I am launching a project that will take me several issues to complete. The subject is a big one: what some people refer to as the violence of God in the Old Testament (OT). Gregory Boyd has written a voluminously fat book about this: The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (2017; over 1400 pages). I have been asked for my opinion; this has led me to undertake this project.
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Illustration: William Favorite, “Sebastian Munster: Battle of Munster,” http://www.tablespace.net/prints/Munster/hires/MunsterBattle.jpg (CC BY 2.0)
This issue is the first installment. I am not going to start with Boyd’s book. I first want to do some study of my own and read a bit more broadly. I begin with the conquest, first, because it is a subject of more manageable size, and second, because, at least to the modern mind, the conquest is perhaps the most shocking example of violence in the OT. Did God really command the Israelites to kill every Canaanite who came within reach of their swords?
This project is an adventure. I don’t know where it will take me and what my results and conclusions will be. My aim is not only to assess Boyd’s book but also to think through the issues and develop my own position.
Sources Used
Several books have been my dialogue partners for this issue. Because this is a long text, I won’t list them here but instead provide an annotated bibliography at the end, for those who want to know (and perhaps read) more.
The Problem
The conquest of Canaan seems to have been a violent affair. Israel is commanded not to leave anyone alive but to “devote them to complete destruction” (Dt. 20.16f) and to “show no mercy to them” (Dt. 7:2). This sits uneasily with the message of the New Testament (NT), where we are told that the very essence of God is love and where Jesus tells us to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us. I think this qualifies as a problem.
One crucial Hebrew word appears in both Deuteronomy passages: herem. (Actually, there are two words: a noun and a verb based on the same root, but to simplify things, I will consistently speak of herem. The h, by the way, is pronounced as a guttural ch.)
Herem is a difficult word to translate, and perhaps I will return to the question of its precise meaning in a future issue. It does not always have overtones of destruction. It can simply mean to devote something (it definitely has cultic connotations, that is, it belongs in the context of worship and sacrifice). In other cases, though, especially in connection with the conquest, it appears to imply destruction (by fire or the sword). German translations tend to be cautious, often translating “to ban” something or “to place something under a ban,” leaving room for the reader to interpret (or wonder). In English, a common translation is “to devote to destruction,” although this entails substantial interpretation.
God wanted the Israelites to devote people to destruction? I guess that adds to the problem.
In this issue, I will start with a number of preliminary considerations, proceed to list some possible answers, and finish with a survey of relevant passages in the Torah (Gen.-Dt.).
Genocide?
It is not uncommon for people to speak of genocide when debating the Israelite conquest of Canaan (Boyd, for one, does this). Genocide is a conscious attempt to destroy a people in whole or in part. It is a heinous crime. My title for this issue speaks of the Canaanite conquest, not genocide; this is deliberate.
First, the term genocide was not coined until the mid-20th century. It seems ill-conceived to project it back onto the past and onto texts that are a few thousand years older than this concept. Doing this imposes a Western, 21st-century conceptual framework on texts. This is not only arrogant and imperialist, it guarantees poor interpretation and a failure to understand.
Second, it answers the question before it can be properly asked and processed. If it was genocide, it was evil, pure and simple. But what do we know about what actually happened and what do the relevant texts actually say? Do the events even come close to what we today might consider genocide? Let’s investigate before we engage in moral condemnation; we may be in for a surprise.
Further Preliminary Considerations
In a next issue, I hope to tackle the book of Joshua, because that is where the conquest is described. Here are a few things to notice about the conquest even now.
- Virtually every time, both before and after Israel crossed the Jordan, the attack was initiated by others. The exceptions are Jericho and Ai. For instance, when kings Og and Sihon were asked for permission to pass through their territory, they attacked (Nu. 21:21-35).
- The relevant texts indicate that not all that much killing took place. Large numbers of Canaanites continued to live in the area under consideration. Clearly, no genocide was perpetrated.
- It was possible to make peace with the Israelites, as the Gibeonites did (Joshua 9). Admittedly, they had to take recourse to some trickery, but the interesting thing is that God does not utter any complaint about Joshua’s covenant-by-mistake with those he should have – exterminated? The only ones who grumble are some of the Israelites, not God.
Tough questions remain. These considerations do not ‘excuse’ or explain everything but they do mitigate. In addition, I include two more general considerations.
