Did God command genocide?

Our cultural memory is scarred by the atrocities of war, where the powerful have slaughtered the weak, often for nothing more than belonging to a different tribe, or for the land under their feet. Think of the Cambodian killing fields, the mass graves of the Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Nazi death camps. For many these wounds are fresh. Some of my own dear friends have been traumatised by the human carnage of the conflict in Nigeria, finding themselves comforting after militants from the north have wiped out peaceful villages. Surely, if we have any heart left, we weep in the face of such evil.

So what are we to make, then, of the trouble texts in the Old Testament, where it seems like God similarly commands the genocide of the Canaanites at the hands of Israel’s armies? These stories are hard to swallow, leading many to conclude that, if true, God must be a moral monster. How does the Christian story make sense of divine violence? Did God command genocide?

Imagining the death of so many people, being drowned in floods, destroyed by fire, or slain with the sword is unbearingly discomforting. But as historians like Tom Holland have pointed out, though, precisely why it troubles me so much is because as a society our collective conscience has been so radically reshaped by the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

For it was into a dark and brutal world full of warring gods and dehumanising tribal violence that Jesus celebrated peacemakers not warmongers. Jesus rebuked his disciples for their violent impulses, inviting his followers to turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and pray for those who persecute you: a teaching Jesus embodied when he prayed for those who crucified him:

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34)

So while Jesus does warn of a coming judgment, where he will come back to deal with evil and restore justice on earth, but suffice it to s ay, it is the legacy of Jesus’ non-violence and his compassion for sinners that makes me so uncomfortable with the trouble texts in the Old Testament.

Taking the military conquest of Canaan in Joshua as our test case, where in Deuteronomy 20:16-17 the Israelites were explicitly commanded not to leave anything alive in these cities, the problem for me as a Christian, at face value, is that it seems I need to believe 4 statements are true, when the truth of any 3 of these statements logically invalidates the last one.

The four statements are:

#1 God is good.

#2 The Bible is true.

#3 Genocide is evil.

#4 According to the Bible, God commands genocide.

Now all 4 can’t be true at the same time, so which one gives? Do I question God, question the Bible, question my moral intuitions, or question my interpretation. 

Option #1: Is God really good?

One possibility is to follow Richard Dawkins, who concludes that the God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction, before going on to call him every name in the ad hominem playbook. However, along with philosophical theists of various stripes, as a Christian I believe that God is in fact the source of all goodness, which we see in the fullest revelation of God, where the invisible God became visible in Jesus. Which means there is no wedge between the God of the Old Testament and God of the New Testament. There is only one God, made known in Jesus. And so because of Jesus, and the broad witness of the Christian story, I’m led to affirm that God really is good. We can trust Him. So to me, option 1 is off the table.

Option #2: Is the Bible really true?

Some Christian scholars believe that, because you cannot imagine Jesus presiding over the Canaanite conquest, that we must filter the trouble texts in the Old Testament through the lens of God’s self-sacrificial love on the cross. As such, they conclude that while God intended to drive out the Canaanites non-violently, the Israelites, in their own dark sinfulness, misinterpreted God to be sanctioning genocide. Now while I sympathise with the struggle to reconcile Jesus with these events, I’m not comfortable throwing the Bible under the bus. From the gospels Jesus certainly seemed to treat the Scriptures as though they were inspired by God and trustworthy, so it seems to me a slippery slope to start picking and choosing which divine utterances in the Old Testament can be believed, and which must be rejected as human error. So for me, I’m not persuaded #2 is a live option.

Option #3: Is genocide always evil

Other Christian scholars try to justify the Canaanite conquest by challenging our moral intuitions. They argue that while it is wrong for human rulers to play God, as it turns out, God is God. As the author of life, as the judge of all humanity, and as the only one who possess perfect foreknowledge and wisdom to know when and how to intervene as the best possible course of action, God has the unique right, indeed the responsibility, to execute judgment. These scholars typically point to the depravity of the Canaanite culture, who were known to ritually sacrifice their own children to pagan gods, as justification for God’s judgment, highlighting God’s patience with the Canaanites where for 450 years he was warning them to repent. And when it comes to the difficult question of non-combatants like women, or of innocents like children, these scholars typically appeal to the Christian view of eternity, where in God’s mercy, those who are lost as collateral damage could have their suffering compensated in God’s future world.

Now I think this view has difficulties, and is often poorly parsed out, but I do think there is something to the need for justice, where a loving God cannot forever stand back and watch evil pervert His creation, with incalculable costs to future generations.

Finally, Option #4: Did God command genocide?

There is a growing body of Christian scholars who argue that God’s commands to Israel are better interpreted as a charter to exile the Canaanites for their evil, not exterminate them. Pointing out how warlike hyperbole was a common feature in ancient conquest narratives, and that Israel was no trigger happy bully but a puny nation compared to the Canaanite giants they feared, these scholars hone in on Israel’s rules of war to show that, not only were the Canaanites warned of God’s judgment and given passage to leave, but that the Israelite conquest was aimed at military strongholds, not civilian population centres, and that the only non-combatants explicitly mentioned, Rahab and her tavern keeping family, ended up being saved from God’s judgment amidst Jericho’s dramatic downfall. So for me this final option, swapping out extermination for exile, certainly helps lessen the force of the question around genocide, even if it doesn’t fully resolve the tension of the Canaanite conquest. 

The truth is, honestly, I don’t really have a comprehensive or completely satisfying answer on this question. Christian scholars who love Jesus and the Bible disagree, as we do on a range of things where the Christian story is not as clear. So while right now I lean towards appealing to some mix of options 3 and 4, I wouldn’t die on that hill. But here’s a couple of things I do know. While some detractors interpret the Canaanite conquest as ethnic cleansing, the Bible teaches that all tribes and tongues are made in God’s image and are deeply loved. If it turns out the penalty for their evil was indeed was exile from the promised land, rather than extermination, then Canaan faced the same judgment as Adam and Eve before them and Israel after them. God’s justice does not show favourites.

If we all must be judged, then I know I trust that Jesus, the judge of all the earth, will ultimately do what is right. So whilst these trouble texts in the Old Testament are confronting to anyone with a beating heart, and perhaps remain partially unanswered, they are the exceptions in the Christian story, the warnings that punctuate a larger narrative of God’s patience and forgiveness in drawing us towards salvation.

As it turns out, mercy and grace are the native language of God’s divine nature. And where holy justice must burst forth to deal with evil, God’s heart for us is ultimately revealed in Jesus, who was more willing to fall on the sword of divine justice for us at the cross than to wield it against us at the judgment.