Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Part 2

2. Why Isn't It Really Genocide?

The so-called “Canannite Genocide” mostly takes place in the book of Joshua. I'd like to look at three short stories from the book of Joshua to show that not everything is as we might expect.

a) The Story of Rahab

Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute, who starts out living in Jericho. Right at the start of the conquest, before anyone dies, Joshua sends some spies out to investigate the land. They comes to Jericho, and meet Rahab, but are spotted. In one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the Bible, Rahab then lies to her own people to protect the Israelite spies, then says this:

“I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” (Joshua 2:9-13, ESV)

The spies escape; Jericho is destroyed; Rahab and her family are saved.

There are several remarkable things about this as we consider the Canaanite genocide.

• Rahab was a Canaanite, but she decided to side with the Israelites.
• She is spared. No-one even questions whether it was wrong to make an agreement with her or whether they should go back on it (both arguments are used later with the Gibeonites).
• God approves of her being spared. As we will see in the second story, God punishes all of Israel because Achan kept some of the plunder from Jericho, but he does not mention Rahab and her family being spared as a problem at all.
• Rahab is not subsequently treated as a Canaanite. According to Matthew 1:5, she is the mother of Boaz and hence an ancestor of both David and Jesus. None of the laws against intermarriage apply to her (e.g. Deut 7:3); none of the laws against her descendants being allowed into the temple apply to her. The same is true of her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth. Why not? I suggest it is because her profession of faith in the God of the Israelites means that she is no longer treated as a foreigner but as one of God's people.

What can we therefore learn about the “Canaanite Genocide”? Simply this – it's about punishment and idolatry. If people repent and decide to worship the true God, they can be spared. It might mean treason against their own people – it does for Rahab - but it means loyalty to the higher and more legitimate authority of God.

b) The Story of Achan

Achan stands in stark contrast to Rahab. She was the Canaanite who became part of God's people; he was the Israelite who was excluded from God's people and suffered the same fate as the Canaanites. We read about him in Joshua 7.

When Jericho was destroyed, the Israelites were not allowed to take any of the plunder for themselves – it was all to be destroyed or put into God's treasury. But Achan stole some and hid it under his tent. As a result, God was angry with Israel and they lost their next battle. Achan's actions come to light, and he is treated the same way as Jericho was (Josh 7:15 c.f. Josh 6:24).

What do we learn from this?

• The division between those whom God destroys and those whom God spares is not ethnic. It is to do with whether or not they serve him. So rebellious Israelites are put outside, and obedient Canaanites are included. Echoes of Romans 11...

c) The Story of the Gibeonites

After the next battle, at Ai, Joshua has some more visitors. These visitors have a confession of faith that sounds like Rahab's, and they claim not to be Canaanites.

From a very distant country your servants have come, because of the name of the LORD your God. For we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon the king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth. (Joshua 9:9-10, ESV)

Joshua doesn't check it out with God, but makes peace with them. Of course, it turns out that they are actually from a nearby city. Squabbling ensues, but the Gibeonites join the list of Canaanites who are safe.

On the rare occasions when this passage is preached, it is usually applied by pointing out Joshua's foolishness in not asking God before signing the treaty. And that is there, but what is more striking to me is the Gibeonites' cunning in wanting to be part of God's people. It's a great illustration of Matthew 11:12. This is thrown into even clearer focus a couple of chapters later when the prophetic author of Joshua comments on the other Canaanites.

There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the LORD's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses. (Joshua 11:19-20, ESV)

In the Bible, when God hardens people's hearts, it always describes the same process as them hardening their own hearts against him. The Canaanites harden their own hearts, but God is sovereign over it and uses their hard-hearted rejection of him to bring them to destruction.

But the crucial implication of that passage is that God approved of the Gibeonites trying to avoid destruction. It was the right thing for them to do, and stemmed from hearts that hadn't been hardened. Despite their lies, it seems that they really believed what they said about God. When Joshua confronts them with their lies, they reply:

“Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you--so we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing. And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.”

So he did this to them and delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, to this day, in the place that he should choose.

(Joshua 9:24-27, ESV)

What can we learn from the Gibeonites?