- In evaluating the conquest with its language of destroying and killing Canaanites, we quickly run into a Catch-22. Was this right (and therefore we need to find a way to justify God)? Was this wrong (but what then do we make of the OT?)? Either we relativize Scripture (God wouldn’t say or do that; he cannot have ordered the slaughter of women and children) or we end up with a harsh theology, in which God is capable of ordering actions that shock most people. It is not easy to find a way out.
- We are dealing with an unfolding and progressive revelation. God started to work with humans within their world and on their moral and developmental level. This is called accommodation or condescension. He did not reveal everything all at once. Much he left in place. He adjusted his revelation so that people could understand. Consequently, he condoned much that falls short of his will or truth, for instance, slavery and polygamy. Accommodation also played a role in the sacrificial system and the purity regulations. We can clearly see this principle at work in the OT law but also elsewhere in the OT. War was normal. It took a while for some of the prophets to think that maybe it shouldn’t be (Isaiah 2 and Micah 4).
In assessing ‘violent’ material in Scripture and seeking to understand it, it is crucial that we keep these three in mind: progressive revelation, accommodation, and condoning. It won’t be easy to put the pieces together. For one, even making generous allowance for accommodation, can God order the killing of women and children? Did he?
Before we investigate this, let’s survey a number of possible answers.
Possible Answers
1. This was wrong. Based on what is revealed of God’s character in the NT, God cannot have ordered mass killings, nor can he approve of them. So… did Israel misunderstand or distort God’s intent? Are these portrayals in the OT plainly wrong or distorted and in need of significant reinterpretation? This appears to be Boyd’s position, and I expect that such a reinterpretation will be a major part of his project in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God.
2. This was right. It is what it appears to be: Israel executed God’s command by killing many Canaanites. This ‘harsh theology’ position sometimes argues that it is not surprising that God judges and destroys the Canaanites but rather that he does not judge and destroy all nations. This is formally correct but does not provide a satisfactory explanation. In fact, it offers no explanation at all. Yes, God could strike us all dead and still be just. But this, although true, is beside the point; I am not indicting God or challenging his sovereignty but attempting to understand his actions.
Three additions can be made to this approach.
The first possible, indeed, common addition is that the Canaanites were extraordinarily wicked. Therefore, they were singled out for judgment. Not infrequently, this argument leads its advocates to exaggerate Canaanite vice as the epitome of human evil. This goes far beyond what the text tells us about them. The “abominable practices” of the Canaanites were practiced widely in the Ancient Near East (ANE). I certainly don’t claim that the opposite is true, that the Canaanites were in reality good people. But there is a difference between bringing out and emphasizing their evil side (which I think is what Scripture does) and painting them as over the top evil, more than any other group at the time.
The latter would leave one to wonder why only the Canaanites within the boundaries of Israel were judged and not those further north. More importantly, nothing in the book of Joshua suggests that this is the reason or even that the conquest is to be understood as judgment. There are no examples of Canaanite wickedness given. As Walton & Walton (Proposition 5, 2017:38ff) argue, this and other indicators for divine retribution are missing. There are, however, indications that Canaanite wickedness was a factor (Gen. 9:20-25, 15:16, Dt. 9:4f, 18:9-12). Still, this hardly explains indiscriminate killing ordered by a God who is love.
The second, related addition is the idea of intrusion ethics (first proposed by Meredith Kline and discussed in Longman III 2003: Loc 3012ff). God’s judgment on sin has been postponed until the end and the last judgment, but in the case of the conquest it intruded into the present: “In a sense, the destruction of the Canaanites is a preview of the final judgment” (ibid.: Loc 3018f).
This is worth thinking about and there is something to be said for this idea, even though it also leaves me uneasy. It is not just that it fails to explain why it hit this subset of Canaanites or that, as stated before, the indications that this is meant as judgment are missing. As an answer, it is theologically clean, but what about the fact that it impacted real people – including those Israelites who had to execute God’s judgment? And how can it be the intrusion of God’s final judgment if it was so imperfectly and incompletely executed?
The third addition is the claim of illegal occupation. In this view, the Israelites held the legal title to the land; therefore, the Canaanites were squatters. It was legitimate to compel them by force to give up the land to its rightful owners. This is argued by both Copan & Flannagan (2014: Loc 1171ff / P. 62ff) and Merrill (2003: Loc 1315).
This claim does not hold water. God had promised to give Israel the land. This does not establish a right to go in and take it. If a church or a Christian organization feels that God is promising them a certain building, they cannot simply move in. There was nothing illegal or illegitimate about Canaanite residence in Canaan.
