Prichard, James B. The Canaanites, by contrast, were destroyed at the direction of God and primarily because of their sin. Completely destroy them-the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites-as the LORD your God has commanded you. Sometimes the Amorites were named in the same way. The takeaway point in all this below is that the God of the Bible was totally justified in giving His command to Israel to totally destroy the Canaanites. All rights reserved. At such moments there was only one place to look, and that is up, beyond oneself, to the One who could do so much more than we can ask or imagine.. because they were not salvageable. In Joshua 6:1 we read that they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.. {D} Blood-Lust Gory Murder Religious Ceremonies. CONCLUSION: The God of the Bible was totally justified in giving His command to the nation of Israel to totally destroy the Canaanite tribes. How to Have Joy in Your Golden Years Despite These 10 Life Garrett Kell explains in an article for TGC, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Used by permission. There was a total of 6 tribes that were practicing (1) through (12) up there: Hittites Amorites Canaanites Perizzites Hivites Jebusites All 6 tribes are generally referred to as the "Canaanites." . The Egyptian Dream book has a section for men that begins with: Remember, the gods themselves were involved in incestuous relationships. In Gen. 15:16, Yahweh stated that Abrahams descendants could not take the land of Canaan because the Canaanites were not yet evil enough to be destroyed. Why did God command the genocide of the Canaanites? Israel was never commanded in the Bible to kill the Canaanites merely to take control of the land. The Canaanites descend from the grandson of Noah, Canaan. 3:21-26). They have little to no political affiliation, they are just simple people hoping to live out their days in their fields, loving their families, and doing honest work. God told Abraham that the Amorite were a wicked people. "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them." End quote. with the Israelites and were never the object of total annihilation as was the 6 totally corrupt Canaanite nations. Get the answers your looking for and save with code SPRINGSTUDY15! The Canaanite people were an extremely violent people involved in and promoting idolatry, gang rape, bestiality, child sacrifice, and many other evil and grotesque practices.[2]. Get our Question of the Week delivered right to your inbox! In the midst of idol worship, God would establish His promises to Abraham. 17:7-23; 24:20-25:30). In a world of no police or prisons, few options existed for dealing justly with these kinds of evils. 10:5) so that we may be loyal to our covenant with Yahweh and free of corruption. As much as it might help our comfort, we cannot remove God from the story of the destruction of the Canaanites. and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood. The main focus of Deut. . . When Israel first entered the land, Yahweh did not immediately send warriors to kill people; rather, he sent two witnesses to give the people in Jericho a chance to repent and escape the judgment (Josh. The righteousness of Yahweh and His covenant with the family of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 15) is what led to Tamar leaving her Canaanite culture and joining the family and covenant of Abraham (Gen. 38). The "new atheists" call God's commands to kill the Canaanites "genocide," but a closer look at the horror of the Canaanites' sinfulness, exhibited in rampant idolatry, incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality, reveals that God's reason for commanding their death was not genocide but capital punishment. If someone wanted to guarantee a victory in battle, they could sacrifice one of their children to ensure the gods fought on their behalf (Judg. Not only did they declare these acts as righteous morality, but they also participated in these acts in the worship of their gods as a means of gaining the gods approval. 11:19-20). But we would be remiss not to point to Jesus Christ. xb```"6vAd`B~'p14:)mPP,dRsV%n=?*4H[K)m;?RYttY7b}K&8j]OEUKe=2IM*]W. 6:10-12). 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; Isa. [4] See W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: A Historical Analysis of Two Contrasting Faiths, p. 145. Does the Bible Condemn Using Tarot Cards? Not once does the narrator or Yahweh condemn these acts of mercy. Canaan, Canaanites. SourcesElwell, W. A., & Beitzel, B. J. 18:7-8). Just as fantasies of incest were seen as good omens, so was homosexuality. Joshua decided that showing mercy and honoring oaths takes priority over the Mosaic Law to exterminate everything. 2; Jam. Canaan is the place God chose to fulfill His promise to Abraham. 3Those who dwelt of old in thy holy land4thou didst hate for their detestable practices,their works of sorcery and unholy rites,5their merciless slaughter[a] of children,and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.These initiates from the midst of a heathen cult,[b]. 