• Where the Canaanites were not hard-hearted towards God, it was quite possible for them to remain in the land and escape destruction. All that they needed to do was strive for it and be willing to serve God rather than their idols.

Three short stories set during the conquest of Canaan, and each of them radically changes our perspective on what happened.

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Part 1

Continuing a series which I started yesterday...

1. How Can God's Instructions About the Canaanites Possibly Be Justified?

God commanded Israel:

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. (Deut 20:16-17, ESV)

The Bible itself gives several justifications for this command:

• The picture the Bible paints of God is of an all-powerful sovereign. He owns the whole world, including the land of Canaan, and chose to give the land to Israel. He is therefore perfectly within his rights to expel squatters. Strikingly, that's almost exactly the language used in Joshua 3:10 – God is “driving out” the Canaanites from the land. Only the ones who stay and fight get killed.
• God originally promised the land to Abram, 400 years earlier. But he does not give the land to Abram immediately. Instead he says “[your descendants] shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Gen 15:16). In other words, there is a strong element of punishment in what happened to the Canaanites. God is removing them from the land in punishment for their sin.
• One aspect of the Canaanites' sin which was particularly heinous was their idolatry, which God wanted eradicated. “The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the LORD your God.” (Deut 7:25) There are strong indications elsewhere in the Bible that Canaanite idolatry included child sacrifice.
• Linked to this is the idea that the Israelites needed to be protected from idolatry. After the verses quoted above, Deuteronomy 20 continues “... that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.” God wanted his people to be free from any of the evil influences of Canaanite religion, therefore he required that it be completely eradicated, which meant eradicating all of its adherents. Of course, what eventually happens is that the Israelites don't wipe the Canaanites out, they do end up copying the Canaanite religion, and so they do end up rejecting God. So God's concern at this stage turns out to be completely justified.
• This is all a part of the big picture of God's mission. The overarching storyline in this part of the Bible is that God has promised that he will bless all nations, and do so through establishing Israel as a nation which serves and honours him, and then shines as a light to the world. That requires them to be a nation, in a land, and living faithfully to him. All of which requires the removal of the Canaanites.

It's easy to kick against the idea that sin deserves death. We live in a culture which so often refuses to face up to reality in this area.

Most countries seem to agree that the most serious crime is treason. It was certainly one of the last crimes to carry the death penalty in the UK (abolished 1998). Treason is essentially an act of war against one's own country, particularly plotting to kill the rightful ruler. And it seems fairly clear that the better the ruler is, the worse the treason is. So Claus von Stauffenberg plotted to kill Hitler but is widely regarded as a hero, whereas William Joyce (aka Lord Haw-Haw) collaborated with the Germans during WW2 and is viewed as a villain, though both were convicted of treason. The better the ruler, the worse the crime.

What we seem to miss is that we are all guilty of treason against the best, the wisest and the most rightly sovereign ruler of all – God. We take all the good things that he has given us and try to declare our unilateral independence from him. And even while he continues to sustain us and bless us, we use our abilities to sing the praise of other gods, who are no gods at all. The Canaanites sacrificed their children, whom God had given them, to his rivals who were nothing more than statues.

They were all traitors, and all therefore rightly deserved death. Longman writes:

In conclusion, we must point out that the Bible does not understand the destruction of the men, women and children of these cities as a slaughter of innocents. Not even the children are considered innocent. They are all part of an inherently wicked culture that, if allowed to live, would morally and theologically pollute the people of Israel. (p.201)

But so are we, and that should be the real surprise of the Canaanite genocide. It was only the Canaanites who got destroyed, and not us too. We all deserve it – but they were the only ones to get what they deserved.

The important question is not so much why certain nations were destroyed but rather why all nations, including Israel, were not. By YHWH's standards of holiness, not even the most righteous of humanity could remain alive. (Gard, p.103)

Longman cites Meredith Kline's helpful idea of intrusion ethics – that what we see at the Canaanite genocide is God's final judgement on the Canaanites, but brought forwards from the end of time to the time of Joshua. What happened to the Canaanites is what should and will happen to all of us by rights. So it's just as well there's a way out...

