Command to commit genocide?

Originally posted on May March 05, 2008 – by Andre Piet

QUESTION:
How is God’s command to exterminate the peoples of Canaan to be reconciled with a God of love.

ANSWER:

1.Israel received the command to DRIVE OUT the inhabitants of the land.

Ex. 23:27 – I will cause all your enemies to flee before you
Ex. 34:24 – I will drive out nations before you
Deut. 4:38 – to drive out nations greater and mightier than you before you
Deut. 6:19 – by driving out all your enemies before you
etc.

Only those who, despite the warnings, nevertheless remained in the land had to be killed. See for this order Deut. 7 verse 1 (driving out) and verse 2 (exterminating). The inhabitants of Canaan had already been alerted years earlier and knew that God would cause the land to be given to the people of Israel. Listen to what Rahab says to the spies:

9 (…) I know that the LORD has given you the land and that dread of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land tremble before you. 10 For we have heard that the LORD dried up the waters of the Sea of Reeds before you when you went out from Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites beyond the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. 11 When we heard this, our heart melted and no courage remained in anyone any longer because of you, for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
Joshua 2

2.God waited four hundred years before driving out the inhabitants of Canaan.

God said the following to Abram:

13 (…) Know for certain that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and that they will serve them, and that they will afflict them, four hundred years. 14 But also the nation whom they will serve I will judge, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 But you will go to your fathers in peace; you will be buried in a good old age. 16 But the fourth generation shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
Genesis 15

The inhabitants of the land committed extreme abominations (bestiality, child sacrifices, etc. – Deut. 18:12), but God intervened only in the fourth generation. In accordance with what we read in “the ten words”:

…visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and to the fourth generation of those who hate Me…
Exodus 20:5

The people of Israel had to wait hundreds of years for the fulfillment of the promise, purely because the measure of the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. The driving out of the nations in the days of Joshua, centuries later, was therefore a demonstration of God’s patience.

3.The people of Israel are also driven out if they persist in disobedience to God.

In Leviticus 18 we read the following:

24 Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations have defiled themselves which I am driving out before you. 25 For the land has become defiled, therefore I have punished it for its iniquity, so the land has vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But as for you, you shall keep My statutes and My ordinances and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native nor the stranger who sojourns among you— 27 for all these abominations the men of the land did, who were before you, so that the land became defiled— 28 lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.

God does not discriminate. Because of heaven-crying iniquity, pagan nations were ultimately expelled from the land. God, however, does the same with His chosen people: He has them deported and sent into exile. This has happened more than once.
So that one would know that He is the LORD.

Delen: