# Canaanite Conquest and Herem ## Intro **The objection.** In the book of Joshua, God commands the Israelites to invade the land of Canaan and to "completely destroy" the people who lived there: men, women, children, even animals. Other passages name infants directly. To a modern reader this looks like a command to commit genocide, given by the God Christians say is good. That is the sharpest moral objection raised against the Old Testament, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a brush-off. The basic Christian reply is twofold: the language of the commands belongs to a recognized ancient war-rhetoric style that almost always overstated what actually happened, and the action itself was a one-time, time-bounded judgment on a specific group of city-states whose religion included industrial-scale child sacrifice. It is not a template for any future war, and it is not racial. Why the surface reading bothers people is obvious. The words on the page say "leave no one alive," and the modern moral conscience rightly recoils. No serious Christian reader pretends otherwise. The honest first move is to admit the difficulty of the texts. What modern readers usually miss is context. Ancient Near Eastern war reports routinely used totalizing phrases like "I destroyed them all, none survived" even when, in the very next paragraph, large numbers of those same people are clearly still alive. Joshua does this too: after the conquest reports of "total destruction," the book itself describes large unconquered territories still full of Canaanites, and Judges has them living next door for centuries. The language was a victory formula, not a body count. The Christian response, in the room, usually combines three pieces. First, the ancient war-rhetoric reading explains most of the totalizing language. Second, the targets were city-state military and political structures tied to a specific cultic system that included burning children alive to Molech, God's judgment is delayed ([Genesis 15:16](/codex/genesis-15-16/)) until that evil reaches a tipping point. Third, anyone who left that system was spared and welcomed in (Rahab, the Gibeonites, the foreigner-protection laws). The Old Testament treats the conquest as judicial action against a specific evil at a specific moment, not as ethnic cleansing, and not as a model for anyone to imitate today. The takeaway: these passages are hard, and Christians who handle them well do not flinch from saying so. But the popular skeptic version of the objection ("the Bible commands genocide, end of story") flattens a careful body of work into a slogan. Read in its own context, with the surrounding canon, and against the actual Canaanite religion it judged, the conquest is a much narrower and stranger thing than the slogan suggests. ## In full The single hardest moral-textual objection raised against the Old Testament: God's commands in [Deuteronomy 7:1-6](/codex/deuteronomy-7-1-6/), [Deut 20:16-18](/codex/deuteronomy-20-16-18/), [1 Samuel 15:3](/codex/1-samuel-15-3/), and the Joshua conquest narratives that Israel "completely destroy" (*ḥerem*) the Canaanite peoples, including, in the most-cited language, "men and women, young and old, oxen and sheep, camel and donkey." On any straight-reading-with-modern-categories the texts appear to authorize genocide. The challenge is real and serious, not (as some popular apologetics suggest) a misreading. This hub presents the textual data, the major Christian-philosophical responses with their strengths and costs, and the spread of positions a serious reader can land on. It does not minimize the difficulty; it shows where the work has been done in 2000 years of exegesis and the past two decades of analytic-philosophical engagement. ## The texts ### Direct command texts - **[Deut 7:1-6](/codex/deuteronomy-7-1-6/)**, "When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you are entering to possess, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites... and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then *you shall utterly destroy them* (*haḥarem taḥarîm*). You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them..." - **[Deut 20:16-18](/codex/deuteronomy-20-16-18/)**, "Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, *you shall not leave alive anything that breathes* (*kol-neshamah*). But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God." - **[1 Sam 15:2-3](/codex/1-samuel-15-2-3/)**, "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek and *utterly destroy all that he has*, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'" - **[Num 31:17-18](/codex/numbers-31-17-18/)**, [Moses](/codex/moses/) to the troops returning from Midian: "*Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.*" ### Narrative-execution texts - **[Joshua 6:21](/codex/joshua-6-21/)** (Jericho), "They utterly destroyed everything in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword." - **[Joshua 8:24-26](/codex/joshua-8-24-26/)** (Ai), "When Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai in the field in the wilderness where they pursued them, and all of them were fallen by the edge of the sword until they were destroyed... 