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Introduction

I recently finished reading Show Them No Mercy – Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide in the excellent Counterpoints series (Zondervan, 2003). For anyone not familiar with the series, they find a controversial topic – in this case the Canaanite genocide partially carried out in the book of Joshua – and ask 4±1 scholars to write an essay on it. The scholars are selected because of the fact they hold differing views on the topic, and they get a chance to write responses to each others' essays as well. The result is a book that does a good job of presenting the different points of view on a difficult topic, which can be very useful as a starting point either for understanding the debate or for formulating one's own views.

Show Them No Mercy is a slightly unusual volume in the series because three of the four scholars end up in substantial agreement with each other, with only C.S. Cowles dissenting. Cowles kicks off the book with an essay where he argues that “love as it is revealed by God in Christ [should be] our criterion for interpreting Scripture”1. The difficult question is then this “Given that God has revealed himself supremely in the person of Jesus Christ, what does it mean for Scripture to record him commanding genocide in the case of the Canaanites?” Having raised the issue well, Cowles doesn't answer it anywhere near as convincingly. He tries a fusion of Origenistic allegorical interpretation and arguing that the Biblical authors' understanding of the nature of God develops with time, essentially saying “God didn't command it; God wouldn't command it; but Moses, Joshua and so on thought that he did because they didn't know God as well as we do now.”

Cowles' problem is that his understanding of Scripture doesn't hold together. He keeps appealing to Jesus, but ignores Jesus' understanding of the Old Testament passages as literal, and especially his claim that they are fundamentally about him (e.g. Luke 24:27). He ends up ignoring large swathes of the Bible (including Revelation and most of the OT) because they don't fit with his picture of what God is like. The three other authors rightly take him to task for this, and go on to make some very good and important points about how God could permit and even command the Canaanite genocide. And Cowles keeps coming back, saying “What about Jesus? Isn't Christianity meant to be centred on the cross?” He never really gets to grips with his own understanding of Scripture but I don't think the others ever really get to grips with his main point either. How can the God of Joshua be the God of Jesus?

Over the next few days, I'm going to try to post some of my thoughts about God and the Canaanite genocide. They lean massively on the authors of Show Them No Mercy, especially Tremper Longman III, but I'm adding some bits of my own thought too. I'm aiming to answer the following questions:

1. How can God's instructions about the Canaanites possibly be justified?
2. Why isn't it really genocide?
3. How do we know we aren't going to be called to something like that today?
4. How can the God of Joshua be the God of Jesus?

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

William Law - Holiness and Thankfulness

Here's a brilliant quote I came across today from William Law:

Would you know him who is the greatest saint in the world? It is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who receives everything as an instance of God's goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it.

If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. Whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, it turns into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles, you would not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit; it turns all that it touches into happiness.

Quoted by Robert Atwell in Celebrating the Saints, page ii.

Book Search

I buy quite a few Christian books. One chore I thought needed automating was searching the half-a-dozen British Christian book websites to see which have the book and which is cheapest. I couldn't find an easy work around, so I scripted one. My JS skills aren't what they should be, but this seems to work.

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function dosearch() {
var sites=new Array();
sites[1]="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=";
sites[2]="http://www.eden.co.uk/shop/search.php?category_id=&keyword=";
sites[3]="http://www.wesleyowen.com/search/product/productPowerSearch.jhtml?keywords=";
sites[4]="http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/search?searchTerm=";
sites[5]="http://www.10ofthose.com/search/?query=";
var n=1;
for (n=1;n<=5;n++)
{
var fulladd = sites[n]+ escape(document.searchform.searchterms.value);
window.open(fulladd);
}
}
</script>
<style type="text/css">
p {
font: 12pt Arial;
margin-left: 2cm;
margin-top: 1cm;
}
form {
margin-left: 3cm;
width: 10cm;
padding: 1cm;
}
</style>
<title>John's Christian Book Search</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Please enter the name of the book you want to find in the box below, and then press "Search".</p>
<form name="searchform" onSubmit="return dosearch();">
<input type="text" name="searchterms">
<input type="submit" name="SearchSubmit" value="Search">
</form>
</body>
</html>

To use: copy and paste that into a text editor. Save it as "books.htm", and it should work. Any title you type into the box should result in you getting five windows/tabs, one for each of the online bookshops I use most often. Feel free to modify the code, redistribute and so on - it can be easily modified to work for any other searching. Just don't charge for it! If you want a copy of the html file, feel free to e-mail me and I'll send you one.

