4

KILL EVERYTHING THAT BREATHES

CRUSADES AND CONQUESTS

On April 3, 2003, America was two weeks into its invasion of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary at the time, persuaded President Bush to deploy more troops, using these words:

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Rumsfeld’s words were a quotation from Joshua 1:9 (NIV), which God spoke to Joshua just before he conquered Canaan. God’s nation was told to wage a “holy war” on the pagan Canaanites. And Rumsfeld saw fit to use the same logic for America’s own (holy?) war against Iraq. Christian leader Jack Graham agreed. “This is a war between Christians and the forces of evil,” preached Graham. “The ultimate terrorist is Satan.”1 Another famous radio preacher was asked if America was justified in going to war in Iraq. “Yes. Maybe we need to go back to the Bible and see what the Bible actually says,” the preacher suggested. “God told the children of Israel to go into the land, destroy the Canaanites.”2 Whether explicit or implied, the point seems clear: America is a holy nation, and the terrorists in Iraq, like the Canaanites, need to be annihilated.3

These leaders weren’t the first to use Joshua’s conquest to give religious backing to war. The crusaders of the Middle Ages mapped the book of Joshua onto their conquest of Palestine, as Arabs were massacred out of obedience to the Old Testament. Later, American colonists settled the “holy land” (America) but first had to exterminate the Canaanites (American Indians). Or at least, this was how they justified the slaughter. One preacher condemned Native Americans when he celebrated “the mercies of God in extirpating the enemies of Israel in Canaan.” Benjamin Franklin viewed the carnage as “the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivation of the earth.”4 I wonder how many people have been killed, tortured, and in some cases cannibalized, all because certain Christians (mis)applied the book of Joshua to their lives.

Needless to say, there is an ethical urgency to understand how—if at all—Joshua’s conquest applies to us today. Does the conquest of Canaan justify a Christian’s use of violence?

DID GOD REALLY COMMAND THE CONQUEST?

There are many different ways that people have understood Joshua’s conquest.5 Some think that Joshua (and Moses before him) misunderstood God, who never really meant that the Israelites should kill all the Canaanites. The Israelites merely “acted on what they believed to be God’s will.”6 While this approach distances God from an apparent genocide, nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Israelites misunderstood God.7 In fact, the Israelites are rebuked for not driving out all the Canaanites from the land. If God never commanded Israel to drive them out, then such a rebuke would be nonsensical.

Others—yes, even Christians—assume that the God of the Old Testament is quite different from the God of the New. The God of the Old is filled with wrath, judgment, and violence, and it fits His character to command an indiscriminate slaughter of the Canaanites. But the God of the New, revealed in Jesus Christ, shows us how to love, forgive, and live peaceably with all humanity. So when it comes to the Canaanite genocide, there’s no problem. The God of the Old is a God of genocide. Let’s just be thankful that we serve the God of the New.

I don’t think either of these views does justice to what the Bible actually says. A basic reading of the Bible shows that God commanded the Israelites to drive out all the Canaanites.8 “You shall devote them to complete destruction,” God says (Deut. 20:17). And yes, throughout Joshua’s conquest we see him carry out this command, at least on a few cities. And finally, yes, the command to kill all the Canaanites seems to include women and children. Let’s start with this plain reading of Scripture and then move toward a solution for the ethical problems therein. But I cannot emphasize enough that any solutions we propose must come from the text. God doesn’t need us to make excuses for Him, nor does He need us to give Him a lesson in morality. But perhaps there’s more to the conquest than is often recognized.

SETTING THE CONTEXT

We should first understand two fundamental aspects of the conquest: the people and the land; namely, the Canaanites and Canaan.

Who were these Canaanites? Many critics such as Richard Dawkins will describe the conquest with a slanted view of these people. You would think that they were innocent peasants living peaceably with one another, when all of a sudden a sociopath named Joshua came in and slew all the women and children. But this is not the way the Bible presents the event. The Canaanites on the whole were a particularly wicked people by anyone’s standard.9 Incest, bestiality, orgiastic religious prostitution, and child sacrifice were a regular part of life. The Canaanite gods themselves were said to be engaged in shameless sexual feats, and the Canaanites joined in. Paul Copan said that the “sexual acts of the gods and goddesses were imitated by the Canaanites as a kind of magical act: the more sex on the Canaanite high places, the more this would stimulate the fertility god Baal to have sex with his consort, Anath, which meant more semen (rain) produced to water the earth.”10 Humans, therefore, were encouraged to participate in the wild orgies of their gods.