12,000, all the people of Ai." - **[Joshua 10:28-43](/codex/joshua-10-28-43/)** (the southern campaign), repeated formula: "He left no survivor"; "they struck it with the edge of the sword and every person who was in it; he left no survivor"; "they struck it with the edge of the sword, with every person who was in it." Cities listed: Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, "the whole land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes." - **[Joshua 11:10-15](/codex/joshua-11-10-15/)** (the northern campaign), Hazor and the northern coalition similarly. These are the texts. Any honest engagement starts here, not with downplaying. ## Why the objection is sharp The objection is structurally severe because: 1. **The commands are explicit.** Not "you may"; *"you shall."* Not "the men only"; "*man and woman, young and old, oxen and sheep.*" [Num 31:17](/codex/numbers-31-17/) and [1 Sam 15:3](/codex/1-samuel-15-3/) specifically name *infants*. There is no textual ambiguity at the surface level about *what* is commanded. 2. **The command-giver is God.** Not a king's policy; the text repeatedly says "as the LORD your God commanded." Israel is *condemned* ([1 Sam 15](/codex/1-samuel-15/)) when they spare anything. The moral authority of the killing is attributed to YHWH directly. 3. **"As if to children today" is the sting.** Modern readers are not shocked by the existence of ancient warfare violence; they are shocked by *divine command* of *non-combatant* killing. The texts authorize the death of *infants*, and infants cannot be guilty of any moral failing. 4. **The reasons given do not relieve the sting.** "*Lest they teach you their detestable practices*" is ethically perplexing, it appears to make idolatry worse than infanticide, when modern moral instinct reverses the priority. The objection is not that ancient warfare was bloody (it was) but that *God commanded* this, and that the texts present the killing of children specifically as obedient and good. This is what the *evilbible.com* / Dawkins-Hitchens / popular skeptic literature presses, and they are not making the texts say something they don't. ## The major Christian-philosophical responses There are five principal traditions of response, each with strengths and costs. None is uncontested; serious Christian thinkers occupy different positions on this. ### Response 1, Hyperbole / Ancient Near Eastern warfare-rhetoric thesis (Copan, Flannagan) **Position:** The conquest texts use *hyperbolic warfare rhetoric* of the kind documented across ANE literature (Egyptian Pharaonic inscriptions, Moabite Stone, Hittite annals). The phrases "kill all that breathes," "leave no survivor," "men, women, and children" are formulaic, extreme rhetoric not meant as literal extermination. The actual military campaign was directed at Canaanite *combatant* and *city-state* military and political structures, not at non-combatant population. Subsequent biblical narrative *itself* shows the hyperbole: [Joshua 11:21-23](/codex/joshua-11-21-23/) says "Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities," but the next chapter ([Joshua 13:1-6](/codex/joshua-13-1-6/)) lists vast unconquered territories with their populations intact, and [Judges 1](/codex/judges-1/)-3 has Canaanites still in the land in large numbers. So the conquest-formula language *signaled total military victory*, not literal extermination of every individual. **Strengths.** - ANE parallels are extensive and well-documented (Younger, *Ancient Conquest Accounts*, 1990). - The internal-biblical evidence (Joshua's own narrative does not consistently treat the *ḥerem* texts as literal, see [Josh 13:1-6](/codex/joshua-13-1-6/); [Judg 1](/codex/judges-1/)) is genuinely there. - Allows reading the texts as *military-rhetorical* without collapsing into "the texts mean nothing they say." **Costs / objections.** - The [Num 31:17](/codex/numbers-31-17/) specification, "kill every woman who has known man intimately... but all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves", is *specific*, not formulaic. Hyperbole-thesis defenders respond that this is a different text-type (post-battle distribution) but the distinction is contested. - [1 Sam 15:3](/codex/1-samuel-15-3/)'s "infant and suckling" and Saul's punishment for *not* fully complying argues that the text wants to be read more literally than the hyperbole-thesis allows. - Hyperbole-thesis can feel like *moving the goalposts* once exposed to the texts, a reading developed *after* the moral problem became acute. **Defenders:** [Paul Copan](/codex/paul-copan/) and Matthew Flannagan, *Did God Really Command Genocide?* (2014); Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Reading Joshua" (in *Divine Evil?