Two Awesome Adverts

Here's one about being welcoming (or otherwise): (hat tip)

And here's probably the best advert of the year. Acts 20:35.

The Word on the Wind - Alison Morgan

This is the best book I've read to give to members of “sleepy churches that are being woken up”. It starts off at a very general middle-of-the-road Anglicanism, even to the extent of having an introduction by Rowan Williams, and it ends up fairly close to charismatic evangelicalism.

Alison Morgan is a good and clear writer, who has obviously got lots of experience of helping people know God better and seeing him working, both in England and Africa. The only bits that got on my nerves were the bits about science and religion, where Morgan sometimes gets out of her depth. For example, in chapter 2, Morgan says that the scientific revolution was largely due to a recovery of the Greek way of thinking as compared to the Hebrew. That may well be the way things often function today, but it's just plain wrong when thinking about the history of science (for a better view, see e.g. Peter Harrison, The Fall and the Foundations of Natural Science).

But that's being picky. It's not Morgan's main point and in general this is a great book – the kind of book that made me go out and look for other stuff she's written – the kind of book I'd like to work through with folks in a church that needed waking up. She even has a poem with the reflection questions at the end of each chapter, which really isn't my style but I recognise will work well for others.

Heaven - Randy Alcorn

I would never normally have picked this book up, and that would have been my loss. It's by a chap called Randy, and has a smiling cheesy photo of him on the back. The top paragraph of the blurb is “We all have questions about what Heaven will be like, and after twenty-five years of extensive research, Dr. Randy Alcorn provides the answers.” How cheesy and yet subtly threatening! What sort of research has he done – tracking down nice people and killing then reviving them?

But actually, despite appearances, and despite one or two minor quibbles (of which more later) this is just about the best book I have ever read on the topic. The “extensive research” turns out to be detailed study of all the relevant Bible passages and reading and engaging with just about every book ever published on the topic of heaven.

What I particularly liked about it was the valuable stress on the physicality of heaven and the importance of the Old Earth at its best as at least a vague picture of the New Earth. Alcorn's picture of the afterlife is God-centred, but it has a lot of enjoying God by enjoying his (new) creation, which is something I rarely see in books which try to give a Biblical perspective.

Another thing I liked was the sheer depth of his background reading.

I shall rise from the dead... I shall see the Son of God, the Sun of Glory, and shine myself as that sun shines. I shall be united to the Ancient of Days, to God Himself, who had no morning, never began... No man ever saw God and lived. And yet, I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen him, I shall never die.
John Donne

I've got a few small quibbles though. Alcorn talks about the Millennium far too much for something that only gets one Bible verse on it (and that contested and in a highly symbolic passage). Maybe that's because he knows loads of people who think it is really important. I don't, but then I don't do loads of stuff with Christians in America. I don't dramatically disagree with him, I just don't see the point of him mentioning it so much, but maybe that's because he's in a different context from me.

About 40% of the book (>200/550) is a section entitled “Question and Answers About Heaven”, which is sometimes weak and gets a bit repetitive. For example:

In heaven, will we be able to do time travel and go back and watch exciting events from the past?
Yeah, that would be pretty cool. I don't see any good reason why not. Hey – if you did that we could go back and watch the Sermon on the Mount or the parting of the Red Sea. That would be great!
And will we able to live in fairytale castles with knights and dragons like in medieval times?
Ooh wow – some people would really like that. I don't know – let's say “yes”, but I'm not going to say where all the peasants would come from.

(not a real quote, but you get the idea.)

Alcorn also sometimes errs a little on the side of literalism for my taste, but at least he admits it. For example, he suggests that the streets in the New Jerusalem will literally be made of gold (p.478). But those are only minor quibbles and actually it is a really good book. The Q&A section does work if it's being used as a reference book, and some of the questions (e.g. on animals in heaven) are handled really well.

