Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
May 2008
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
Of all the accusations levelled at the Christian faith, perhaps one of the most difficult to counter concerns the charge of genocide – that the Israelites carried out a policy of genocide, on God’s orders, when they took over Canaan in the days of Joshua. Sometimes Christians are quick to accuse Muslims of genocide and seem blissfully unaware of the events associated with the conquest of the Promised Land. God was certainly clear in what He said to the Israelites: ‘And you shall consume all the peoples that the Lord your God will give over to you. Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be snare to you’ (Deut.7:16).
The first thing that needs to be said is that God only ordered the destruction of Canaan when the culture had become so debased that judgment was all that could be done with it. Well before the conquest of Canaan ever took place, God told Abraham: ‘And they [your descendants] shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete’ (Gen.15:16). It was not to be the usual story of the strong conquering the weak. Quite the reverse, Israel was less numerous and much weaker than the nations she dispossessed (Deut.7:7-8). Rather, God was punishing the Canaanites for their abominable practices. These included child sacrifice, fortune-telling, and contacting the dead (Deut.18:9-14). The depressing list of perversions that were practised amongst the Canaanites included incest, homosexuality, and sexual relations with animals (see Lev.18). In 1983 the prize-winning novelist, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, sought to explain why the communist experiment in what was still then the USSR went so barbarously wrong. Solzhenitsyn’s diagnosis was simple and compelling, albeit not popular with Western liberals: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ The book of Joshua is not simply a book about how God brought Israel into the Promised Land. It is also a book about how God punished the degraded Canaanite tribes.
Secondly, God never gave Israel a blank cheque to carry out wars whenever and however she wished. Apart from the conquest of Canaan, she was always to offer terms of peace first to any city (Deut.20:10-20). There was to be no scorched earth policy, and women and children were to be preserved. It was Carl von Clausewitz who famously stated that ‘To introduce into a philosophy of war a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.’ It is God Himself who has introduced a moderating factor into the conduct of wars. Total war – so tragically familiar to us all since 1914 – is a concept that is foreign to the teachings of the God of the Bible. Wars are the result of human sin (James 4:1), which means that they can only be waged in order to prevent a greater evil. The genocide of Joshua’s day was restricted to Joshua’s day – although even then, Rahab the harlot found grace (Josh.2 & 6).
Thirdly, the destruction of the Canaanites points to God’s judgment, known as the second death. What we see in Joshua is a prelude to this. In typical Old Testament terms, God carries out His judgment on the ungodliness and unrighteousness of human beings who had utterly repudiated both God and humanity. It is the New Testament which warns us that ‘as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death’ (Rev.21:8). If the conquest of Canaan causes some consternation, the reality of hell is much more distressing. What happened to the Canaanites about 1500 B.C. hardly compares with God’s just judgment on all those who reject His truth. Those who baulk at what Joshua did in conquering Canaan ought to contemplate what Jesus says about hell.
The reality is that God is the One who both wages war and achieves peace. He is the God of grace and the God of judgment. Psalm 24 asks: ‘Who is this King of glory?’ Then it answers: ‘The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!’ (Psalm 24:8) The God who led Israel through the Red Sea is the God who drowned their enemies in that same sea (Ex.14-15). It is hardly possible to have one without the other. Nehemiah was confident in telling his fellow labourers in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem: ‘Our God will fight for us’ (Neh.4:20). Yet God will ultimately achieve true and everlasting peace (Isa.2:4; Micah 4:3). ‘He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; He burns the chariots with fire’ (Ps.46:9). His kingdom is one of peace (Isa.11:1-10) ruled by Christ as the Prince of Peace (Isa.9:6). The One who came not to bring peace but a sword (Matt.10:34) has by His cross become our peace (Eph.2:14) and so grants His people peace (John 14:27).
Peter Barnes