*, 2010); K. Lawson Younger, *Ancient Conquest Accounts*; Richard Hess, *Joshua* (TOTC, 1996). ### Response 2, Divine command theory / divine prerogative (Craig, Adams) **Position:** God, as creator and sustainer of all life, has the right to take any human life at any time without injustice. *Every* human will die, God ordains the time and means of every death. When God commands Israel to be the *agent* of judgment on the Canaanites, He is not committing injustice but *delegating* what is His prerogative. The Canaanites had reached a measure of cultural-moral evil (child sacrifice, sexual cult-practice, see [Leviticus 18.21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/)) that *God's patience had run out* on (cf. [Gen 15:16](/codex/genesis-15-16/), "the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete"). The conquest is judgment, not arbitrary cruelty; the children of Canaan, dying in this judgment, are no worse off than children who die any other way under God's providence. **Strengths.** - Takes the texts at face value rather than weakening them. - Preserves the force of God's holiness and covenantal seriousness. - Has the deepest Reformed-orthodox / Calvinist-tradition footprint: God's sovereignty over life and death is non-negotiable; humans are not entitled to natural-life under any rights-claim that limits divine prerogative. - Robert Adams's *Finite and Infinite Goods* (1999) and other modern Christian DCT work (Mark Murphy; Steven Long) show DCT can be philosophically defended in modern analytic ethics. **Costs / objections.** - The *infants* problem remains acute, even if God has the right to take adult Canaanite life as judgment, the moral status of *infants* is not warranted by adult-cultural-evil; the appeal to prerogative is dialectically expensive when the question is the *non-guilty*. - DCT must answer the Euthyphro problem (is something right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right?), Adams's modified DCT does this well, but still has costs. - Many modern Christians find this response *correct in principle* but *insufficient pastorally*, it answers the philosophical question without lessening the moral weight of the texts. **Defenders:** [William Lane Craig](/codex/william-lane-craig/), "Slaughter of the Canaanites" (in *On Guard* / *Reasonable Faith*); Robert Adams, *Finite and Infinite Goods*; Mark Murphy; the broader Reformed-orthodox tradition (Calvin, *Institutes* on Joshua; Owen, *Vindicia Evangelicae*). ### Response 3, Christotelic / progressive-revelation reading (Boyd, Seibert) **Position:** The conquest texts represent God's *accommodation* to a violent ANE worldview, not the full revelation of God's character. The full revelation comes in *Christ*, who teaches enemy-love, refuses violent self-defense, and dies forgiving His killers. The *Christotelic* reading treats the OT conquest texts as morally and theologically *true* in their canonical-historical role (they describe what Israel believed God had commanded; they served covenantal-pedagogical purposes) but as *not* normative as a moral-template. The Cross is the *interpretive lens*; whatever does not look like the Crucified Christ is read as accommodation, not divine endorsement. Greg Boyd's *Crucifixion of the Warrior God* (2017, two volumes) develops this in the most extended modern form. **Strengths.** - Takes Christ's teaching seriously as the hermeneutical key: "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father" ([Jn 14:9](/codex/john-14-9/)). - Honors the moral revulsion modern Christians feel without dismissing the texts. - Has roots in patristic exegesis ([Origen](/codex/origen/)'s allegorical reading of conquest; many Fathers handled hard OT texts via Christological lenses). - Allows a reading that does not require defending the killing of infants as good. **Costs / objections.** - Risks a *canon-within-a-canon*, privileging some scripture over others as more "real" revelation. - Critics (Walton, Wright, classical-Reformed) charge this exceeds what scriptural authority can bear: the conquest narratives are presented as God's commands, and a hermeneutic that treats them as merely Israel's projections rather than God's actual commands has weakened the doctrine of inspiration. - Borders on ditheism / Marcionism if the OT God and the NT God are too sharply distinguished. **Defenders:** Gregory Boyd, *The Crucifixion of the Warrior God* (2017); Eric Seibert, *Disturbing Divine Behavior* (2009); some Anabaptist-tradition theologians; partially: N. T. Wright (in some moods); historically: Origen's allegorical readings. ### Response 4, Judgment-not-genocide reading (Wolterstorff, classical Reformed) **Position:** *Ḥerem* is *judicial-religious*, not *ethnic*. The targets are not "Canaanites by blood" but cultures saturated by specific moral-cultic evils (child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, bestiality, see [Lev 18:24-25](/codex/leviticus-18-24-25/)). When non-Canaanites adopt these practices, they fall under the same judgment (Israelites who do these things are also to be cut off, [Lev 18:29](/codex/leviticus-18-29/); 20). When Canaanites *abandon* these practices, they are spared, Rahab and her household ([Josh 2](/codex/joshua-2/); 6:22-25), the Gibeonites ([Josh 9](/codex/joshua-9/)), and the broader pattern that the *ger* (foreigner) joining Israel's covenant is welcomed ([Lev 19:34](/codex/leviticus-19-34/); [Deut 10:18-19](/codex/deuteronomy-10-18-19/)). So *ḥerem* is *judgment on a specific evil*, executed against those who continue in it; it is not *genocide* in the modern sense (extermination of a people *qua* people). **Strengths.