The Canaanite Objection: Clay Jones on the Destruction of the Canaanites

One of the Bible stories that I learned as a child was about the Battle of Jericho. The Battle of Jericho, as told to us then, was tidied up considerably from the way it actually appears in the Bible. The book of Joshua, which reports the events of Jericho, describes things more violently than the cheery tune we sung about Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho. The Joshua account reads (emphasis mine): 

^"On the seventh day they rose early, at the dawn of day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. ¹⁶ And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, “Shout, for the Lord has given you the city. ¹⁷ And the city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers whom we sent. ¹⁸ But you, keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest when you have devoted them you take any of the devoted things and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction and bring trouble upon it. ¹⁹ But all silver and gold, and every vessel of bronze and iron, are holy to the Lord; they shall go into the treasury of the Lord.” ²⁰ So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city. ²¹ Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword" (Joshua 6:15–21).

This was the beginning of the conquest of Canaan. The book of Joshua continues to report the Israelites’ military conquest of the land of Canaan, a conquest commanded by earlier by God during Israel’s desert wanderings

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, ² and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. ³ You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, ⁴ for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. ⁵ But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire” (Deuteronomy 7:1–5).

And God commanded later, when due to Israel’s disobedience in conquering the land they were submerged in Canaanite idolatry and sin, in 1 Samuel 15 (emphasis mine):

² Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘I have noted what Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. ³ Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey'" (1 Samuel 15:2–3) 

Clearly this aspect of the account wasn’t stressed in children’s Sunday school. Both non-Christians and Christians struggle to make sense of these passages. Why did God command the destruction of the Canaanite nations? Fervent atheists like Richard Dawkins have seized on these passages and said that the God of the Bible that Christians worship is a fictive, genocidal lunatic. How are Christians to make sense of, and explain, God’s directive to destroy the Canaanites?

Clay Jones, professor of apologetics at Biola University in California, addresses this question in his article “We Don’t Hate Sin So We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites.” Jones’ argues that (a) we do not hate sin in the same way that God does and so we struggle to understand his directive to destroy the Canaanites (p. 53) and (b) that the destruction of the Canaanites was not an instance of racially-motivated ethnic cleansing but was an act of corporate capital punishment in response to deeply-rooted evil (p. 68).

Jones makes his case by demonstrating from Ancient Near Eastern sources and secondary scholarship that Canaan was polytheistic (or, idolatrous) and that this polytheism was “theologically conducive to (if not motivational for) the formation of Canaanite practices, including the practices of incest, adultery, incest, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality, such that these practices are not incoherent with Canaanite idolatry” (p. 57). Polytheism in Canaan allowed for all sorts of evil practices that God detested.

After suggesting this connection Jones illustrates the nature of the aforementioned practices in Canaanite life. This is the largest portion of the article as Jones sketches out in vivid detail the morally reprehensible practices of Canaan prior to the Israelite conquest.

Jones also argues that the underlying motivation behind the destruction of the Canaanites was not ethnic cleansing.  God treated Israel, his chosen people, with great severity as well when they turned to Canaanite gods and committed similarly evil acts.

Finally, Jones provides numerous illustrations from contemporary Western culture that illustrate the evil in our own culture is eerily similar to Canaan’s sins. Websites and television promote adultery. Groups lobby for the legitimacy of pedophilia. Children are sacrificed for comfort, cost, and convenience. Pornographic websites featuring bestiality get thousands of hits per day. Our culture, blinded by sin, does not want to recognize the justness of God’s judgment against Canaan because to do so would also be an act of self-condemnation.

Jones sums up his article by writing:

“We do not appreciate the depths of our own depravity, the horror of sin, and the righteousness of God. Consequently, it is no surprise that when we see God’s judgment upon those who committed the sins we commit, that complaint and protest arises within our hearts: “This is divine barbarism!” or “This is divine genocide!” But studying these things over the years has led me to wonder if the Canaanites might not stand up at the Judgment and condemn this generation” (pp. 71-72)

Jones’ article is worth reading, not only because it answers a common obstacle to biblical faith, but also because it calls to our attention a similarity that existed between the people of God in the Old Testament and today. Similar threats to capitulate to the surrounding culture have faced the Church throughout the ages. The Church must resist these, stand firm in the faith, glory in holiness, and be sanctified through the Word so that through its witness many might be transferred out of spiritual darkness and into the light of Christ. Let us pray that the God will protect the Church, strengthen the Church, and use the Church to call the world to repentance through Christ while making the pleasures of serving him known.  