The Canaanites were not innocent peasants. But this doesn’t mean that other nations were any better. In fact, God says that even Israel wasn’t much better (Deut. 9:5). So why rain down judgment on the Canaanites while other nations are allowed to live? To answer this, we have to understand the uniqueness of the land of Canaan.

God didn’t randomly pick on the Canaanites because they were the most wicked. Rather, He sought to drive them out of the land because the land would become God’s residence on earth. This means the Canaanites were having sex with prostitutes and sacrificing babies to foreign gods right there in God’s living room. Put simply: the Promised Land would become God’s new home on earth. Yes, God dwells in heaven. But biblically speaking, He also resides on earth—first in Eden, then in the tabernacle, and then in the temple. Since God is holy (set apart), His presence requires “sacred space,” and God chose the land of Canaan to be that sacred space—the piece of earth where His holy presence would dwell.

But the land became defiled and therefore had to be cleansed, as God says: “The land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Lev. 18:25). The logic, again, is that the Promised Land is God’s residence. “The land is mine,” God says. “You are strangers and sojourners with me” (25:23). And if Israel lives a holy life, not defiling God’s residence as the Canaanites did, then God says, “I will make my dwelling among you … and … walk among you” (26:11–12). But if the Israelites live like the Canaanites did, then the land too will “vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you” (18:28).

So God didn’t bully the Canaanites because of their ethnicity, nor did He coax Israel into a “bloodthirsty massacre” carried out with “xenophobic relish.”11 Rather, God’s holiness demands sacred space for Him to dwell with human beings. This is why the Canaanites had to be driven out of God’s new residence.

Although it’s popular to call the conquest genocide, this term is not a fitting description of what happened in the Bible. While it is true that genocide involves the attempted killing of an entire population, and this is what God commanded in Deuteronomy, genocides are always fueled by a feeling of racial superiority that leads to an ethnic cleansing. But there was none of this in Joshua. In this sense, Joshua’s conquest cannot be called genocide. It was God’s judgment on persistent evil, and no genocidal nation today can claim such authority.12

GRACE: GOD’S PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

So, God commanded Israel to drive out the Canaanites as an extension of divine justice in light of God’s special claim on the land of Canaan. But they weren’t eliminated without warning. This point is often missed—or ignored—by skeptics who highlight the immorality of the event. Way back in Genesis 15, God told Abram that he would have to wait 430 years before his people would take full ownership of the land. The reason is that “the iniquity of the Amorites [a people living in Canaan] is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16). In other words, though the Canaanites were sinful (aren’t we all?), they hadn’t yet exhausted God’s patience. They had 430 years to turn from their wickedness to the God of Israel.

But would such repentance have been realistic? After all, how would they know about this God of Israel?

Good question—and it’s one that the Bible answers. After God wreaks havoc on Egypt and brings His people through the Red Sea, He broadcasts His divine power across the world.13 All the nations know about this God of Israel, even those living in Canaan. The Canaanites living in the city of Gibeon are a case in point. After Israel enters the land, the citizens of Gibeon come to Joshua and say: “We have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt” (Josh. 9:9). Therefore, “we are your servants. Come now, make a covenant with us” (v. 11). These Canaanites know about the God of Israel and are quite unwilling to oppose Him. God trumpets His reputation across the ancient world, and these particular Canaanites not only hear it but also turn to Him (albeit through espionage).

The most well-known example of someone accepting God’s preemptive grace in Canaan is Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute living in Jericho. Like the Gibeonites, Rahab declares that all the people of Jericho “have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea … and as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you” (Josh. 2:10–11). Even though they all come face-to-face with God’s grace and could have accepted it, only Rahab goes on to confess that “the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath” (v. 11). Instantly, God removes her sins as far as the east is from the west. But the rest of the people of Jericho and many other Canaanite cities choose to remain in their wickedness and oppose the God of Israel.

