But of the cities of these peoples which Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth,
Deuteronomy 20 sets out Israel's law of war, and here the rules change: Israel could offer peace to distant cities, but not to the cities of the land God was giving them. This raises a hard question — why would a good God give such an order, and what does it say to readers today?
Israel's normal way of war was to offer terms first. Even in a siege, the chapter limited what Israel could destroy.
Indiscriminate slaughter and wholesale destruction formed no part of Israel's business. Any city willing to accept the offer of peace was given the privilege of paying tribute to the people of God. And in a city that refused peace, everything inside the walls that could be used was to be kept.
The nations of the land are the one exception, and the reason given is not military.
There was one exception: there must be no peace with the Canaanites. They were not feared as rivals. They were doomed to destruction for their vile practices and for luring others into them.
God did not act against a people He had ignored. He waited, and Scripture records how long.
Already in Genesis 15:16 God had said to Abraham: "For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." The Amorites were one of the main nations of Canaan. The Canaanites worshipped idols called Baal ("Lord"), Moloch ("King") and Astaroth ("Spouse"), and that worship went with dreadful moral excesses such as child sacrifice and prostitution. And yet God showed grace towards these nations for more than 400 years.
That guilt is what answers the complaint — and God held His own people to the same standard.
No nation on earth was such a breeding ground for every kind of corruption among men, and for all wickedness and abomination in the sight of God, as the Canaanites whom God devoted to destruction... Far from passing over His own people, God never dealt with any nation as strictly as with Israel. Every soul of Israel perished in the wilderness except the two spies... where can men justly complain of the doom that fell on such corrupters of the race?
Israel was not grabbing land it wanted. God handed Israel a task, and the task carried a lesson.
Israel was in this respect only the executioner of divine judgment, not of their own passion or greed for gain. He could have destroyed them Himself by plague or famine. Instead He chose Israel to do it, and so taught His people the most solemn lesson He could give them, in the holiness of His own nature, and in what sin is before Him. They themselves would incur similar awful judgments if they followed them in their sin.
Some readers object that this order is cruel. One writer answers by holding two truths about God together.
Opponents of Scripture have sometimes attacked the severity of the LORD's orders to Israel about their enemies. If God is love, why would He tell His people to act like this? The answer is very simple: "God is light," as well as love. The nations in and around Canaan were so soaked in terrible evils that they were a moral ulcer in the middle of the earth. It was mercy to others, and righteousness in God, to destroy them completely, after bearing with them so patiently. How much of a cancer does a skilled surgeon's knife spare?
Israel did not carry the order out, and the survivors cost them dearly.
They left many alive who should have been destroyed. Those spared became the wretched instruments of Israel's own ruin, leading Israel into the very sins that had called so loudly for divine judgement.
No reader today is handed a sword. This command belonged to one people at one point, and Christians are given the opposite order.
The same Divine Lawgiver, in full keeping with the age of law, told Saul to destroy Amalek utterly and to spare none. Now, in the day of salvation, He says to His redeemed, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
What stays with us is the picture. These nations stand for an enemy believers still face.
Seen as a picture, the Canaanites stand for the agents of Satan — the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places, the rulers of this present darkness whom we are called to wrestle with now... With them there can be, and ought to be, no terms, no compromise, and no letting up in the fight, at any time or in any circumstances.
- Limited — This is not a rule for war in general. Israel could offer distant cities peace and take them as tributaries. Only the nations of the land itself were to be destroyed.
- Deserved — God waited more than 400 years while the guilt of these nations filled up. He bore with child sacrifice and prostitution before He acted.
- Delegated — Israel struck as the executioner of God's judgment, not out of greed. In carrying it out, Israel learned what sin looks like to a holy God.
- Consistent — The same God let a whole generation of His own people die in the wilderness. He shows no favourites.
- Costly — Israel spared nations it was told to destroy. Those survivors dragged Israel into the very sins that had condemned them. No such sword is given today; Christians are told to love their enemies.
but shalt utterly devote them to destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee;
Six nations are named here, and Israel is told to leave none of them alive — a command that has troubled readers ever since. Commentators ask what "devote" means, why these nations, and why God used Israel's sword instead of His own hand.