** - Internal-biblical evidence is strong: Rahab, Gibeonites, the *ger* pattern. - Distinguishes the act-form (looks like genocide) from the act-rationale (specific judicial judgment on cult-evil). - Connects to the Levitical legal logic (the same evils committed by Israelites trigger the same judgment, the texts treat the morality, not the ethnicity, as the issue). - Wolterstorff's *Reading Joshua* essay (in Bergmann-Murray-Rea, *Divine Evil?*, 2010) develops this carefully. **Costs / objections.** - Doesn't fully address the infants problem: even if *ḥerem* is judicial-cult-judgment, infants are not yet morally engaged in the cult. Why are they included? - Combines best with hyperbole-thesis (Response 1) to handle the infant cases, but stand-alone struggles there. - The "Canaanites who abandon practices are spared" pattern is real but limited (Rahab, Gibeonites are exceptions; the canonical narrative doesn't show Israel routinely offering this option). **Defenders:** Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Reading Joshua" (2010); Christopher Wright, *The God I Don't Understand* (2008); Iain Provan; the Reformed-evangelical mainstream. ### Response 5, Critical / "Israel's projections" reading (Brueggemann, broader liberal-mainline) **Position:** The conquest texts represent Israel's own *theological-narrative construction* of its origin-story, not God's literal commands. Ancient near-eastern peoples projected their own warfare practices onto their gods; Israel did the same. The texts are *scripture* in the sense of being canonical revelation about Israel's encounter with God, but *not* scripture in the sense of authorizing modern action or describing God's literal commands. We read these texts as *honest theology of a developing people* rather than as direct divine speech. **Strengths.** - Honest about the moral problems. - Doesn't require defending the killing of infants as morally good. - Has serious mainline-Protestant biblical-theology footprint (Brueggemann, *Theology of the Old Testament*; James Crenshaw; many). **Costs / objections.** - Substantially weakens the doctrine of inspiration (depending on how the projection-thesis is articulated). - Doesn't handle the NT's own use of the conquest narrative ([Heb 11:30-31](/codex/hebrews-11-30-31/) commends Rahab and the conquest in faith; Stephen's speech in [Acts 7](/codex/acts-7/) narrates the conquest without reservation). - For evangelical / Reformed / Catholic-orthodox readers this response gives up too much of the doctrine of scripture. **Defenders:** Walter Brueggemann; mainline-Protestant biblical theology; some recent post-evangelical voices. ## A spread-of-positions table | Position | Texts taken at face value? | Infants problem handled? | Inspiration preserved? | Modern moral revulsion honored? | |---|---|---|---|---| | **Hyperbole-thesis** (Copan/Flannagan) | Texts read as ANE rhetorical-military, not literal extermination | Partially, non-combatants weren't actually killed at scale | Yes | Yes | | **Divine command** (Craig/Adams) | Yes, fully literal | By divine prerogative; infants not exempt from God's right over life | Yes (strongly) | Modestly, the texts are defended, not softened | | **Christotelic** (Boyd) | No, read through Christ as accommodation | Yes, texts don't fully reflect God's character | Weakened (depends on version) | Yes (strongly) | | **Judicial-not-ethnic** (Wolterstorff) | Yes, with cult-evil framing | Combines with hyperbole-thesis to handle | Yes | Yes | | **Israel's-projection** (Brueggemann) | No, texts are Israel's construction | Yes, texts don't bind us | Substantially weakened | Yes (strongly) | The serious Christian engagement of the conquest objection draws from multiple of these, most evangelical apologists today combine Hyperbole-thesis (Response 1) with Judicial-not-ethnic (Response 4) and use Divine-prerogative (Response 2) as a backstop for residual cases. ## What the texts actually do *not* say A careful reading dispels several common misreadings: - **"Genocide of the Canaanites" is not what the text-formula tracks.** The targeted "peoples" are not ethnic groups in the modern sense but city-states characterized by specific religious-cultic practices. When Canaanites convert (Rahab) or make peace (Gibeonites), they are spared and integrated. The *gerim* (resident aliens) of various Canaanite descent are protected by Mosaic law ([Ex 22:21](/codex/exodus-22-21/); [Lev 19:34](/codex/leviticus-19-34/); [Deut 10:18-19](/codex/deuteronomy-10-18-19/)). - **"Israel was racially pure" is not what the text-formula assumes.