The Story of the Bible, Part 16
Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, and a lot of people died. Justified?
Joshua 1
The Law of Moses had been delivered. Moses was dead, as was a whole generation of unbelieving, rebellious Israelites who died in a forlorn wilderness because they didn’t believe a promise God had made to them (through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) several hundred years before. What a sorry lot of people they were.
But the new leader Joshua led the people into the Promised Land. It was a process, not an event, but it happened. Again, God had made the promise to Abraham: He would give his descendants that land. It would be theirs. They were given a “constitution”—the Law of Moses. It wasn’t just for their sake, a small, puny, insignificant bunch of barbarians when the entire world’s population is considered. All of this was also for you and me. The Jews were the people through whom Jesus would descend. And He is the Savior of Jew and Gentile alike. And there are a whole lot more Gentiles in world history than there are Jews. Those who see only the Jews in all of this—even today—are too narrow-minded and do not understand....the story of the Bible.
Skeptics have long attempted to make capital out of the “cruel God” who had the Israelites wipe out large numbers of people, often including women and children. This, as always, demonstrates a total lack of understanding of God, the Bible, and human nature.
But this is worth examining. Why DID God tell the Israelites to “utterly destroy” these people (Deuteronomy 7:2). At least two reasons.
1. The Messianic line had to be kept as pure as possible. The promise was to be through Abraham and his descendants. Interbreeding with foreign seeds would dilute and eventually destroy that bloodline, and God’s plan would be thwarted. So, He told them not to intermarry with those nations who “will turn your sons away from following me” (Deuteronomy 7:4). The Jews would not only lose the pure Messianic bloodline, they would destroy the religion God gave them—the “tutor” to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The end of God’s plan of salvation for all of mankind was a stake. There was a much greater issue involved here than just a few detestable pagan savages who offered their own children as sacrifices and used homosexuality in religious ceremonies. They were disgusting people, maybe even worse than some of the trash that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party supports today.
The continual presence of these pagan peoples—Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, “seven nations greater and mightier than you” (Deuteronomy 7:1)—would result in the spreading of the dreadful cancer of sin among God’s covenant people. That could not be allowed. God had the higher purpose of the salvation of ALL mankind in view. The nations who might obliterate that promise had to go. A holy God has always demanded moral purity of His people.
2. There was a second reason. Despite the bleeding hearts of weak, sniveling liberals today, there are just some people who are so vile, so corrupt, so wicked, evil, and abominable that they do not belong on God’s earth and should be removed from it. God one time did that Himself, in the days of Noah, when that filthy conglomeration of mankind, who could think of nothing but evil (Genesis 6:5), were justly wiped off the planet. The people in the land of Canaan had reached that point in God’s mind, and He used the Israelites to punish them. He actually told Abraham, about 500 years previously, that He was going to do it. In Abraham’s day, the people in Canaan weren’t to the point yet where God’s justice needed to descend upon them—“the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). They hadn’t reached God’s limit yet. But that was one reason the Jews spent 400+ years in preparation—they built up their own numbers, but also the point in time arrived when God’s judgment was to come upon the people living in the land of Canaan. It is often marvelous to see how Jehovah works out His plan so smoothly.
God often used (and perhaps still does) one nation to punish another. In Isaiah 10, the prophet told Israel that God was going to use the Assyrians to chastise them. In Habakkuk 1, the same story about Babylon and Judah. God even used a locust plague (at least once) to punish His people, “My great army” He called the locusts in Joel 2:25. Whether God still does that today or not, we don’t know. But He makes it plain that He did in ancient times. The people in Canaan were so wicked they no longer belonged on this earth. God used the Israelites as the arm of His justice. The timing was perfect.
These two reasons, when viewing matters from the mind of God, were perfectly rational.
But the skeptic never gives us, of course. “But, but, but...God had the Jews kill women and children, and let the Jews keep some of the women as sex slaves.” Let me deal with this bit of delusion—and hypocrisy—in my next article in the series.