A reader writes

I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before, but how do you respond to people who reject God based on the Biblical account of Him commanding the Israelite people to commit genocide? Thanks.

The most detailed (and, mind you, speculative) treatment I have given to this and related questions of Old Testament violence is found in the chapter on the Moral Sense of Scripture in my Making Senses Out of Scripture. That’s where I’d point you.

In addition, Tim Gray and Jeff Cavins have a book coming out from Ascension Press in which they do a survey of scripture based on Jeff’s “Great Adventure” series which deals with (among many other things) doctrine of “herem” in the context Israel’s covenant relationship with God. It’s an enormously complex subject.