Why did God command the extermination of the Canaanites?

To many Bible readers the general command of Jehovah to Israel to exterminate all Canaanites causes real difficulties for it appears to be cruel and incomprehensible.

Already in Gen. 15:16 God had said to Abraham: "For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The Amorites were one of the main nations of Canaan. The idolatry of the Canaanites with their idols Baal ("Lord"), Moloch ("King") and Astaroth ("Spouse") was linked with dreadful moral excesses such as child offering and prostitution. And yet God showed grace towards these nations for more than 400 years. But once Israel came to live in Canaan the extermination of these idolatrous nations was a necessary spiritual task. On the one hand God used Israel to punish the ungodliness of these nations. On the other hand this was the only way to preserve the people of God from defilement and from taking over these sinful customs. Israel became God's instrument so to say to fulfil His moral goals (Sodom and Gomorra likewise had been exterminated by God for the same reason - but without human intervention). The disobedience of Israel in this respect unfortunately let idolatry creep in amongst the people of God. -

233 Having given this general view of the connection of the whole subject, I return to the conquest of Canaan. The scriptures are express in presenting it as an example of God's positive judgment after all patience had already been shewn to be useless (as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrha); of His power against the enemies of His nature, purposes, and people; and of His faithfulness to these last. Abraham was told that his descendants must go down and dwell in Egypt for a long period, for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full; and this took place. Israel was clearly informed of the cause why they were thus judged: "Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, but for the wickedness of these nations, the Lord doth drive them out before thee," Deut. 9:5; Deut. 18:12. This truth is expressed in the strongest possible manner (Lev. 18) in warning Israel not to fall into the like abominations. "And the land is defiled, therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes … that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you." Thus a people, allowed to ripen up to their full height of wickedness, are taken as the occasion of shewing God's righteous wrath and power. Israel is fully warned and apprised of the principle on which it was done. It is a great public sample of God's full judgment in the earth. They were to be destroyed by the judicial power of God. It was also (as the case of Achan fully shews) the occasion of shewing God's power and faithfulness, but His strict judgment of evil in the midst of His people.

In the land the history of Israel continued in the same disobedient way, where we are told first that which is negative. God sent them in with orders to destroy the inhabitants (v. 34). Why was this? Because the iniquity of the Amorites had become full: they were given up fully to gross idol worship, and only their destruction could satisfy God. People would protest, "But what of the children who are not responsible for this evil? The answer is simple. If the children died under the age of responsibility, they would be infinitely better off in being taken to heaven, rather than being left to learn the ways of idolatry, with its resulting eternal judgment.

However, in speaking of these things, it was the intention of Moses to encourage Israel to be unafraid to enter the land of Canaan and dispossess their enemies there. The terrible, indiscriminate slaughter of a whole culture may seem to us naturally reprehensible. But God is wiser than we. He knows what He is doing. He had told Abraham years before, "The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Gen.15:16). But now the time had come when it was complete. Idolatry and demon worship had risen to such a height that there was no hope of recovery (1 Kings 21:26). Little children would be better dead than exposed to the evil indulged in by their parents, and parents would be better dead than left to continue in the abominations that were prevalent in their whole society.

At Hazor, as in other cities and places, the divine command of utter extermination of all human beings was literally carried out. "There was not any left to breathe." An awful picture indeed it is! Infidels have made the best of it by denouncing these records and blaspheming the righteous and holy God. Others again have tried to excuse the Israelites by saying that it was the customary thing 1,500 years before Christ to treat conquered nations in this way. But it was God Himself who commanded their extermination. Joshua and Israel had no choice whatever in the matter. They acted in obedience to the divine will. God's time for the execution of His righteous judgments had come and He used Israel as His instrument. To Abraham the word was spoken concerning his seed, "in the fourth generation they will come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The iniquity of these nations had reached such a degree, that God's wrath and holy vengeance had to fall upon them. They were given to the most awful abominations and practised unspeakable immoralities. The hour of judgment had come. The whole race was to be swept away. And who dares to question God's sovereign right to do so. Should not the judge of all the earth do right?

So far as to Israel, simply looked at as from within: a sterner duty awaited them as to the land into which Jehovah was about to bring them. They were completely to destroy out of it the Canaanite inhabitants, showing them no mercy, making no covenant or alliance with them. Over and over again the cause of this has been explained. They were a people whose iniquity was now full, as in Abraham's time it yet was not. (Gen. 15.) The land itself was spuing them out for their abominations, and Israel was in this respect but the executioner of divine judgment, not of their own passion or lust of acquisition. Instead of destroying them, as He might, by plague or famine, He chose Israel to perform this office, and thus gave His people themselves the most solemn lesson that could be given 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, of which their loathsome gods of lust and murder were the full outcome and expression. There must be no dalliance with this evil, no league of any kind with those infected with it. Axe and fire must deal with all its symbols, and Israel must be wholly devoted to Him who had set His love upon them in all their insignificance, and in that love, and faithful to His promise to their fathers, had now redeemed them to Himself. Thus they knew God, this true and faithful God, — faithful in holy judgment as in loving mercy.