But even if the rest of the people Jericho didn’t believe the report they heard about the God of Israel, God intentionally has Israel march around the city for seven days. Think about it. Jericho probably contains only a few hundred people (a few thousand at best), and Israel numbers around six hundred thousand! The soldiers in Jericho have seven days to give in to what is clearly an inevitable victory for the Israelites. And yet they choose to reject the God of Israel and defend their city. The point is that the seven-day march around the city could be viewed as another offer of grace by the God of Israel, an offer already taken up by Rahab yet rejected by the rest of Jericho’s inhabitants.

God persistently forewarns the Canaanites that He is coming as Savior and Judge. If they reject Him as Savior, they will face Him as Judge. God believes, therefore, in preventive wars—wars waged by the extension of grace.

In sum, the conquest is God’s punishment for relentless wickedness among people living in God’s special residence, who rejected God’s offer of grace. Whatever you think about the conquest as a whole, you have to distinguish between arbitrary killing—genocide—and retributive punishment. Or as Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright said: “There is a huge moral difference between arbitrary violence and violence inflicted within the moral framework of punishment.”14 The conquest, like the flood, was divine capital punishment after many years of spurned grace.

TOTAL ANNIHILATION: NOT THE FULL PICTURE

We still need to dig deeper into what actually happened. Most people familiar with the biblical story assume that Israel went in and slaughtered every single Canaanite. However, a quick look at all the evidence shows that such “total annihilation” wasn’t the case. After Joshua finished the conquest, there were many Canaanites left alive.15 You may think, yes, that’s because Israel disobeyed God, who commanded total annihilation. And maybe that’s true. However, it’s not altogether clear that God actually intended Israel to massacre every man, woman, and child—young and old, solider and civilian. The Bible itself suggests a more complex situation. Here’s how.

If you look at all the passages where God commands the conquest, you will see that most of them say that God would “drive out” or “dispossess” the Canaanites.16 Such language in itself means only that the Canaanites would be forced out of the land. “Drive out” doesn’t mean “slaughter.” For instance, Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden (see Gen. 3:24), and Cain was driven out into the wilderness (see 4:14). Later on, David would be “driven … out” into the wilderness by King Saul (1 Sam 26:19).17 Adam, Eve, Cain, and David were not annihilated. They were simply forced out of a particular location. And this is the most common language God uses when referring to the Canaanite conquest. After all, God’s main concern was that there be no Canaanites living in His residence (unless they turn to Him, like Rahab). Any killing would be a result of their resistance, not Yahweh’s insatiable thirst for blood.

The Bible also says that the conquest would happen “little by little,” not all at once.18 In fact, some of these “little by little” passages say that the Canaanites would be driven out by “hornets” (Exod. 23:27–30). Scholars debate the meaning of this, whether it was literal hornets or a figure of speech, but one thing is clear: a wholesale slaughter of all the Canaanites by an ancient blitzkrieg is not the uniform picture in the Bible.19

So what do we do when there is language of annihilation? Deuteronomy 20 clearly says that “you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction” (vv. 16–17). Several passages in Joshua describe Israel’s obedience to Deuteronomy’s command of total annihilation—the people left alive no breathing thing. Here are the passages in Joshua that describe the slaughter of particular cities in Canaan:

• Of Jericho: “They devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword” (6:21).

• Of Ai: “Israel had finished killing all the inhabitants of Ai. … All who fell that day, both men and women, were 12,000, all the people of Ai. … He had devoted all the inhabitants of Ai to destruction” (8:24–26).

• Of Makkedah: “He devoted to destruction every person in it; he left none remaining” (10:28).

• Of Hazor: “They struck with the sword all who were in it, devoting them to destruction; there was none left that breathed” (11:11).

