Does the God of the Bible Really Condone Killing?
After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, “The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you. Deuteronomy 9:4
One of the most common challenges from opponents of Christianity relates to God’s command to destroy the nations that occupied the Promised Land when the Israelites came out of Egypt. It is true that God commanded the Israelites to kill every man, woman and child when they entered the land. Hearing that, we can be confused and even repulsed from what is written. The whole process seems to be so counter to the example of Jesus, so counter to Christian ethics. The charge that the Old Testament is just a human book filled with primitive, unacceptable values seems hard to defend against, even to ourselves. Why does the Bible command the killing of everyone?
Like many hard questions about God and the Bible, when we look closely at this one, we find two things. First, the situation is something beyond what the stereotype paints it to be. Second, there is a lesson about God, about us and about our world.
Regarding the first lesson, the Bible makes clear that the Israelites were coming to the Promised Land to be used as an instrument of judgment on a wicked people. This was not simply a story of territorial conquest. God has a purpose and plan at work in this world that encompasses every person, every culture and every civilization on earth. It would even seem to be the case that part of the reason the Israelites went into captivity in Egypt was to wait for the cultures of Palestine to come to the full fruit of the course they had begun. Listen to what God says to Abraham while he was living in the land God promised, over 400 years before the conquest began: “Then the LORD said to him, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own [meaning Egypt], and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years… In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”‘ (Gen 15:13, 16)
When the sins of the people of that land had reached their “full measure” God would bring His people. And the conquest would not just be human warfare. It would be supernatural. God brought down the walls of Jericho symbolically and supernaturally. The sin and judgment of Achan (Joshua 6,7) made it clear that this was God’s affair, God’s mission. It was not for personal human gain.
The Amorites were the people that would be conquered by the Israelites. Archeology shows us a culture of unspeakable depravity and evil. Child sacrifice was rampant. Sexual perversion filled their society. The Israelites were warned again and again by God that if they turned to evil in the same way as the people they conquered, God would treat them the same way. God did not order these people to be killed just to give the Israelites their land. An infinite God would have no problem providing land for one people without taking it from another. As a matter of fact, God told the Israelites there were many countries and people they were not allowed to attack or disturb in any way, for God had given those places to others (Deut. 2:5,9,19). And in no situation did God call His people to engage in war except related to this conquest of the land from these specific peoples under God’s judgment and later to defend that land.
God also wanted the Israelites to utterly destroy their culture for another reason – because if this did not happen the Israelites would eventually be corrupted by it. Their failure to remain separate from the peoples around them ultimately led them to experience a judgment from God even more severe than what was brought upon the wicked culture in the Promised Land.
These passages give a few of the places God addresses this conquest:
“You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” Deut 12:31
“But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” Lev 18:26-28
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations- the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.” Deut. 7:1-4
The second lesson, in this brief overview, is that God’s actions can only be understood beginning from God’s perspective. God made mankind in His image to do what is good and right. And God will judge everyone based on that created purpose. There is nothing unusual in that. Every designer evaluates and judges what was made based on its intended purpose.
Obviously, if our purpose is to express the character of selfless love and holiness, all have sinned. All have fallen short of the glory God created us to express. All have failed to live what we were created to be. And God does judge everyone – not just those destroyed at Sodom or Gomorrah or in Palestine at the coming of the Israelites. Death is one result of that judgment (Gen 2:17; Romans 6:23). So the fact that everyone dies speaks of God’s judgment on every human life.
In a unique way in the Flood of Noah, and in the destruction Sodom, and in the conquest of the Promised Land, God symbolically revealed his judgment of sin through an historical event. In one He used water, in one fire, in one His chosen people. Each one was accomplished to reveal truth to us about God, about ourselves and about what will happen in the future. God warned the Israelites over and over not to get the wrong idea and think they were somehow better than the people they were conquering (see Deut 9:4-6).
Like the Flood and God’s judgment of Sodom, the conquest of the Promised Land was a unique act of God never to be repeated. Unlike Islam, we do not have sanction to go to war for our faith. Not even the Israelites had that and Judaism has never been spread by force.
Because this explanation and understanding comes from an honest look at the Bible and the message it communicates when taken as a whole, those determined to be critical of Christianity will never see it or be satisfied by it. But it is important for us as believers to know that the Bible is consistent, and never changes in its message: God is good, God is Lord of the earth, God exercises righteous judgment in the affairs of man, and that same God rules our world today. The Bible makes clear sense when seen as a communication from the God described in it. When understood rightly the Bible contains a message that teaches us essential truths about ourselves, about our world and about the God we will one day meet face to face. It is intended to make us thankful, fearful and humble, qualities that would bring a whole lot of good to our world today.
Great stuff, John. I like the point about God’s judgment being revealed first through water, then fire, and finally through His people. To me, it’s just one more example of God’s favor of revealing things in “threes”. Past-present-future, solid-liquid-gas, Father-Son-Holy Spirit. There is a definite symmetry in the way He goes about things. There is probably a lesson within a lesson in there for us.