This paragraph sets forth two great principles which, if fully laid hold of, must put the heart into a right moral attitude. In the first place, the people were reminded that their possession of the land of Canaan was simply in pursuance of God's promise to their fathers. This was placing the matter on the most solid basis — a basis which nothing could ever disturb.

As to the seven nations who were to be dispossessed, it was on the ground of their wickedness that God, in the exercise of His righteous government, was about to drive them out. Every landlord has a perfect right to eject bad tenants; and the nations of Canaan had not only failed to pay their rent, as we say, but they had injured and defiled the property to such an extent that God could no longer endure them; and therefore He was going to drive them out, irrespective altogether of the incoming tenants. Whoever was going to get possession of the property, these dreadful tenants must be evicted. The iniquity of the Amorites had reached its highest point, and nothing remained but that judgement should take its course. Men might argue and reason as to the moral fitness and consistency of a benevolent Being unroofing the houses of thousands of families and putting the occupants to the sword; but we may depend upon it the government of God will make very short work with all such arguments. God, blessed for ever be His holy Name, knows how to manage His own affairs, and that too without asking man's opinion. He had borne with the wickedness of the seven nations to such a degree that it had become absolutely insufferable; the very land itself could not bear it. Any further exercise of forbearance would have been a sanction of the most terrible abominations; and this of course was a moral impossibility. The glory of God absolutely demanded the expulsion of the Canaanites.

Yes; and we may add, the glory of God demanded the introduction of the seed of Abraham into possession of the property to hold, as tenants for ever under the Lord God Almighty, the most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth. Thus the matter stood for Israel, had they but seen it. Their possession of the land of promise and the maintenance of the divine glory were so bound up together that one could not be touched without touching the other. God had promised to give the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, as an everlasting possession. Had He not a right to do so? Will infidels question God's right to do as He will with His own? Will they refuse to the Creator and Governor of the universe a right which they claim for themselves? The land was Jehovah's, and He gave it to Abraham His friend for ever; and although this was true, yet were not the Canaanites disturbed in their tenure of the property until their wickedness had become positively unbearable.

Thus we see that in the matter both of the outgoing and incoming tenants, the glory of God was involved. That glory demanded that the Canaanites should be expelled because of their ways; and that glory demanded that Israel should be put in possession because of the promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Now the races of Canaan occupied that land which Jehovah intended for Israel. Nor was this all. They were conspicuously vile, most of all the cities of the plain, whose wickedness was not to be named. They were therefore cut off by a sudden and manifestly divine infliction. But when the cup of the Amorites was full, and the land became so unclean that Jehovah must visit its iniquity, He was pleased to make Israel the executioner of His vengeance. What could be more righteous in itself? What wiser for His people, its destined heirs? All unnatural evils as well as idolatries (their very religion ever binding on them these abominations) had become their "customs," from which Israel must be kept. It was no question of cruelty; and it was Israel's fault not to exterminate as completely as Jehovah enjoined; so that the spared did not fail to ensnare and corrupt the chosen people into like infamy.

It is well known that not a few have found a difficulty in these extreme measures of Joshua, as expressing Jehovah's will. The exterminating severity with which the work was pursued in the land of Canaan shocks them. But they forget, or do not know, that these Canaanites were the most daring enemies against God, the most openly depraved and shameless on the face of the earth; not only morally the grossest, but this bound up most of all with idolatry of the most corrupt kind. They were the chief originators and patrons of unnatural crimes, which were as common as possible in their midst. If then God meant that the seed of Abraham should be His people in the land, how possibly could those who must be in evils moral and idolatrous the most infectious to Israel be tolerated there? I repeat, they might have fled elsewhere if they did not repent of their iniquities. It had been long revealed that God meant to bring His people to Canaan. It was therefore their rebellious unbelief if they did not look for it; for God had long ago said it plainly. But then, as we are told in the book of Genesis, the cup of the Amorites was not yet full. If God was waiting for His people to go through the necessary discipline in bondage and sorrow, all that time Satan was working up the Amorites to their abominable excesses of evil. The cup of their iniquity was full when the divine dealings with Israel were sufficiently ripe for bringing His people in.

The notices of the Canaanite families are more minute, as God considered His people whose duty it was to execute judgment and dispossess them of the promised land. However they might be "spread abroad" or dispersed, and seen to flourish for a while, the curse was on them, from the first on moral grounds, aggravated at last by enormities against God and man which to His eyes called for extermination.