• Of Madon, Shimron, Achshaph, and other cities: “Every person they struck with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them, and they did not leave any who breathed” (11:14).20

All of these passages refer to Israel carrying out the Deuteronomy 20 command of total annihilation against specific Canaanite cities and not necessarily the whole land. However, there is one verse in Joshua that refers to Israel annihilating the entire population of Canaan:

So Joshua struck the whole land, the hill country and the Negeb and the lowland and the slopes, and all their kings. He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the LORD God of Israel commanded. (10:40)

This seems rather clear. Joshua and his army killed every breathing Canaanite. If this were the only verse we had, we would have to conclude that annihilation was the goal and that this goal was achieved. But there’s one glaring problem: the book of Joshua itself doesn’t say that Israel annihilated the entire population. Several passages in Joshua say that “there remains yet very much land to possess” (13:1), and that “they did not drive out the Canaanites who lived in Gezer, so the Canaanites have lived in the midst of Ephraim to this day” (16:10), and that “the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land” (17:12). This is why Joshua would exhort Israel at the end of his life that “you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods” (23:7; cf. vv. 12–14). And when the book of Judges picks up where Joshua left off, it’s clear that many Canaanites were not slaughtered but continued to live in the land.21

The point is that some passages suggest that all the Canaanites were annihilated, while others suggest that they were not. What do we do with this?

One option is that the Bible contradicts itself, and some take this view. But before we chalk up the problem to a hopeless contradiction—a big problem, of course, for those who believe that the Bible is inspired—let’s consider another option. Perhaps there’s a bit of hyperbole in the biblical account of the conquest.22

Last night, the Dodgers slaughtered the Yankees. I mean, they absolutely annihilated them!

Hyperbole refers to overstating something to make a point, and we do this all the time. (Just like my phrase “all the time.”) The language of slaughtering and annihilating the Yankees is overstating something to make a point, even though the Dodgers really did beat them up pretty good. (“Beat them up,” there I go again …) That’s hyperbole. It’s when you make comprehensive and sometimes exaggerated statements to make a point. You may think that there’s no way the Bible does that! But think again. Hyperbole is a common rhetorical device in Scripture. “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you,” says Jesus (Matt. 5:29 NASB). Sounds painful, and it would be if taken literally, as would “swallowing a camel,” which Jesus says the Pharisees are quite fond of doing (23:24).

The Bible sometimes overstates something to make a point. Since this is true, perhaps the biblical phrases that refer to total annihilation are hyperbolic—they are overstating the case to make a point. I know this may sound fishy, but our only other option is that the Bible contradicts itself: Joshua 10 says the Israelites annihilated all the Canaanites, while Joshua 13–24 says they didn’t. So let’s explore the hyperbole option a bit further.

How would we prove that the annihilation statements are hyperbolic and therefore not actually saying that everyone was killed? The fact that the Canaanites weren’t all killed is one conclusive piece of evidence that the statements are hyperbolic. Outside the Bible, hyperbole appears frequently among ancient nations, especially in their warfare accounts.23 For instance, the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III said that “the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally.”24 But historically speaking, many folks of Mitanni survived well after Thutmose had died. They weren’t “annihilated totally.” They were simply defeated. Thutmose was using hyperbole. Again, the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah fought against Israel and said that “Israel is wasted, his seed is not,” suggesting that Israel ceased to exist as a people. That’s what “his seed is not” means. But this was in the thirteenth century BC, and Israel continued to live on. Clearly Merneptah overstated the case.

The book of Joshua itself reveals clear examples of hyperbolic war rhetoric. For instance, Joshua 11:22 says that “there were no Anakim left in the land” (NASB) after Joshua got through with them. Sounds like total annihilation. But later, Caleb asks permission to drive out the Anakites (same people) from the hill country.25 Therefore, either the book of Joshua contradicts itself, or Joshua 11 (“there were no Anakim left in the land”) is hyperbolic. I think there’s a good biblical case for the latter.

The point is well-known and thoroughly documented by historians: hyperbolic language about comprehensive defeat was typical war rhetoric and wasn’t intended to be taken literally. If this were true—and there’s every reason to believe that it is—then Joshua didn’t annihilate every single Canaanite.

Now, let’s revisit Joshua 10:40, which sounds like Joshua killed every single Canaanite. Again, the text reads:

He left none remaining, but devoted to destruction all that breathed, just as the LORD God of Israel commanded.

