Old Testament Cannanite Genocides
Old copy. Email for current version.
One reader notes:
If you look at the names of the "Canaanite" tribes that were massacred, many of their names translate to things like "Spirits", "Ghosts", "Giants." I suggest that this was a spiritual warfare to cleanse the land, not a warfare against actual peoples. These were narratives, like narratives are told everywhere, of how people with God's help ousted the unclean spirits from their spiritual fortresses (towns). It was a spiritual warfare. Later Rabbis, wanting a more nationalistic epic, downplayed and suppressed the spiritual meaning of the tribes' names. Thus there was no actual genocide; it was warfare against principalities and powers.
STATIST:
If the scripture translations we have are correct, when the Israelites entered Canaan, they fought many battles in which God aided them and gave them victory.
God instructed them to fight.
God has chosen to be honored by bloodbaths before...check out His direct commands in the OT to wipe out nations. If God commanded it, the Israelites were required to do it or suffer dire consequences. He is the same God. Jesus did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it and make it complete. This is the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that ordered men, women, children, and animals to be destroyed utterly. He is a dangerous God, like Lewis' Aslan, but a righteous and loving one. You can't just cherry pick the love and leave out the danger.
BELIEVER:
I've heard 4 good possible answers to this:
1) This was an imperfect understanding of Yah's will, like when Yah allowed polygamy and divorce in the OT, but Yahshua clarified that Yah's highest will was lifetime monogamy. (We can't find a NT scripture justifying Christian violence. )
2) That every violent battle in the OT was actually a punishment for an earlier disobedience; i.e. - Yah told them what to do, they disobeyed, now they have to endure the hell of war by their own choice. It takes a bit of study to see this is always logically inferable from the wider context of the OT stories. Explained very well in Robert Roberg's free Jihad e-book.
3) YHWH wanted those people wiped out, and YHWH gets what he wants. In this case, he wanted them wiped out because of their abominable Babylonian occult practices involving sex, sun, and war worship. (All of which are more among us today than we realize).
and/or
4) That the account is corrupted and YHVH never commanded those genocides.
