5:7; 29:23; Hos. God waited to redeem humankind until they had the chance to be, as 2 Live Crew once put it, as nasty as they wanna be.. all, and God plays fair with all peoples at all times, giving them equal chances for repentance and reformation. A more obvious reason for the possibility of intermarriage is the fact that the Israelites didnt fully obey Gods commands. Gods first inclination is to save Canaan rather than destroy it. They had male shrine prostitutes (1 Kings 14:22), committed acts of lewdness, adultery, and incest (Jer. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. In both Testaments we see that God hates sin and will punish it. Doesnt the new atheists complaint ring hollow, since they are often at the forefront of defending a womans right to suction, dismember, or scald to death her unborn baby at any time and for any reason? He teaches theology at Westminster Academy in Memphis, Tennessee. God and the Canaanities | Bible.org We're not around right now. The Extermination of the Canaanites - Knowing the Bible Their task was to prepare the way for the arrival of the Messiah. Then they would simply abandon worship of the true God. However recently an atheist friend told me God was cruel and unloving and used examples from the old testament to prove it. Moreover, most atheists do not customarily condemn the very practices that God condemns, for example, idolatry, adultery, and homosexuality. God's Justice in the Land of Canaan - The Gospel Coalition (2) Yahwehs command to kill the Canaanites was an act of divine genocide. Paul Copan, Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?, Philosophia Christi 10, no. 1:16; 8:25). As a result, they eventually received the same judgment the Canaanites experienced ( Deut. Why were Ananias and Sapphira not given a chance to repent? Acts 5:1-11 For the most part, they chose to rebel against God. It is reasonable to believe that other people had heard what Rahab (and Jericho) had heard, thus giving them the opportunity to repent and be spared. God didnt. Wouldnt even infants, as they grew, begin to ask, What practices did my parents do which resulted in your killing them? As sad as this is, it also points to the horror of sin. He gets no pleasure in the death of anyone. Lets look at something God told Abraham before all this started. William Lane Craig reminds us God is not subject to our judgment of His actions; He has no moral obligations except to Himself. note: please see Probes article Do Babies Go to Hell? by Probes founder Jimmy Williams.]. . 4:28 NIV). God had warned them against that ( Deut. Phase five of Yahweh war will be the final battle of history when Jesus returns and will once again be military in nature. Such a complaint usually masks an unspoken premise: God shouldnt have killed the children because that wouldnt give them the chance to reject Canaanite sin. God was patient. Going by this definition alone, the destruction of the Canaanites would seem to have been genocide. This was Gods judgment carried out on the people of Canaan using the chosen people of Israel. Just as God had demonstrated his knowledge of who would repent in the Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, before he destroyed Jerusalem He told Jeremiah that if He could find even one righteous person He would spare the entire city (Jer. . The Hebrew word means to devote something to total destruction.. 44:18). Abraham asked the Lord this exact question in Genesis 18 regarding the coming destruction of two Canaanite citiesSodom and Gomorrah: Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? OT scholar Tremper Longman summarizes this point well: 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. The Canaanites, by contrast, were destroyed at the direction of God and primarily because of their sin. Now after all of this God gives marching orders. Capital Punishment Reason 4 What Happened to the Canaanites? - Biblical Archaeology Society But there is a major difference. This was Gods judgment carried out on the people of Canaan using the chosen people of Israel. A God of love and justice, they say, could never command genocide, and therefore he must not exist. Here are a few factors to take into consideration: First, the sins of parents, just like their successes, have an impact on their children. Judges: a cycle of sin and deliverance - OverviewBible Skeptics often complain that children were killed in Sodom and Gomorrahs destruction. God did not order the extermination of these people to be cruel, but to prevent even greater evil from occurring in the . Bible scholars call thiseremwarfare. 13-14), but in nearby cities they were to save nothing alive that breathes (v. 16). 28:7. God had given the Canaanites more than four hundred years of probation, during which He sent prophets and warnings. For example, God commanded the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 20:10-15, to offer conditions of peace rather than extermination to all others. He is also a God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. 18 records briefly the moral degradation of the Canaanites. A more detailed version is also available on our Web site with the title Yahweh War and the Conquest of Canaan. 18:28). He is convinced that the hope of the world lies in men and women having a saving relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. The atheism of today wasnt an option. Based on the Biblical evidence, however, this objection dissolves away for two reasons: 1. it was an act of the judicial holiness of God manifesting itself in righteousness and judgment.{6}. He blogs at, How J. K. Rowling Played, then Lost, the Polarization Game, GAFCON IV: Lessons from a Communion in Birth Pains, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Christian Nationalism, What to Do When Your Child Is Addicted to Video Games, Radical Christian Gentleness in an Era of Addictive Outrage, The FAQs: Anglican Group Calls on Church of Englands Leader to Repent, Whats the Earliest Evidence for Christianity? God had given the Midianites, Amalekites and other Canaanites 400 years to repent of their unbelievably evil practices (sacrificing children on red-hot idols being one of them), and they hadn't (Genesis 15:13-16). Eternal Insecurity Once I Was Saved, But Now Am Lost? Bible Based.We believe in solo-scriptura. The ESV and NIV give a fuller understanding of the term by translating it devote to destruction (the NASB renders it set apart). The Canaanites were grossly sinful people who were given plenty of time by God to change their ways. Only when one views life through the lens of the Bible can one arrive at a worldview based on truth. To answer these questions, we must understand the place of the erem laws in the history of redemption. . It was merciful for God to bring an end to the. 4:58). Moses instructions to the Israelites as they were about to move into Canaan included this: 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. So the Lord said that Israel became like Sodom to me (Jer. In Genesis 15:16 the LORD made reference to the Canaanites when he said, "the sin of the Amorites (Canaanites) has not yet reached its full measure." God was waiting to fulfill his justice against this people. Killing of the Canaanites: What Does This Say About God? Revelation 2:21-23. Such arguments are clearly illogical. Generation after generation of Canaanites continued in the same evil practices. Paul wrote to the Ephesians, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against . Not only have some people rejected Christianity over this, but it has even spurred some Christians to leave the faith. This again reveals that Gods motive isnt genocide, but capital punishment. A miracle child heralded by divine announcement, he grows up to become a one-man army against Israel's enemies. 11. And how are Christians supposed to apply the erem laws today? For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). Dr. Ray Bohlin reviews a second science critique of Theistic Evolution, asking if universal common descent is real. Genesis 15:13-16 God tells Abraham that his descendants will be enslaved for 400 years. But instead of repenting when things went badly, they concluded that their misfortune was because they stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven, Inanna/Ishtar (Jer. If Jesus had died to redeem humankind prior to humankinds comprehending the depth of their sin, then people would question the need for Jesus death. 1: The Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d.), 484-485. Rick Wade provides an expanded discussion of the issues around the Israelites battles against the Canaanites. And they even sent their own children into the fires of the god Molech as living sacrifices. Dt. Although early Canaanite laws proscribed either death or banishment for most forms of incest, after the fourteenth century BC, the penalties were reduced to no more than the payment of a fine.8 In the larger ANE context, it is helpful to consider that in an Egyptian dream book dreams of having sex with your mother or your sister were considered good omens.9, Adultery. Memory,. Although these laws express Gods judgment, they also show us Gods mercy in several important ways: Now that Christ has come, the way in which we understand and apply theeremlaws has radically transformed. There are several aspects of Yahweh war. God has done everything in His power to save the sinner through the plan of redemption (John 3:16). To understand what God was doing in Canaan, one must see it within the larger context of redemptive history.