We have proved that Joshua didn’t actually “[devote] to destruction all that breathed” in the whole land of Canaan. The phrase must be hyperbolic and simply means that Joshua took control of the land. Now, I want to suggest that this hyperbolic phrase clarifies God’s original command in Deuteronomy 20:16–17:

You shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction.

Compare Joshua 10:40 with Deuteronomy 20:16–17 cited above and think carefully about how they relate to each other. It seems clear that whatever Joshua 10 means—and it doesn’t mean total annihilation—it is intended to describe Joshua’s fulfillment of God’s command in Deuteronomy 20. The language is the same. Also, Joshua says in Joshua 10:40 that his (hyperbolic) annihilation fulfilled God’s command, which points back to God’s command in Deuteronomy 20:16–17. Therefore, since the author of Joshua 10:40 describes the Canaanite defeat hyperbolically, then it seems likely that God’s command in Deuteronomy 20 was also intended to be hyperbolic.

If this is true—and I’m only suggesting it as a legitimate possibility based on biblical evidence—then God never commanded a wholesale slaughter of “everything that breathes” in Canaan.26 He intended Israel to kill only those who stubbornly resisted His offer of grace (unlike Rahab, who accepted it) and opposed Israel in war. But it’s unlikely that Joshua would have chased after exiled Canaanite women and children to hack them to pieces.

This suggestion isn’t bulletproof, but I think it carries some good merit. But even if God did actually command a wholesale slaughter, we do know without a doubt that no such slaughter actually happened.

There is one more sticky issue that we have to wrestle with. What about the references to woman and children who were killed? This issue is sobering to me, and it should be to you, too. If you believe that the Bible is historically accurate, then we are not just dealing with an interesting theological issue. We’re dealing with real people, real blood, actual babies who were speared at God’s command. Some Christians don’t see this as a moral problem. They should.

WOMEN AND CHILDREN?

It’s one thing to kill soldiers in combat, but to kill noncombatants seems to be unjustified. How much more horrific, then, is Joshua’s extermination of Canaanite women and babies? Aren’t children, in particular, exempt from the wickedness that blanketed the land of Canaan? They were simply born into a depraved society. So how do we reconcile Jesus, who had a special heart for children, with the God of the Old Testament, who commanded Israel to slaughter Canaanite babies?

Let’s begin with God’s reason for telling Israel to kill (or “dispossess”?) the children. Deuteronomy says that if Israel doesn’t get rid of all the Canaanites, then the people of Canaan will end up leading Israel astray (20:18). And this is exactly what happens. Israel does not drive out all the Canaanites, and Israel ends up getting “Canaanized.” In fact, Israel’s dark history is littered with many Canaanite-like practices, including idolatry, child sacrifice, and male cult prostitution—all of which they learned from the Canaanites left in the land.27

Now, the killing of children still doesn’t sit right with me. It still feels morally repulsive. And yet Israel’s failure to dispose of all the Canaanites ends up biting God’s people in the end. Their moral collapse, which elicited God’s judgment, began when they failed to drive out all the Canaanites from the land. So when read from the perspective of the rest of the Old Testament, we can at least see the logic of the command. As morally difficult as it is, God was right. Failure to drive out all the Canaanites would lead to Israel’s ruin.

But there’s another option that I will throw out as a suggestion. Perhaps the phrase “men and women, young and old” is not to be taken literally. This may sound a bit shady, but hear me out. We have already shown that hyperbolic language is typical in the conquest account. So let’s explore the possibility that God didn’t actually intend for Israel to slaughter all the women and children.

