Misconceptions About Christianity Revisited (corrected 5/30/10)

Christians and critics of Christianity alike have problems with some things in the Bible because they are ignorant of how to read the Bible properly.

A few persons responded to my letter in the Jamaica Gleaner (May 22, 2010, see  A Popular Misconception About Christianity) about killings in history by raising the issue of the God-commanded ‘slaughters in the Old Testament’ like the command to wipe out the nations of Canaan in Deuteronomy 7.1-5 and 20.15-18. Here is the stark offensive mandate of  Deuteronomy 20.16-17 “…you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, ¹⁷ but you shall utterly destroy them…” (New King James Version, hereafter NKJV)

How does this command square with God’s supposed holiness and justice?

The first line of clarification of this brutal command has been offered by William Brenton Greene who reminds/informs “These wars of extermination they were never allowed to regard as precedents. Even with the command to drive out and exterminate the Canaanites, they were given for their permanent rule: ‘If a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shall love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.’ (Leviticus. 19:33-34). Thus were they taught the extraordinary nature of their commission. They were not to expect that even God would call on them again for this strange work of judgment.” (‘The Ethics of the Old Testament’ in Classical Evangelical Essays, edited by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., 1972, 222).

In a nutshell the command to exterminate was unusual in the Old Testament.

The second line of clarification, again from Greene is that the exterminated peoples were “…not cut off without notice. On the contrary, abundant opportunity for repentance was afforded. When the day of vengeance came, “Forty years had passed since the news of the passage of the Red Sea, and of the wonders in Egypt, had proclaimed the greatness of [Yahweh] above all gods. The recent conquest of the kings of Gilead and Bashan had no less vividly shown that a mighty invincible Power fought on the side of Israel, and rightfully claimed universal homage. Rahab in Jericho [an old city of Canaan] had heard of these judgments [Josh. 2.10-14], and, doubtless, the conviction of the people at large through the land, however they may have stifled reflection, was the same as hers…” (p. 220) Kaiser supports the notion of warning before judgment by saying “Every forecast or prophecy of doom, like any prophetic word about the future…had a suppressed ‘unless’ attached to them (sic.). At what moment that nation turns from its evil way and repents then at that time the Lord would relent and cease to bring the threatened harm (Jer. 18:7-10).” (Toward Old Testament Ethics, 1991, 268).

The Jeremiah text (NKJV) says,

⁷ The instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it, ⁸ if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. ⁹ And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, ¹⁰ if it does evil in My sight so that it does not obey My voice, then I will relent concerning the good with which I said I would benefit it.

So then the command to exterminate was after prior warning.

The final line of clarification of the command to exterminate has to do with justice: the fact that the designated nations were very wicked and deserving of divine punishment. This is the view in Deut. 9.4 and 5 and Leviticus 18.21-24; Leviticus 20:3, Leviticus 20:16-18; Leviticus 18:.25, Leviticus 18:27-30.  Extermination was the divine judgment on a uniquely wicked and abominable group of nations that would have corrupted Israel and other nations had they been allowed to exist further.

This act of divine judgment is therefore as justified or as indictable as God’s punishment of a sinful world by a flood in Noah’s day or the destruction of the five cities of the plain (including Sodom and Gomorrah) or Pharaoh’s army or the threat of hell to unrepentant individuals ultimately.

So then, far from the command to exterminate certain nations in the Old Testament being ethically indefensible, it was an unusual outworking of divine justice on evil after prior warning to repent.

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