7:3-4; 9:4-5). The human perspective is not always the divine and right perspective. It shows that Yahweh did spare Rahab for her faith, and thus this is His true character. Ezra 9:1-4 ESV / 5 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful. Enter code SPRINGSTUDY15 to save 15% for life!. . Is this more like the story of the rescue from raiders or bombing a people group who were minding their own business? {C} Murdered Their Own Children {Molech}.. 3 Forty days were set aside for him, for that is how many days it takes to embalm. Where most cultures dehumanize the people they are destroying and make them out to be monsters to justify their slaughter, the narrator does not. Leviticus 18:16, ( 8 ] They were having sex with their neighbor's wife.. Leviticus 18:20, (9) They were having homosexual sex. Likewise, Yahweh did not choose Israel alone to execute justice in every case throughout history. Canaanite religion, beliefs and practices prevalent in ancient Palestine and Syria during the 2nd and 1st millennia bc, centring primarily on the deities El, Baal, and Anath ( qq.v. We already know that certain people are more genetically predisposed to alcoholism and other addictive tendencies; scientists are even trying to find a gay gene. Ultimately, this question can be answered only when one comes to understand that Yahweh is good and that a God who is willing to die for useven for the Canaanitesis a God who can be trusted with where babies and children go when they die. As sinners, we cannot even begin to have any concept of the magnitude of our sin from the perspective of a holy and righteous God. Because we have the Holy Spirit, we have been called to go into the world and be a righteous light among the nations, making disciples of all people (Matt. The only problem with this out is that it is not the way the Bible reads. When one reads records of the other nations conquests, they are self-glorifying and graphic. By submitting your email address, you understand that you will receive email communications from Bible Gateway, a division of The Zondervan Corporation, 3900 Sparks Drive SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA, including commercial communications and messages from partners of Bible Gateway. Its original pre-Israelite inhabitants were called Canaanites. And just as the Israelites were to deal with their own sin in a just way, so is the Church. were already out of Egypt. Young and elderly, men and women, are working the fields. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 9; Eph. 103:8). But by the fact that He is a loving and just God, He is also long-suffering and merciful. Within moments the entire village is razed. We might not agree with His form of justice, but our very sense of justice on which we base our accusations of Him comes from Him as our Creator. El, the father of the gods, was married to Asherah, by whom he had seventy children. Josh 7:11 shows the seriousness of the situation. The Basic Bible Atlas. 0000006193 00000 n This fact makes it very clear that the extermination of the Canaanites had everything to do with the righteous justice of Yahweh and nothing else. The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking cultural group that lived in Canaan (comprising Lebanon, southern Syria, Israel and Transjordan) beginning in the second millennium B.C.E. Sin is serious and carries with it consequence. 0000009533 00000 n In these sources, "Canaan" refers sometimes to an area encompassing all of . This is what makes Him good, for no human is satisfied with a God who can look at the evil committed in the world and be all right with or apathetic to it, never exacting justice. The point of this discussion is not to provide a complete and satisfactory answer, for there is so much we do not understand about this time period, and it is genuinely an emotionally difficult concept to reconcile. Likewise, the Gibeonites (a Canaanite culture) deceived Joshua into making a treaty with them, which spared them from being exterminated (Josh. There is a concept known as generational sin, wherein a child will become like his parents not only because he was raised under their instruction and example, but also because he came genetically from those parents. As with unbelievers, this principle requires that we are living such righteous and blessed lives that those outside the fellowship will recognize what they are missing (Jn. Suddenly a plane from a neighboring country is seen over the horizon. His very nature demands that He punish and deal with sin. And yet, the Israelites encountered the descendants of the Nephilim, among the Canaanites, when they entered the promised land much later on. Rather, for the same reason that only ten nations were marked for destruction and the others (even though they were unbelievers) were left alone in the First Testament, so today, in a post-Second Testament world, not every nation or people group is marked for destruction, though they are unbelievers as well. Sometimes Scripture will use a dominant tribe's name to include several tribes of the same category. 