The phrase “men and women, old and young” is first mentioned in Joshua 6:21 in the battle of Jericho, and then again in 8:25 in the battle of Ai. Both battles are part of the conquest. It appears, then, that Joshua and Israel slaughtered all the women and children in these cities. However, there is a possibility that the mention of “men and women, old and young” is a stock phrase that simply means “everyone” without necessarily specifying the age or gender of the people. A number of evangelical scholars argue for this.28 First, these scholars say that both Jericho and Ai were probably military outposts and not vibrant cities filled with citizens of every age. They were therefore most likely stocked with soldiers, not civilians. Second, the only women or children mentioned are Rahab and her family (which probably included children), and they were rescued, not killed. Furthermore, Rahab was a prostitute and—how can I put it?—it would make sense that she would find much business in a city filled with Canaanite soldiers. Third, apart from Joshua 6 and 8, which mention women and children, all other accounts of Israel killing Canaanites in the conquest include—and only include—combatants, not civilians. There is no record of Israel actually killing a Canaanite woman or a child during the conquest apart from the two verses in Joshua 6 and 8.

None of these arguments are bulletproof in themselves. Taken cumulatively, though, they do offer some merit to the view that God didn’t literally command Joshua to slaughter babies. But there’s another argument that offers clear biblical support for this view. It comes from the book of 1 Samuel, where the phrase “man and woman, child and infant” cannot mean what it seems to say.29

In 1 Samuel 15, God tells Saul to slaughter all the Amalekites including “man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” (v. 3). The text goes on to say that Saul killed “all the people,” except he “spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them” (15:8–9). Notice: Saul spared only the king and some animals; he didn’t spare any other Amalekites. When Samuel rebukes Saul, it’s not because he spared some people, but because he “pounce[d] on the spoil” (15:19; cf. 15:14, 21). So it seems that Saul did actually kill all the men and women, children and infants. However, when you read on in 1 Samuel, you still see plenty of Amalekites running around. David goes on to kill (again?) all the Amalekites in the land, “leaving neither man nor woman alive” (1 Sam. 27:9). But even David’s annihilation can’t be taken literally, since he continues to battle with the Amalekites again in 1 Samuel 30:16–20. Then in 2 Samuel 1:8 we read about an Amalekite who claims to have killed King Saul. No matter how often Israel annihilates the Amalekites, they just don’t seem to go away.30

Here’s the point: the phrase “man and woman, child and infant” is used in 1 Samuel 15:3 as a rhythmic description of total defeat and is not meant to include every breathing Amalekite baby. It can’t. The text doesn’t allow this. Please note: it’s not my human sentiment that demands this, but the rest of 1 Samuel.

Perhaps the same phrase about women and children in Joshua 6 and 8 should be understood along the same lines: a rhythmic description of total defeat, without demanding the slaughter of children. So, even though it appears that women and children were killed, there’s some evidence that may suggest a less barbaric picture. Israel’s clash with the Canaanites resulted in killing other combatants and, perhaps, driving out its civilians who resisted God’s new kind of society under His kingship.

PLEASE DON’T MISAPPLY JOSHUA TO YOUR DAILY LIFE

The Canaanites were horrifically wicked, and yet God gave them hundreds of years to repent. Some did, while most didn’t. And since God chose Canaan to be His new residence on earth—and as Creator, He had every right to do so—He had to drive out all its wicked inhabitants. The ones who resisted God’s grace faced the sword of Israel, God’s tool of judgment.31 While moral problems remain, such as the possibilities that women and children were actually slaughtered (though I have my doubts), the conquest was not a genocide at the hands of a bloodthirsty God.

But the one thing that must be noted about the conquest, the thing that is most relevant to the topic of this book, the point that will be essential for understanding the church’s nonviolent posture, is this: nowhere in Scripture, Old or New Testament, is Joshua’s conquest prescribed for future generations. It’s only a description of what happened. There is nothing in the Bible that appeals to the conquest as justification to wage war or engage in violence. Nothing. The conquest, like the flood and the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, was a one-time, non-repeatable event whereby God judged a particularly wicked people.

To take the point further, all subsequent wars that God commanded Israel to wage focused on defending the land. Like the conquest, where Israel took the land, subsequent wars sanctioned by God had something to do with keeping the land. That is, the Promised Land given to Israel, and not any sort of land that belongs to any given nation. This is why Christians cannot appeal to the conquest to justify using violence today. This would be like burning a city to the ground because God once did it to Sodom and Gomorrah (something James and John tried to do and were rebuked for in Luke 9:51–56). Some things are described in the Bible that aren’t meant to be prescribed.