He reports one conversation between a young bibliophile and an older wiser Christian. The young man asks “Will we have books in heaven?”, and the older Christian replies “Yes, but only the ones you've lent out or given away.” This is a really good book, and I suspect I will indeed be lending it out! One final quote:

What if the resurrection of the dead is an actual, bodily resurrection? What if the New Earth will be real? What if Heaven will be a tangible, earthly place inhabited by people with bodies, intellect, creativity, and culture-building relational skills? What if a physical Heaven is God's plan and has been all along? What terminology would God have to use to convince us of this? How would it be different to what he has actually used in Scripture? (p.479)

Wi-Fi and Individualism

From where I am sitting at the moment, my computer can pick up 13 home wireless internet connections. There are so many that they block each other's signals, and each home will be paying roughly £15 per month for theirs, which they don't use all the time.

The solution should be obvious - neighbourhood wi-fi. A group of 6 or so nearby houses pays for a really good uncapped internet connection, with 2 or 3 transmitters. They get less signal interference, it costs the householders less, and the first company to offer a deal like that makes pots of cash. But it isn't happening because we're too individualistic, don't know our neighbours and so on. Oh, and this way the ISPs make more money in total.

Dealing with Discrimination

Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
Acts 6:1, ESV

How does the early church deal with discrimination? And what can that teach us today?

1. Discrimination is Inevitable

At this stage in Acts, the early church hasn't done much wrong. They are sharing everything they have with each other; they are growing rapidly; they are taking care of the poor. And yet the perception of discrimination arises. Maybe it's because the Hellenists (Greek-speaking Jews, probably from outside Israel) didn't speak the language as well as Hebrews (Hebrew-speaking Jews from inside Israel). Maybe it's because the Hebrews knew people better or were pushier because they were in their home town and the Hellenists were visitors. But whatever the reason, the Hellenists felt that they were being discriminated against. No human system is ever good enough to completely remove the perception of discrimination against someone.

2. The Perception of Discrimination is Itself a Problem

According to various bodies, if someone thinks they are being discriminated against, then they are. I used to think that was stupid, but as time has gone on, I've seen the wisdom of it. It is importance not only that justice is done but that justice is seen to be done.

3. Avoiding Discrimination Really Matters

The apostles convene a full meeting of the whole church to discuss the issue (Acts 6:2).

4. Discrimination Shouldn't Stop Preaching

The apostles recognise that the problem of discrimination has the potential to stop the central work of preaching and prayer, so they choose 7 other people to deal with it. That's not to say that discrimination doesn't matter – of course it does. It can even be a central issue – God includes all sorts of people in his kingdom, and the Jerusalem Council was convened to deal with the question of Jews and Gentiles in the Church. But other things matter too, and we should take care that dealing with discrimination doesn't stop us from doing those things.

5. The Victims of Discrimination Should Be Put In Charge of Righting It

The Seven are an interesting group. The dispute, remember, was between Greek-speaking Jews and Hebrew-speaking Jews. And the group appointed to sort it out were: Stephen (Greek name), Philip (could be Hebrew or Greek), and Prochorus (Greek), and Nicanor (Greek), and Timon (Greek), and Parmenas (Greek), and Nicolaus (Greek – and he wasn't even ethnically Jewish). 6 of them were from the group that felt that they were being wronged. And that's important, because putting them in charge removes the perception of discrimination as well. The Greek-speaking Jews can't complain that they're being discriminated against because they are now the ones in charge of food allocation.

6. The Non-Victims Should Be Protected

Of course, in trying to right any discrimination, there's the possibility of overreaction. And so it's important that the apostles protect against this as well. The Seven are described as “seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”. They weren't going to mistreat the Hebrew widows to try to get revenge or anything like that.

Application

So which groups in the church feel discriminated against? Women in ministry can feel discriminated against. And those who oppose women in ministry certainly do feel discriminated against.

The Biblical solution then is to put those who feel discriminated against in charge of the protection against discrimination. Legislation for women bishops should therefore be drafted and agreed on by two groups – godly, committed women in ministry and godly, committed people who oppose them.