3. This is theology, projected retrospectively onto the past, interpreting and idealizing it. This approach takes the text seriously as theology but not as history. The text seeks to glorify God and teach the people of Israel, for instance, to distance themselves from the Canaanites and from Canaanite practices. In this view, there may not have been anything close to genocide. I expect many of those reading this will feel uncomfortable with such a low view of the historicity of OT Scripture.
4. This was common practice. This would be an easy solution. If Israel did just as the other nations at the time, it would be a case of accommodation. God condones, then corrects and redirects in the progression of salvation history. But is this the case? It begs the question, what was common practice? This would need to be established through historical evidence, and so far, I have not seen such evidence. Herem appears to go beyond what others did.
5. This was Yahweh war. It is often referred to as holy war, but the essence is not that it is a holy activity, but rather that it is God’s, not Israel’s, war, although Israel may be called upon to play a role in his war. In the ancient world, it was not uncommon for a nation to think it was fighting a war for – or with – its god.
This is the approach advocated by Merrill (2003). The strength of this approach is that it takes the conceptual framework and the worldview of the ancient Israelites seriously. It helps us to understand how the Israelites may have understood the conquest. However, it does not really help us today to understand its morality.
6. This needs to be reinterpreted spiritually, in the light of the NT. The real conflict is with spiritual powers. The true enemy is Satan. What needs to be overcome is evil. The Canaanites embody or symbolize the true opponents, the war of the conquest is a type or symbol of our battle with evil. This is the view of Tremper Longman III (2003).
While I am sure such a spiritual reinterpretation is the correct application of conquest texts, it does not help me to come to terms with the historical reality that is described. Joshua’s war was not metaphorical or spiritual only but real and bloody.
7. This is hyperbole. Copan & Flannagan (2014, Chapter 6-9) argues at length that the language of Joshua is hyperbolic and theological. The same applies to the relevant statements and commands in the Torah. Joshua is not meant to be understood as a factual, historical report. There is more to say on the book of Joshua, its type of literature, and its language, and I hope to do so in the next issue. It may be questioned, however, whether this is sufficient as an explanation. And it still leaves us with the question: Did God order this, and if yes, how can that be?
8. God has his reasons but he does not communicate them to us. See the discussion of Copan & Flannagan (2014) in the annotated bibliography below for more on this option. I am not (yet) ready to accept this answer; I want to at least try to see if more understanding is possible.
My take at this (admittedly early) point in this project: Important factors are the conceptual and cultural world of the OT, accommodation, and progressive revelation. This implies that the NT transcends the OT portrayal, an understanding that paves the road to a more spiritual understanding of conflict (the Canaanites are not the problem or the enemy) and the way this ‘war’ is to be ‘fought.’ Because of the complexity of these issues, I am intuitively suspicious of black and white answers and broad strokes solutions. Some ambiguity is to be expected; to want to resolve all the resulting tensions normally leads to forced and extreme exegesis.
Survey of Biblical Material
What follows is a preliminary survey of relevant biblical material in the Torah. What did God command?
Interestingly, the earliest commandments speaking of herem do not refer to the Canaanites and do not in every case imply destruction:
Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction. (Ex 22:19)
But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the LORD, of anything that he has, whether man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD. No one devoted, who is to be devoted for destruction from mankind, shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 27:28–29)
Every devoted thing in Israel shall be yours. (Nu. 18:14)
This illustrates it is not easy to fully comprehend Israel’s concept of herem. It was part of a larger conceptual framework that was already in place earlier on, perhaps long before the Canaanites came into view. It also shows the cultic connotation of the idea.
Equally interesting are the earliest appearances of herem in narrative reports. It turns out Israel practiced the form of herem that we know from the conquest before Moses had said anything about it and in cases where God had not commanded it. Does this imply the Israelites knew this practice quite apart from God’s revelation on the way to the promised land (something that would make it easier to see it as a form of accommodation)?
The first occurrence is when the king of Arad attacks them. In Numbers 21:2 Israel vows to place Arad’s cities under herem if God gives them victory. God did not ask for this nor did he command it. Also in Numbers 21, we read about Israel’s victory over Sihon and Og. There is no reference here to anything like herem. It is only when Moses recounts the events in Deuteronomy that he speaks of this as herem (Dt. 2:34 and 3:6), claiming “we left no survivors” (Dt. 2:34). But in this case, too, God had not commanded herem.
God does order vengeance on the Midianites in Numbers 31, but this does not include herem. When the men of Israel bring women and children as a spoil of war to the camp, Moses gets angry and orders them to kill all of them except the women who are still virgins (Nu. 31:14-17). But notice that God does not speak at this point; the command is Moses’s.