** Mosaic legislation explicitly anticipates and provides for non-Israelite integration into Israel's covenant community ([Ex 12:48-49](/codex/exodus-12-48-49/); [Num 15:15-16](/codex/numbers-15-15-16/); [Deut 23:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-23-7-8/), even Edomites and Egyptians may join the assembly within three generations). The conquest is not a racial-purity project. - **The conquest is *limited in scope and time*.** It applies only to specific ANE peoples in a specific period; the Mosaic legislation does not generalize this to a perpetual divine command for Israel to conquer other peoples. After the conquest, Israel's own legal-prophetic tradition condemns aggressive warfare, demands fair treatment of *gerim*, and prophesies a coming peace where "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb" ([Isa 11:6](/codex/isaiah-11-6/)). - **It is morally relevant that Canaanite practices included child sacrifice.** [Lev 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/); [Deut 12:31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/); 18:9-10; [2 Kings 16:3](/codex/2-kings-16-3/) (Ahaz adopts the practice from the Canaanites); [Jer 32:35](/codex/jeremiah-32-35/). The *children* whose lives were ostensibly preserved by Canaanite culture were the ones being burned alive in the cult of Molech. The morality-comparison is not one-sided in favor of the Canaanite status quo. These observations don't dissolve the difficulty but they constrain it. The conquest texts are *much harder* if read as racial-genocide than they are when read as judicial action against specific cultic evils. ## The deepest point, God's character across the canon The conquest objection is most acute when read against what *seem like* texts of divine cruelty. But the same canon contains: - **Jonah**, God refuses to let Jonah see Nineveh destroyed; Jonah's anger at God's mercy is itself the lesson of the book. - **[Ezek 18:23](/codex/ezekiel-18-23/), [32](/codex/ezekiel-18-32/)**, "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?... For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." God's *self-stated* disposition is *not* delight in death. - **[2 Pet 3:9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/)**, "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, *not willing that any should perish*, but that all should come to repentance." - **The cross**, God *Himself bears the judgment* He pronounces. The same God who commands judgment on the Canaanites bears judgment on Himself in Christ. The conquest is not the final word on God's relation to humanity; the cross is. The OT conquest texts are *real* and *hard*, but they are not the *whole canon*. A reading that takes the canon as a unity reads them within a larger story whose center is God's self-substitution for the world's evil, including the evils of war and conquest. ## How to engage the objection in conversation For practical apologetic deployment: 1. **Don't minimize the texts.** They say what they say. Defenders who downplay are doing the apologetic worse, not better. The skeptic has a real point at the surface level. 2. **Distinguish what *the objection* is asking.** Is it a *moral* problem (these acts are wrong), an *exegetical* problem (the texts say more than X), or a *theological* problem (this is incompatible with God's character)? Each calls for a different response. 3. **Lead with the hyperbole-thesis evidence.** It is the most empirically grounded of the responses. Show the ANE-warfare-rhetoric parallels (Younger 1990); show that [Joshua 13:1-6](/codex/joshua-13-1-6/) + [Judges 1](/codex/judges-1/) demonstrate the conquest formulas don't track literal extermination. 4. **Hold the divine-prerogative defense in reserve.** It works on the residual cases the hyperbole-thesis doesn't fully cover ([1 Sam 15:3](/codex/1-samuel-15-3/) infants; [Num 31:17](/codex/numbers-31-17/)). It is harder for modern hearers but is philosophically defensible. 5. **Ask the symmetry question.** Modern moral instinct condemns Canaanite child-sacrifice. The same instinct condemns the killing of Canaanite children. If the *first* condemnation is binding, why not the second? Either both are binding (in which case God's judgment on Canaan is consistent with the universal moral instinct against child-killing, including the cultic killing the Canaanites practiced) or neither is (in which case the skeptic's moral instincts have no purchase). 6. **Acknowledge the *infants* problem honestly.