The crusaders were therefore wrong. The colonialists were also wrong. Rumsfeld, Bush, and others who sanitize contemporary wars with verses from Joshua are not only wrong but marching down a dangerous path. After all, God warred against the militarized, chariot-stacked, well-fortified Canaanites, not the demilitarized, unprofessional Israelites who fought with trumpets and prayer. Before we apply Joshua to our lives, we need to make sure which side of the Jordan we are living on. Militarism invites God’s wrath.

NOTES

1. Jack Graham, quoted in Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 145.

2. John MacArthur, interview by Larry King, Larry King Live, CNN, March 11, 2003.

3. Rumsfeld’s frequent use of the Bible in reference to the Iraq war is well-known. See, for instance, Robert Draper, “And He Shall Be Judged,” GQ.com, June 2009, http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/200905/donald-rumsfeld-administration-peers-detractors (accessed March 2013); and Daniel Nasaw, “Iraq War Briefings Headlined with Biblical Quotes, Reports US Magazine,” The Guardian, May 18, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/rumsfeld-gq-iraq-bible-quotes-bush (accessed March 14, 2013).

4. Cited in Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 135.

5. For an overview, see Stanley N. Gundry, ed., Show Them No Mercy (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003).

6. C. S. Cowles, “Radical Discontinuity,” in Show Them No Mercy, 41.

7. “There is no hint anywhere in the Bible that the Israelites took the land of Canaan on the basis of a mistaken belief in God’s will” (Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008], 83).

8. Deut. 7:1–2; 20:16–18

9. This is how the Bible describes the Canaanites at least; see Lev. 18:24–25; 20:22–24; Deut. 9:5; 12:29–31; cf. Jer. 5:8. There is a debate among Old Testament scholars about the historical accuracy of the biblical description of the Canaanites. And we don’t possess many Canaanite sources to crosscheck what the Bible says about their morality. The historical evidence that we do have is complex: it describes the Canaanites as a blend of wicked and relatively moral people. For the most recent discussion, see the forthcoming article by Richard S. Hess: “‘Because of the Wickedness of These Nations’ (Deut. 9:4–5): The Canaanites––Ethical or Not?”

10. Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011), 159.

11. Richard Dawkins, quoted in Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 163.

12. See Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 92; Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 163.

13. Exod. 15:14–16; Josh. 2:9–11; 5:1

14. Chris Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 476.

15. Josh. 13:1–13; 15:63; 16:10; 17:12–13; 18:3; 23:4; Judg. 1:27–36; 3:3–5

16. “Drive out”: Exod. 34:24; Num. 32:21; Deut. 4:38; “dispossess”: Num. 21:32; Deut. 9:1; 11:23; 18:14; 19:1.

17. Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 181.

18. Deut. 7:22; Judg. 2:20–23

19. Even when God tells Israel to “destroy” the Canaanites, the language of “destruction” doesn’t have to mean total annihilation. For instance, Israel is said to be “destroy[ed]” by God when the people are driven out of the land of Canaan in years to come (Deut. 28:63; cf. Jer. 38:2, 17). Obviously, “destroy[ed]” here can’t mean that they were all killed.

20. The reference to “cities” in 11:14 is ambiguous but probably refers to the cities listed in 11:1–5.

21. Judg. 1–2

22. Most evangelical Old Testament scholars advocate for the same argument I propose here (see Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 87–88).

23. See K. Lawson Younger Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).

24. Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 171.

25. Josh. 14:12–15; cf. 15:13–19

26. See note 19 above.

27. 1 Kings 14:24; 21:26; 2 Kings 16:3; 17:8; 21:2

28. Richard Hess, “War in the Hebrew Bible: An Overview,” Richard Hess and Elmer Martens eds., War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century (BBRS 2; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 29–30; Wright, Old Testament Ethics, 474–475.

29. 1 Sam. 15:3; 22:19; 2 Sam. 6:19; Neh. 8:2; 2 Chron. 15:13.

30. Not to mention “Haman … the Agagite” (Esther 3:1) who is most likely an Amalekite (see 1 Sam. 15:8).

31. Chris Wright, The God I Don’t Understand, 93.