I have always been a bit disturbed by the way God tells the fledgling Israelite nation to go into the promised land and wipe out all of its inhabitants. This seems to go against everything I believe God to be like. This week, as I am again following a through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan, I read a section that opened my eyes in a new way.
In Deuteronomy 20, God, through Moses, explains what the "rules of engagement" for this new nation would be when going to war. I was surprised by what I read in vs 10 - 14. Here, God allows the Israelites to make peace treaties with other nations. I had always thought that God had ordered the Israelites to kill all of the people in the area. I guess I had overlooked something critical. The Israelites were not told to go in and just randomly start wiping people out. Reading further, verses 15 - 18 distinguish between "nations that are very far from you" and "the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance." The specific nations in the promised land are identified in several places as the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. God had singled out these nations to be annhiliated by the Israelites because of their idolatry. These nations all descended from Canaan, otherwise known as Ham, a son of Noah. They were people that had known about God, but chose to worship idols instead.
God was using the nation of Israel to pass judgement on these nations for their idolatry, just as God later uses Babylon to pass judgement on Israel for their idolatry. When conquering the promised land, the Israelites are instructed not to marry the women or take any of the posessions from the land, in order to help protect the young nation from falling into the same sin that He finds in these wayward people.
This understanding helps me to see that God wasn't bloodthirsty. He was simply trying to teach his people to stop practicing idolatry. He had a specific plan for a specific group of people. He wanted to protect His chosen people, while at the same time, to stop the spread of the practice of worshipping gods of stone and wood and sacrificing their children to these so-called gods.
In Deuteronomy 20, God, through Moses, explains what the "rules of engagement" for this new nation would be when going to war. I was surprised by what I read in vs 10 - 14. Here, God allows the Israelites to make peace treaties with other nations. I had always thought that God had ordered the Israelites to kill all of the people in the area. I guess I had overlooked something critical. The Israelites were not told to go in and just randomly start wiping people out. Reading further, verses 15 - 18 distinguish between "nations that are very far from you" and "the cities of these peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance." The specific nations in the promised land are identified in several places as the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. God had singled out these nations to be annhiliated by the Israelites because of their idolatry. These nations all descended from Canaan, otherwise known as Ham, a son of Noah. They were people that had known about God, but chose to worship idols instead.
God was using the nation of Israel to pass judgement on these nations for their idolatry, just as God later uses Babylon to pass judgement on Israel for their idolatry. When conquering the promised land, the Israelites are instructed not to marry the women or take any of the posessions from the land, in order to help protect the young nation from falling into the same sin that He finds in these wayward people.
This understanding helps me to see that God wasn't bloodthirsty. He was simply trying to teach his people to stop practicing idolatry. He had a specific plan for a specific group of people. He wanted to protect His chosen people, while at the same time, to stop the spread of the practice of worshipping gods of stone and wood and sacrificing their children to these so-called gods.
