There are many decent responses to the old “problem:” how could a good God command the genocide of all the people of Canaan?” Let us leave aside the over literalism that ignores the spiritual point of the passage and assumes that we are reading God’s battle plan of the people of Israel.
One thing that is often overlooked in the discussion of the issue is that the people of Israel did not obey the command.
Genocide did not happen.
At first, this does not seem so important because the people of Israel are chastised for their failure to obey. Seemingly God did not only tell them to do a bad thing, He was mad when they did not follow up and do it!
And yet it is important to note that genocide did not happen.
Why?
God was dealing with an ancient people and trying to reveal His holy and loving nature. Ancient peoples were not kind in warfare . . . wiping everyone out would not have been a morally troubling command. It would have been unusual because it was a waste of loot. The other obvious option for an ancient when dealing with captive peoples was slavery and other forms of exploitation.
Now, oddly, the same books that command “genocide” (not carried out) also command the people of Israel (in the future when they have the land) to treat the stranger as an equal.
What is happening?
A possibility is that Israel faced a test like that of Abraham with his only son, Isaac. Human sacrifice was a possibility in Abraham’s world and so when God commanded it, Abraham knew no better. He was at the start of the moral education of the Jews and Christians that would make such a test useless for us. If at the end of centuries of moral education I heard a voice commanding my to kill my child, I know not to do it.
Abraham could be tested because he was ignorant of this lesson. In fact, when Abraham put God first and did not turn Isaac into an idol, God stopped the test. Abraham was told not to sacrifice his son. This passage has much deep theological meaning, but notice that one thing it did not do was lead to the Jewish people wondering if they should sacrifice their children on bloody altars.
They got the point our wooden literalism misses: Abraham could be tested in ways that (because of Abraham) we cannot. Lesson learned.
The people of Israel did not, in fact, obey God’s command to “cleanse the land.” They did not do so out of moral indignation with God, but because they wanted slaves, loot, and to worship false gods. They made slaves.
What if they had begun to obey as Abraham did?
We cannot be sure, but given the thrust of Scripture, I think it plausible that God would have made atonement for the Canaanites. Like all ancient people groups, Israel had a slew of bad views about other peoples. Two bad ideas were treating captives as spoil and another was merging all ideas found in a conquered people into their own. God wanted them to learn to be set apart and to be good students in His moral school.
They decided to let the Canaanites live, but for immoral reasons. They disobeyed and so the Canaanites became a snare to them instead of a redeemed group of sojourners in their midst.
This is at least possible given the rest of Scripture. God tested ancient peoples in ways that would not work for us. We are “further along” in our moral education. He sometimes commanded things (like killing) to get at one bad motive and then stopped the person in process (like Abraham with Isaac) when he saw that the person was purged of his bad motive.
The people of Israel did a good thing (letting the Canaanites live) for bad reasons (disobedience, greed, lust). They failed the lesson, but notice that mainstream Judaism learned from this failure, not that they should kill all their enemies in war. God’s moral school soon dealt with that issue in other ways. They learned that the “land” (really the hearts of the people) needed radical purification. We cannot cling to “Canaanites” because they are attractive to us.
So the “genocide” of the Canaanites that did not happen is included in a story with a mainly mystical or theological point about purity, and demonstrates the bad results of disobedience. The relationship of Israel to the Canaanites would never be redeemed because Israel made the Canaanites objects of desire or of loathing. God would have provided a better way.
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