** This is where the apologist must be most careful. The deepest answer combines: (a) the hyperbole-thesis (most non-combatant casualties were not what the campaign actually produced); (b) divine prerogative over life and death (in the cases of literal infant casualties); (c) the eschatological hope (every infant who dies, Canaanite or not, is in the hands of a God whose judgment is just, and Christian theology has space for the salvation of those who die before moral agency). The conquest objection is not a *defeater* for Christianity. It is a *hard text* that demands serious engagement. The serious Christian engagement is rich and multi-dimensional; the dismissive popular-skeptic objection ("the Bible says God commanded genocide, therefore Christianity is evil") is doing a kind of two-step the apologist can patiently dismantle. ## The Canaanite *practices*, context the skeptic site omits Honest reading needs the cultural-religious context the *evilbible.com* page does not provide: - **Child sacrifice**, [Lev 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/); [Deut 12:31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/); 18:9-10; [2 Kings 17:31](/codex/2-kings-17-31/) (the people of Sepharvaim "burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech"); [2 Kings 23:10](/codex/2-kings-23-10/); [Jer 7:31](/codex/jeremiah-7-31/); 19:5; 32:35. The cult of Molech, attested archaeologically (Tophet of Carthage; Phoenician child-burial inscriptions), involved the ritual burning of children, sometimes infants, as offerings. - **Ritual prostitution**, *qedeshot* / *qedeshim*: [Hos 4:14](/codex/hosea-4-14/); [Deut 23:17-18](/codex/deuteronomy-23-17-18/); [1 Kings 14:24](/codex/1-kings-14-24/); 15:12; 22:46. Cultic sex was a structural feature of Canaanite religion. - **Bestiality**, [Lev 18:23](/codex/leviticus-18-23/); 20:15-16. Listed among the "abominations" that [Lev 18:24-25](/codex/leviticus-18-24-25/) says caused the *land itself to vomit out* the Canaanites. - **Mass-cultural moral collapse**, [Lev 18:24-28](/codex/leviticus-18-24-28/): "Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you... Therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.... that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you." [Genesis 15:16](/codex/genesis-15-16/) ("the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full") establishes that God's judgment was *delayed*, pending, until the Canaanite cultural-moral situation reached a level where judgment was warranted. The 400+ years of delay are themselves the evidence: God did not act precipitously on prejudice; He waited until the cultural-moral evidence was overwhelming. The skeptic site presents the conquest as God's gratuitous cruelty against innocent peoples. The text presents it as *delayed judicial action* against peoples whose cultural-religious practices included industrial-scale child-sacrifice. The two presentations are not equivalent. ## Connection to scripture - Conquest commands: [Deut 7:1-6](/codex/deuteronomy-7-1-6/); [Deut 20:16-18](/codex/deuteronomy-20-16-18/); [1 Sam 15:2-3](/codex/1-samuel-15-2-3/); [Num 31:17-18](/codex/numbers-31-17-18/) - Conquest narratives: [Josh 6:21](/codex/joshua-6-21/); [Josh 8:24-26](/codex/joshua-8-24-26/); [Josh 10](/codex/joshua-10/); [Josh 11](/codex/joshua-11/) - Counter-pattern: [Josh 13:1-6](/codex/joshua-13-1-6/) (unconquered territory remains); [Judg 1](/codex/judges-1/) (Canaanites still in land); [Josh 2](/codex/joshua-2/) (Rahab); [Josh 9](/codex/joshua-9/) (Gibeonites) - Canaanite practices: [Lev 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/); [Deut 12:31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/); [Deut 18:9-10](/codex/deuteronomy-18-9-10/); [Gen 15:16](/codex/genesis-15-16/) (delayed judgment) - *Ger* / foreigner integration: [Ex 22:21](/codex/exodus-22-21/); [Lev 19:34](/codex/leviticus-19-34/); [Deut 10:18-19](/codex/deuteronomy-10-18-19/); [Ex 12:48-49](/codex/exodus-12-48-49/); [Num 15:15-16](/codex/numbers-15-15-16/); [Deut 23:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-23-7-8/) - God's character on judgment: [Ezek 18:23](/codex/ezekiel-18-23/); [Ezek 18:32](/codex/ezekiel-18-32/); [Jonah 4](/codex/jonah-4/); [2 Pet 3:9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/) - NT engagement: [Heb 11:30-31](/codex/hebrews-11-30-31/) (Rahab and the conquest commended in faith); [Acts 7](/codex/acts-7/) (Stephen's speech narrates the conquest without reservation) ## Patristic / scholarly engagement - **Origen, *Homilies on Joshua*** (3rd c.), the locus classicus of *allegorical* reading of the conquest as the soul's spiritual warfare against vice. Origen does not deny the historical event but treats the moral force of the text as primarily spiritual-Christological for the Christian reader. - **[Augustine](/codex/augustine/), *Quaestiones in Heptateuchum* VI; *Contra Faustum***, defends the *historical* commands as just divine judgment; develops divine-prerogative-over-life logic; combats the Manichaean / Marcionite rejection of the OT. - **Aquinas, *ST* II-II q. 64 a. 6 ad 3**, addresses divine commands to kill (Abraham/Isaac, conquest) via divine prerogative. - **Calvin, *Commentary on Joshua***, defends the texts via judicial-judgment logic; emphasizes Canaanite cultural-cultic evil. - **K. Lawson Younger, *Ancient Conquest Accounts*** (1990), landmark ANE-comparative study that grounded the modern hyperbole-thesis. - **C. S. Lewis, "Reflections on the Psalms"** (1958), addresses imprecation and judgment texts pastorally. - **Christopher Wright, *The God I Don't Understand*** (2008), accessible evangelical engagement of the conquest texts. - **Paul Copan, *Is God a Moral Monster?