Destruction Of The People In Ca

Destruction Of The People In Ca THE JUSTNESS OF GOD IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PEOPLE IN CANAAN

The purpose of this study is to show God’s righteousness and justness in his destruction of the people of Canaan at the time the Israelites entered that land after their exodus from Egypt.

Since this study involves the character of God, let us first see what he has revealed about his righteousness in his word:

Isaiah 45:21 And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but me.

Isaiah 61:8 For I, the Lord, love justice…

Jeremiah 9:24 …”I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.

Secondly, let us see some of the practices which he has declared as wickedness–the things which are detestable to him:

Deuteronomy 17:2-5 If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the Lord gives you is found doing evil…has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars of the sky,…If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel,…stone that person to death.

Deuteronomy 27:15-25 Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol–a thing detestable to the Lord,…Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow…Cursed is the man who sleeps with his father’s wife… Cursed is the man who has sexual relations with any animal… Cursed is the man who sleeps with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother…Cursed is the man who sleeps with him mother-in-law…Cursed is the man who kills his neighbor secretly…Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent person.

Deuteronomy 16:21, 22 Do not set up any wooden Asherah pole… and do not erect a sacred stone, for these the Lord your God hates.

It can be seen from Scripture that the peoples of Canaan and the surrounding regions were practicing these things:

Genesis 19:4, 5 Before they [Lot and the angels] had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom–both young and old–surrounded the house. They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-12, 14 …do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, and because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you…The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination…

1 Kings 14:23, 24 They [Judah] also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. There are even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.

So we can see that a problem would (and in fact did) develop with God’s people living in a land where their neighbors practiced such rites and religions, things that would be destructive to the Israelites’ relationship with God (see Ps 106:34-39). Those who embraced the evil practices of these neighbors faced the same divine destruction (Dt 7:26).

It must be remembered that in those days a person could not be “born again”–that is, receive a new spiritual existence that is in intimate contact with God–and thereby receive the indwelling Holy Spirit. He had to practice a very disciplined life adhering strictly to the Law to prevent wandering away from God (Dt 7:11; Nu 31:1-17).

Since this was the case, God had to provide a sheltered, isolated environment for his people to prevent their self-destruction by being polluted by the wickedness that was around them. This is why God told them not to spare any nearby towns (Dt 20:10-18).

As to the apparent severity of God’s punishment by total destruction of the nearby towns and kingdoms, note that God says that destruction would come to those who committed such detestable things (Isa 3:10, 11; Dt 7:1-10). So, besides giving the Israelites the land of Canaan as an inheritance, God also commissioned them as his agents to carry out his judgement on the evildoers (Lev 4:19). We can see from Romans 13:4 that God uses man as his agents to carry out punishment on the wicked.

I think that I should address a commonly misunderstood aspect of Scripture at this point. The sixth commandment of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17) in the King James Version reads, “Thou shalt not kill.” Those who have heard and read the Ten Commandments may consider God’s command to the Israelites to destroy the inhabitants of the cities of Canaan as a contradiction. This apparent paradox arises because the writers of the King James Version incorrectly translated these verses. The Hebrew word used in each listing of the Commandments is *ratsach*, which means to murder or pierce, not to kill which comes from other Hebrew words. The Hebrew *ratsach* was translated as “kill” in these verses also: Nu 35:27, Dt 4:42, 1 Ki 21:19, and Hos 4:2. The same word was translated as “murder” or “murderer” in the following verses: Nu 35, 2 Ki 6:32, Job 24:14, Ps 94:6, Isa 1:21, Jer 7:9, and Hos 6:9. In Matthew 19:18 Jesus quotes Ex 20:13/Dt 5:17 this way, “…Thou shalt do no murder….” The Greek word here is *phoneuo* which means, To do murder.

But lest we think that God would not have mercy on a nation that would repent see Jeremiah 18:7, 8; and Jonah 1:1, 2, and 3:4-10. Remember, God took no pleasure in the destruction of those people (Ex 33:11), but his holiness demanded the punishment for their extreme wickedness.

In the verses where the Israelites were commanded to totally destroy the city–kill every thing that breathes and burn the town, the Hebrew word for “destroy” and “devoted (‘accursed’ in the KJV),” according to footnotes in the NIV, “refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, often by totally destroying them.”