For those who desire a condensed version of Jones’ argument you should consult Greg Koukl’s article on it here (follow the link and download the pdf).

Slow to Anger, Great in Power: Part Two

Those who presume on the God’s love, in order to justify their sin, are like a cruel child poking a leashed Rottweiler with a long stick. They assume that since the dog is tethered, that it cannot actually do anything about the child’s irritating and cruel behavior. Perhaps the dog, is merely irritated at first, and slowly wakes from his afternoon sleep. The child is merely prodding at first; but in a desire to provoke some sort of reaction the child continues to poke, harder and harder. He assumes that while the angry dog might make growl and bark, that that is all he can do. He assumes wrongly.

Nahum’s warning is this: God is not tethered. Yes, he does not desire to punish; but do not assume he cannot or will not. Do not poke and prod God, assuming that he can only make a harmless fuss.

Sin is a poking and prodding of God. It is an offense to his perfect goodness. Then, the frightening fact is, we have poked and prodded God with our sin. Romans 3:10-18 provides us with our own indictment:

as it is written: "'None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.' 'Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.' 'The venom of asps is under their lips.' 'Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.' 'Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.' 'There is no fear of God before their eyes.'"    

We are a people who have either denied or defied God’s wrath; but praise be to God that he chose to pour out his wrath, not on us, deserving sinners, but onto his Son, Jesus Christ. It was Jesus who paid the penalty that was due for our sins. He bore the wrath we deserved.

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Therefore, for those who are in Christ, there is no fear of the Lord who is “great in power” (Nahum 1:3); rather, we rejoice! For his great power became the means of our redemption, our forgiveness. By his power, we are saved.

Slow to Anger, Great in Power: Part One

Nahum 1:2-3a, "The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies. The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty."

When God revealed himself to the Moses on Mount Sinai, he spoke these words: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Exodus 34:6-7). As God’s self-revelation, the understanding of God being “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” became central to Israel’s understanding of the God they worshiped (the phrase occurs in several places in the Old Testament, e.g. Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalms 86:15, 103:8, 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2).

These were words that God spoke about himself and they came to define how Israel thought about their God. So, it is odd that the prophet Nahum changes this description, “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power” (v. 3). Upon realizing a switch has been pulled, the reader should ask, nervously, “But what about the part that says God doesn’t get angry very quickly?

The background to Nahum is important in understanding why Nahum makes the switch. Nahum is addressed to the people of Nineveh, a nation that had experienced a dramatic religious revival and period of repentance during the ministry of the prophet Jonah; however, Nineveh did not continue living lives of godliness. Nineveh became the capital city of the mighty Assyrian empire, an empire whose brutality included the torture of prisoners-- flaying, burning alive, and amputating various parts of the body and face. As such, “Nineveh represented the brutal wickedness of the Assyrians that the Lord had determined to punish” [Andrew Hill & John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2000), 511]. The book of Nahum records the prophesies of God, through Nahum, against the Ninevites. Nahum prophesied that the destruction of Nineveh, the supposedly indestructible city, would happen, and it would be at the command of the LORD God. God’s punishment against the evil of Nineveh was certain.

So, Nahum is a book about the judgment of God. In Nahum’s time, as in today, such talk of wrath often causes great distress, “God is love.” Praise the Lord that this is true! However, what is (wrongfully) implied by this reference to 1 John 4, seems to often be: if God is a God of love, he cannot also be a God of judgment. Love and judgment, it is suggested, live as irreconcilable opposites.

God doesn’t think so. Inspired by the Holy Spirit, Nahum prophesies that while God doesn’t not move quickly to punish, he is wholly able to. It is his prerogative (that is to say, his divine right) to punish sinners and he has the power to do so. John Calvin provides this helpful paraphrase:

“[It is] as though [Nahum] said, ‘I see that the world everywhere trifle with God, and that the ungodly delude themselves with such sophistries, that they reject all threatenings [of God’s punishment]. I indeed allow that God is ready to pardon, and that he descends not to wrath, except when he is constrained by extreme necessity: all this is indeed true; but yet know, that God is armed with his own power: escape then shall none of those who allow themselves the liberty of abusing his patience, notwithstanding the insolence they manifest towards him’” [John Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries: Volume 14 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2009), 422].

Continued tomorrow...