7; 2 Kgs. We Dont Hate Sin So We Dont Understand What Happened to the Canaanites: An Addendum to Divine Genocide Arguments, in Philosophia Christi 11:1 (Spring 2009). His plan to redeem humanity included a promise to Abraham concerning the land he would inherit and the generations that would follow the One True God. And it seems that as history trudged along, the Canaanites became increasingly wicked. 7:4, 7-11; 9:4-6; 29:16-29). The women were killed because they participated in the violence, child sacrifices, bestiality, and sexual immorality just as much as the men did. "However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance. 16:3; 21:6; 23:10; 2 Chr. Just as Israel was not to judge the sins of the surrounding nations, we are not called to judge the sin of the unbelievers around us. What made them distinct was the extent of their sin, their cultural approval of their sin and rebellion, and their unwillingness to relent or repent of their evil. To be the rape victim was so humiliating that no one would ever show respect to that person. Blood-lust, murder, close family member incest, sex with animals. The fact that Jesus Christ was willing to be exterminated (Matt. Canaanite Culture Canaanite Culture We know from the Bible and from experience that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Though on the surface Yahwehs command to exterminate the Canaanites may leave us emotionally uncomfortable, we must realize that we really do want a God who hates sin and punishes evil justly. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. The extermination of the Canaanites had to do with removing all influence of the idolatry of immoral gods and practices that would corrupt the lives of the Israelites and lead to perverted and dysfunctional culture. Ugaritic Baal myth describes Anat as taking joy in slaughtering her enemies, cutting off their heads and hands and wearing them as a necklace and belt. Word of their plight comes to an elite team of special op soldiers. Baker Books. The Egyptians mourned for him for seventy days. He loves us so much that He does not want to punish us to the full extent that justice would require. Yahweh did not command Israel to exterminate the Canaanites because they were a different race. [10] Hoffner, Incest, Sodomy and Bestiality in the Ancient Near East, p. 82. 12:2; 2 Cor. That is why the Israelites were not sentenced to eternal punishment but for only 40 years. The blood was so deep that she waded in it up to her knees -- nay, up to her neck. 18:3 specifically says the Egyptians and Canaanites had same sex marriage contracts. Yahweh was extremely patient, waiting for hundreds of years for them to reach a certain point of immorality before He judged them, for Yahweh is slow to anger (Ex. The command of God to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 20:16 "do not leave alive anything that breathes" was applicable only to these 6 tribes that were practicing (1) through (12) listed up-post. A contributing writer for Salem Media since 2016, Meg is now thrilled to be a part of the editorial team. The Twelve Spies, as recorded in the Book of Numbers, were a group of Israelite chieftains, one from each of the Twelve Tribes, who were dispatched by Moses to scout out the Land of Canaan for 40 days as a future home for the Israelite people, during the time when the Israelites were in the wilderness following their Exodus from Ancient Egypt.The account is found in Numbers 13:1-33, and is . 16:4-22). We laud the soldiers in the first story has heroic but recognize the planes in the second story as evil. Anyone who has ever studied the mythology or religions of ancient people knows that their gods were not moral beings, according to anyones standard in the modern world. It seems reasonable that if all flesh was corrupt, except for Noah, then someone else on the ark must have been the source for the post-Flood appearance of the Nephilim. When Joshua led the people across the Jordan River into Canaan, he was fulfilling this promise. Yahweh made it clear that Israel was not allowed to attack any of the other nations unless the other nation attacked first (Deut. 0000000696 00000 n 2:25). ). Three of the ten were dealt with before Israel entered the land of Canaan, leaving seven after they entered the land. Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity[13] that required child sacrifice in order to prove devotion to him (Lev. 1 Answer. They describe their conquests in great detail and brag about how they subjugated and destroyed other people groups. When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations- the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you- and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated the, then you must destroy them totally. During the Exodus and wilderness period, they also serve as a threat to the religious purity of the Israelites. We see the Canaanites play a prominent role in the early pages of the Bible. Walter Elwell helpfully draws the geographical boundaries for us: The first six [of the 11 people groups from Genesis 10] evidently occupied territory at or south of Sidon, whereas the others lived farther north. What specifically was considered Canaanite territory? All will be required to bend the knees to Him. Yahweh was willing to show mercy to the Canaanites in the same way He had with Israel previously. The Scriptures point out the evil of Canaanite society for a reason. We see in Christ that even stories like the Israelite conquest of the Canaanites is redeemed. God chose a place hostile to the Lord to give to Abraham and His chosen people as an inheritance. The Lord mentioned 7 nations by name who inhabited the land of Canaan in the time of Abraham unto the time of Joshua. The Lord wanted his story to be distributed globally, John A Beck explains, The promised land was the transportation hub between three continents.. But what do we do with this story? We do well to let the Bible speak for itself and even allow our questions at times to remain unanswered. and afterward were the families of the Canaanites spread abroad." Now these were the cursed line of Ham's son Canaan and Canaan's offspring. In fact, temple prostitution was a large part of worship in the Canaanite culture. We are to live such righteous lives through the power of the Holy Spirit that those around us, like those living around Israel, will want to leave behind their old ways and worldviews and join the fellowship of Christians. We are to live so righteously and love each other in such a unique way that the world cannot help but want to be a part of the Church. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.", Joshua 17:16: "The people of Joseph said, The hill country is not enough for us. The completely negative connotations of "genocide" make it hard to look at the biblical events without a jaundiced eye. And just as He desires that sin be removed from Israel, so should we desire that sin be removed from the Church. Afterwards Anath was satisfied and washed her hands in human gore before proceeding to other occupations. Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective. The above quote regarding Anath is from Is God A Moral Monster: Making Sense Of The Old Testament God, by Paul Copan, page 159. A group of settlers are happily farming in their fields. Why prohibit intermarriage if they were to be completely wiped out? Leviticus 18:7 (3) They were having sex with their sisters. 0000001321 00000 n The names Canaan and Canaanite occur in cuneiform, Egyptian, and Phoenician writings from about the 15th century bce as well as in the Old Testament. Did God order this? How Can I Recognize and Understand the Holy Spirit Better? He was cursed because of his sin against Noah (Genesis 9:20-25). The Canaanites are identified in Genesis as descendants of Ham, son of Noah. And even though He is a merciful and longsuffering God, there is a point where, for the sake of His holiness and the good of others in His creation, He must punish evil. At the time of the flood, Yahweh told the world that they would be judged, and Noah preached to them for 120 years to bring them to repentance before Yahweh judged them (Gen. 6:3, 5-8; 1 Pet. . This site is a proud member of the Salem Web Network, a subsidiary of, Copyright 2023, Crosswalk.com. The Canaanites were defeated and eliminated. Isn't this the same God that listed Thou shalt not kill? in the Ten Commandments?" These initiates from the midst of a heathen cult. posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its 2 Joseph commanded the physicians who served him to embalm his father, so the physicians embalmed Israel. And all the wrath of Yahweh could be poured out on Christ as humanitys representative, killing Him and satisfying Yahwehs justice. It is the land where the Canaanites dwell that God promises to give to Abraham. Decade after decade, He will allow the sins of Israel to go unpunished. An oppressor is one who rules others severely. But Walton is quick to note that this narrative isnt about punishing the Canaanites: we have to stop imagining the purpose of the conquest account is to teach us that Gods ideal of goodness involves us going out and killing Canaanites (or whomever they represent today) and then either adopting that idea or rationalizing it away by embellishing the text so that killing Canaanites seems good according to our own logic. (Walton, 29). They have been abusing them for days and there is no end in sight. Since Canaanite sin was regular and systematicthe entire adult population participated in the idolatrous systemGod judged the entire nation.
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