There are several passages before Deuteronomy that speak about what Israel is to do when it enters the land: Exodus 23:23-33, Exodus 34:11-16, and Numbers 33:50-56. These passages do not use the term herem, but they do include a commandment to destroy. Interestingly, however, what they are to destroy is the Canaanite gods and their altars; the Canaanites themselves are to be driven out.
So where is God’s command to execute herem on the Canaanites?
The only direct instruction to do so appears in two verses in Deuteronomy:
When the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. (Dt. 7:2; when all of Dt. 7 is read instead of only one or two verses, we do not get the idea that Moses is urging genocide but rather radical separation from the Canaanites and their ways, implying herem here may not mean kill and destroy; the stated reason is that the Israelites “are a people holy to the LORD your God,” Dt. 7:6; such a call for separation – no intermarriage, no covenants – makes no sense if the Canaanites are expected to be killed off entirely)
But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded. (Dt. 20:16f)
Notice that it is only in the second passage that this command is ascribed to God. But we do not find a single instance in the Torah in which God is reported to speak this command directly. And there is only one verse in which Moses states that this is what God commanded. This is more than nothing, but not by much.
We run into a fundamental exegetical issue here. Not everything that the Bible records is right since it also records statements and actions that are obviously wrong, often enough without explicitly pointing this out. Even Moses says and does things that are wrong. We would not expect, however, the narrator to be wrong in his statements and we would not expect the text to wrongly state that God commanded something (which he did not actually command). We would also expect some indication in the text when we are expected to disagree or disapprove of something (see the issue on narrative criticism).
It is not obvious to me that this is the case here and that we are expected to mistrust the claim of Moses that God commanded this. It is therefore not clear that this is the way out of our moral dilemma, but it is thinkable: Moses may have rhetorically overstated.
In a future issue, I hope to explore what the book of Joshua adds to this picture. But as far as the Torah is concerned, this is it. There can be no doubt that, according to the biblical record, Israel practiced herem. But did God order them to do this? This is less obvious.
Attribution
William Favorite, “Sebastian Munster: Battle of Munster,” http://www.tablespace.net/prints/Munster/hires/MunsterBattle.jpg (CC BY 2.0)
Annotated Bibliography
Bible quotations are taken from:
Standard Bible Society (2001), The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Standard Bible Society)
Boyd, Gregory (2017), The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, Kindle Edition)
To read and evaluate this book is my aim, but since I have not read any of it yet, all I can say is: it is big, and it is academic, written as a work of scholarship.
Id. (2017), Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, Kindle Edition)
Cross Vision is a short and simplified version of The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. It is written for a broad, non-academic audience and in a popular style. At this point, I have read parts of this book to have some idea of where Boyd is going, but it is not an important source for this issue.
Copan, Paul & Flannagan, Matthew (2014), Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, Kindle Edition)
This is not an easy book; large parts of it are philosophy rather than theology or biblical studies. Part 3 (of 4) is largely aimed at the so-called New Atheists and others who question the fundamental rightness of God commanding killing in Scripture. This is less relevant to people like me who do not doubt God’s right to do whatever pleases him or his goodness in doing so. Interestingly, Copan and Flannagan argue that it is coherent and rational to claim that God in exceptional situations and for the sake of some higher good may command the killing of innocents. At the same time, they abstain from venturing an explanation what that higher good or God’s reasons may have been in the case of the Canaanite conquest:
We have argued that it is rational to think that God could, on rare occasions, grant an exemption to the moral rule against taking innocent human life for the sake of some greater good. We also rejected arguments which purport to show that the biblical theist lacks adequate grounds for thinking that God did on certain occasions recorded in Scripture issue such an exemption. One important point noted in the last chapter is that the scriptural texts don’t tell us much about God’s reasons for issuing these commands. Scripture, however, does provide the Israelites with some reasons why they should follow the commands. But the Scriptures leave us largely in the dark as to why God issued the commands in the first place. (233)
All in all, this book is thorough and well argued, and the sections that focus on Scripture are helpful. This is especially the case in Part 2, which deals with the occasional nature of the command to kill Canaanites (it only applies to this special situation at this time) and the hyperbolic and stylised language used to speak of this.
Cowles, C. S. (2003), “The Case for Radical Discontinuity,” in Gundry 2003: Loc. 136-986.
