and on and on until the human race is wiped out. No, in the law of Moses, regulations are established for the punishment of sin which include the death penalty. Jesus didn’t forbid the death penalty during his earthly ministry, but rather submitted willingly to it. Moreover, the apostolic witness indicates that governing officials should continue to “bear the sword” as instruments of God’s wrath against sin (Rom. 13:4).
The truth is, as human beings, we delight in the punishment and eradication of evil. I just watched the movie Valkyrie last week which is the story of a failed attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Now, I would venture to say that nearly everyone in that theater was cheering for the people who were trying to assassinate Hitler. Why? Because we hate evil. There is something in us (perhaps the image of God) that cries out to God for sin to be eliminated. We hate injustice, oppression, deceit, greed, abuse, etc. Even now, if a pedophile or a terrorist is punished, we are glad. So why do we cringe when God punishes sin in the Bible? In particular, when God uses the Israelites as his agents to punish the Canaanites, why do we feel upset? My guess is that we have tended to misunderstand sin. In particular, our culture has taught us that certain sins such as sexual immorality, murder, and racism are especially heinous while others aren’t particularly bad. But the first and greatest command is to love God. So it would follow that the first and greatest sin is to not love God. Now if that is true, we understand that the person who rejects God is engaging in sin that is more severe than the Holocaust or 9/11.
Well, I’m going to stop now. Need to move on to other things. Think this over, I look forward to your feedback.