*** (2011); Copan & Flannagan, *Did God Really Command Genocide?* (2014), the contemporary evangelical apologetic mainstays; develops the hyperbole-thesis at book length. - **Gregory Boyd, *The Crucifixion of the Warrior God*** (2017, 2 vols., ~1500 pages), the major Christotelic-reading work; argues the conquest texts represent accommodation, not God's character. - **Eric Seibert, *Disturbing Divine Behavior*** (2009); *The Violence of Scripture* (2012), sympathetic to Boyd's direction; develops a more Anabaptist-shaped reading. - **Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Reading Joshua"** (in Bergmann-Murray-Rea, *Divine Evil?*, 2010), analytic-philosophical engagement; develops judicial-not-ethnic reading. - **Iain Provan, *Seriously Dangerous Religion*** (2014), biblical-theological engagement. - **Walter Brueggemann, *Theology of the Old Testament*** (1997), mainline / projection-thesis engagement. - **Stephen Anderson, "Genocide in the Old Testament: A Reformed Apologetic"** (online; substantive Reformed engagement). - **William Lane Craig, "Slaughter of the Canaanites" (2007 article); *Reasonable Faith***, Craig's divine-command-theory defense. - **Richard Hess, *Joshua* (TOTC, 1996)**; *Israelite Religions* (2007), substantial archaeological-comparative work informing the hyperbole-thesis. - **[John Walton](/codex/john-walton/) & J. Harvey Walton, *The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest*** (2017), ANE-cultural-context approach, distinct from but compatible with hyperbole-thesis. ## What position the codex takes The codex records positions fairly without arbitrating and does not pick a winner among the five responses. Different Christian traditions hold different positions, and the texts are hard enough that the spread is honest. A serious Christian engagement of the conquest objection draws from multiple responses, most commonly hyperbole-thesis + judicial-not-ethnic + divine-prerogative-as-backstop. The Christotelic and projection-thesis readings are live within Christian thought but cost more in doctrine of scripture. The popular-skeptic dismissal ("God commanded genocide, therefore the Bible is evil") is *too quick*. It mistakes the rhetorical surface for the textual reality, ignores the ANE-warfare-rhetoric context, omits the Canaanite-cultic background, treats the texts in isolation from the canon, and demands Christian apologists defend a maximalist literal-extermination reading that the texts themselves don't fully support. The serious skeptic objection is more sophisticated and harder: even granting hyperbole-thesis + judicial-not-ethnic, *some* infant casualties are described, and *some* divine-prerogative-over-life is required. This is the *real* hard work, and the codex tries to honor that work by presenting it without minimization. ## See also - [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/), paired debate-prep defeater syllogism (seven-pronged: ANE-rhetoric + military-target + unique-redemptive-event + creator-prerogative + comparative-justice + Rahab-counter + corporate-civilizational) - [Amalekite Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/amalekite-genocide-objection-defeater/), the Amalek-specific standalone ([1 Samuel 15](/codex/1-samuel-15/)): intent-defeats-genocide, moral-standing turn, creator-prerogative, and the counterfactual-alternatives reductio capped by Agag-to-Haman - [H2764 - cherem](/codex/h2764-cherem/), Hebrew lexicon hub for *ḥerem* (devoted-to-destruction); the technical-philological frame for the conquest-formula at corpus-level, double-sense (consecrated-to-YHWH + categorically-excluded); LXX → *anathema* lexical bridge into NT-canonical anathema-tradition - [Mosaic Law](/codex/mosaic-law/), the legal-covenantal frame the conquest sits inside - [Old Covenant](/codex/old-covenant/), [New Covenant](/codex/jeremiah-31-33/), covenantal-historical frame - [Religion Causes Violence Objection](/codex/religion-causes-violence-objection/), broader question on religion and warfare - [Christians Not Under Mosaic Law](/codex/christians-not-under-mosaic-law/), why Christians do not extrapolate Mosaic legal commands to today's polity - [Privation](/codex/privation/), [Evil as Privation of Good](/codex/evil-as-privation-of-good/), metaphysics of evil that the texts engage - [Problem of Evil, Free Will Defense](/codex/problem-of-evil-free-will-defense/), the broader theodicy question - [Jesus is Not a Human Sacrifice (Defeater)](/codex/jesus-is-not-a-human-sacrifice-defeater/), adjacent argument about how God relates to commanded killing - [Atonement Theory Spread](/codex/atonement-theory-spread/), atonement theology shapes