Cowles argues a case that I expect is close to Boyd’s: these violent commands cannot possibly come from God himself since he is revealed to be the essence of love in the NT. This presentation is by far the most passionate of the four, but this is not necessarily a virtue in theological thought. For all his rhetorical fire, Cowles fails to tell us how we are to read or make sense of the OT. Obviously, the OT portrayal is (in his view) wrong, so what, then, do we do with it? This is Merrill’s critique in his response to Cowles:
He argues that “insuperable difficulties for Christian theology, ethics, and praxis” arise when one attempts to attribute such atrocities as holy war “to the actual intention and will of God.” As we will see, Cowles attempts to resolve this dilemma by suggesting that God had, indeed, never authorized such a policy but was only mistakenly thought to have done so. But this raises serious questions about the credibility of the Old Testament witness. (Cowles 2003: Loc 703-7)
Cowles makes no attempt to answer these questions, something that I expect is a central aim in Boyd’s work.
Gard, Daniel (2003), “The Case for Eschatological Continuity,” in Gundry 2003: Loc. 1802-2578.
Gard offers an eschatological approach: “It is through an eschatological reading of warfare narratives – including their accounts of divinely mandated genocide – that the images of Old Testament genocide can be seen as types of an eschatological event” (Loc 1835-37). This leads to significant overlap with both Merrill and Longman III.
Gundry, Stanley N., ed. (2003), Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Kindle Edition)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book; I like the ‘four views’ format, even though being provided with different persuasive answers to a problem does not necessarily make it easier to make up one’s mind. The four contributions are discussed under their authors, Cowles, Merrill, Gard, and Longman III.
Longman III, Tremper (2003), “The Case for Spiritual Continuity,” in Gundry 2003: Loc. 2590-3302.
Longman III argues for a spiritual reinterpretation, as summarized above under Possible Answers and in this quote:
Jesus is the divine warrior, but he has intensified and heightened the battle. No longer is the battle a physical battle against flesh-and-blood enemies, but rather it is directed toward the spiritual powers and authorities. Furthermore, this battle is fought with nonphysical weapons. (Loc 2927-9)
I should add that Longman understands the final phase of this war and the ultimate fulfillment of herem as the last judgment. In this context, he expects a reversal to more concrete battle, speaking of “the violence associated with the Second Coming” (Loc 2970f). I am not sure such a reversal to an earlier stage makes sense; it is the equivalent of reverting to animal sacrifice in a physical temple in the age to come (which is what some literalists but no one else expect for the millennium).
Merrill, Eugene H. (2003), “The Case for Moderate Discontinuity,” in Gundry 2003: Loc. 994-1791.
Merrill leans heavily on Yahweh war as explained above under Possible Answers. This is helpful in as far as it enables us to understand the mindset of Israel, but it does not leave us with much of an explanation for today. Merrill (2003: Loc 1486-90) admits as much (giving us a sample of ‘harsh theology’ with this endorsement of “biblical genocide”):
The issue, then, cannot be whether or not genocide is intrinsically good or evil – its sanction by a holy God settles that question. Rather, the issue has to do with the purpose of genocide, its initiator, and the particular circumstances of its application. We argued here that biblical genocide was part of a Yahweh-war policy enacted for a unique situation, directed against a certain people, and in line with the character of God himself, a policy whose design is beyond human comprehension but one that is not, for that reason, unjust or immoral.
Walton, John H. & Walton, J. Harvey (2017), The Lost World of the Canaanite Conquest: Covenant, Retribution, and the Fate of the Canaanites (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity)
As the title implies, Walton and Walton concentrate on recovering the worldview, culture, and outlook of people in the ANE at the time of the conquest. This should help us to understand actions and utterances within their original context. A significant pillar of their explanation of the conquest is an alternative definition and translation of the crucial term herem. This part is intriguing (I hope to discuss it in the issue on Joshua). However, other parts I found incomprehensible or far-fetched, I am not sure which: either I didn’t get it or the arguments, logic, and reinterpretations (leading to readings very different from what I found in all Bible translations I looked at) really did not work. Neither option pleads for this book. Much of this is based on digging so deep into ANE customs and languages like Sumerian, Akkadian, and Ugaritic that non-specialists are lost on the way. Worse: all the redefinition and reframing did not make the conquest more palatable or justifiable to me. For instance, if the conquest was not judgment or punishment for Canaanite sin, something that is argued at length, then doesn’t that make it harder, not easier, to understand it today?
I am disappointed because the ancient background and way of thinking about these issues is such an important part of the puzzle and I had high hopes for this book. Reluctantly and although it does include some helpful material as well, I have to say I cannot recommend it.
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