The chapter as a whole sets out how Israel was to make war, and this verse marks off the one group with whom no terms were possible. The reason was not that Israel wanted the land for itself.
In Deuteronomy 20 we see how the fear of Jehovah controlled war, both inside and outside. It was not a rival to be got rid of, but the corrupt races who in fact held the land, to be destroyed by and for Israel, to whom the land was divinely given.
The phrase "devote them to complete destruction" is a legal term in Israel's law. It belongs to the language of vows, not to the language of battle.
Living things could be vowed to Him in two ways. They could be consecrated to Him in life. Or, under certain conditions, they could be devoted to Him forever. This second kind of vow is called cherem. Men, animals and fields could be devoted in this way, and for these no redemption was permitted. In the case of people, such a vow was probably meant to affect only the enemies of God and of Israel. Their death was the only possible way to fulfil it. The Canaanites are an example of this (Deuteronomy 20:17).
Commentators point back four hundred years to God's word to Abraham. This was not the first time God had swept away a whole society.
The first case was of course the flood. Humanity was then wiped off the face of the earth, apart from eight souls. The second was the destruction of the cities of the plain, including Sodom and Gomorrah. Only righteous Lot and two daughters were saved. On both these occasions the destruction was an act of God — by water, and by fire and sulphur. In both cases human corruption had risen so high that it could no longer be tolerated. This was now the case with the Amorite nations. Some four hundred years earlier Abraham had been told, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Genesis 15:16), but now it clearly was complete.
God could have used plague or famine, as He had used water and fire before. He chose Israel's hands instead.
Israel was in this respect only the executioner of divine judgment, not of their own passion or greed for land. He might have destroyed them by plague or famine. Instead He chose Israel to carry out this task. In doing so He gave His people the most solemn lesson they could receive: the holiness of His own nature, and what sin is before Him.
Some ask whether such a command is worthy of God at all. One writer answers by pointing at the Canaanites themselves, and at how God treated Israel.
Of all the nations on earth, none was such a breeding ground for every kind of corruption among men, and for all wickedness in the sight of God, as the Canaanites whom God devoted to destruction. So, as far as righteousness goes, it was perfectly just to hold these Canaanites up as a solemn warning to all the world and for all time. In the last lecture we saw that, far from passing over His own people, God never dealt with any nation as strictly as with Israel. Every soul of Israel died in the wilderness except the two spies who stood for God, even against their fellows as well as against the crowd. If God let all Israel fall in the wilderness for their sins, and did not spare even the single fault of Moses, how can anyone justly complain about the doom that fell on such corrupters of the human race?
Israel did not carry out the command. Commentators trace Israel's later history straight back to that failure.
It was a high honour put on Israel to wipe out those guilty nations. They proved themselves completely unworthy of that honour, because they failed to do as they were commanded. They left alive many who should have been utterly destroyed. The peoples they spared became the miserable instruments of Israel's own final ruin. They led Israel into the very sins that had called so loudly for divine judgment.
Some readers still find this command hard. One writer offers a further angle: what these nations picture.
Seen as a picture, the Canaanites stand for the agents of Satan — the spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. They are the rulers of the darkness of this world, and we are called to wrestle with them now. In particular, they are the powers of evil that keep turning every link of religion into a means of deliberate and ruinous dishonour to God. With such enemies there can be no terms and no compromise, and there ought to be none. The fight must never stop, at any time or under any possible circumstances.
- Devoted. The command uses the language of a vow — cherem, something handed over to God for ever, with no buying back.
- Ripened. These nations were not judged early. Abraham was told their iniquity was "not yet complete"; by now it was, as with the flood and Sodom before.
- Executioner. Israel carried out God's sentence, not its own greed — and learned along the way what sin looks like to a holy God.
- Spared. Israel left many alive. Those spared peoples then dragged Israel into the same sins, and into ruin.
- No terms. Read as a picture, these nations stand for the spiritual powers we wrestle with. With them, compromise is never an option.