Christian reading of judgment texts - [Hell and Eternal Punishment](/codex/hell-and-eternal-punishment/), the related "infinite punishment for finite sin" objection cluster - [Engaging the Conclusion-Fixed Skeptic](/codex/engaging-the-conclusion-fixed-skeptic/), for handling skeptic deployment of the conquest objection in bad-faith mode - Passages: [Deuteronomy 7:1-6](/codex/deuteronomy-7-1-6/), [Deuteronomy 20:16-18](/codex/deuteronomy-20-16-18/), [1 Samuel 15.2-3](/codex/1-samuel-15-2-3/), [Numbers 31.17-18](/codex/numbers-31-17-18/), [Joshua 6.21](/codex/joshua-6-21/), [Joshua 8:24-26](/codex/joshua-8-24-26/), [Joshua 10](/codex/joshua-10/), [Joshua 11](/codex/joshua-11/), [Genesis 15.16](/codex/genesis-15-16/), [Leviticus 18.21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/), [Deuteronomy 12.31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/), [Hebrews 11:30-31](/codex/hebrews-11-30-31/), [Ezekiel 18:23](/codex/ezekiel-18-23/), [2 Peter 3.9](/codex/2-peter-3-9/) - Entities: Moses, [Joshua](/codex/joshua/), Augustine, Origen, [Thomas Aquinas](/codex/thomas-aquinas/), William Lane Craig ## Common questions this page answers **Q: Did God command genocide in the Old Testament?** The conquest texts in [Deuteronomy 7:1-6](/codex/deuteronomy-7-1-6/), [Deuteronomy 20:16-18](/codex/deuteronomy-20-16-18/), and Joshua are hard, and Christians who handle them well do not flinch from saying so. But the slogan "God commanded genocide" flattens a careful body of work. The texts use standard ANE hagiographic war-rhetoric (the same Joshua that claims "total destruction" is followed by [Judges 1](/codex/judges-1/) showing Canaanites remaining in large numbers), and the *herem* is judicial (against specific cultic evils), not racial (Rahab and the Gibeonites are spared). **Q: Why did God target the Canaanites?** [Genesis 15:16](/codex/genesis-15-16/) says God's judgment was delayed 400+ years until "the iniquity of the Amorite is complete." Canaanite religion included industrial-scale child sacrifice ([Leviticus 18:21](/codex/leviticus-18-21/), [Deuteronomy 12:31](/codex/deuteronomy-12-31/), [Jeremiah 7:31](/codex/jeremiah-7-31/)), ritual prostitution, and bestiality. The conquest is delayed judicial action against these specific cultic-cultural evils, not random ethnic cleansing. **Q: What is herem?** *Herem* is the technical Hebrew term for what is "set apart for destruction" under divine authority. It is a judicial-judgment category, limited to specific peoples at a specific moment in a specific land-grant covenant. It is not a general license for war. The New Testament reuses the category in fully spiritualized form (destruction of strongholds, [2 Corinthians 10:4](/codex/2-corinthians-10-4/)). See [H2764 - cherem](/codex/h2764-cherem/). **Q: What about the killing of Canaanite children?** This is the hardest part and Christians don't pretend otherwise. The fullest response combines: (1) hyperbole-thesis (most non-combatant casualties were not what the campaign actually produced; Joshua's literal-extermination language is ANE-genre, not literal); (2) divine prerogative over life and death in residual cases; (3) the eschatological hope (children who die before moral agency are in the hands of a just God). See [God and the Killing of Children](/codex/god-and-the-killing-of-children/). **Q: Was the conquest racial?** No. Rahab the Canaanite ([Joshua 2](/codex/joshua-2/)) and the Gibeonites ([Joshua 9](/codex/joshua-9/)) were spared and integrated. Mosaic legislation provides for non-Israelite integration ([Exodus 12:48-49](/codex/exodus-12-48-49/), [Leviticus 19:34](/codex/leviticus-19-34/), [Deuteronomy 23:7-8](/codex/deuteronomy-23-7-8/)). Israelites who adopted Canaanite practices fell under the same judgment ([Leviticus 18:29](/codex/leviticus-18-29/)). The category is judicial-cultic, not racial-ethnic. **Q: Does the New Testament treat the conquest as a model for Christians today?** No. The conquest is a one-time, time-bounded action in a specific covenantal moment. [Hebrews 11:30-31](/codex/hebrews-11-30-31/) commends Rahab and the conquest in faith, but the New Testament's use of *herem* is fully spiritualized ([2 Corinthians 10:4](/codex/2-corinthians-10-4/): "the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh"). Christians are explicitly forbidden state-violence in service of religion; the path runs from conquest to cross to the call to love enemies. **Q: Why did the Bible use such violent language if it wasn't meant literally?** Because it was written in the ancient Near East, in the genre of ancient Near Eastern victory rhetoric. King Mesha of Moab boasted of having "destroyed Israel forever"; Sennacherib of Assyria claimed he "trampled like dust" surrounding peoples; Egyptian pharaohs routinely claimed total annihilation of enemies who reappear in later inscriptions. The original audience understood this language as conventional. Modern readers who insist on a strict literal reading are imposing a foreign genre expectation.