Original Post in Chinese: https://henryau.org/2016/02/19/canaanite1/
Question: How should we understand God’s command to the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites? Isn’t this too cruel?
Answer: (Updated October 1, 2026)
Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (ESV):
16 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,
17 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,
It is imperative to distinguish the biblical mandate from modern occurrences of “ethnic cleansing.” The war against the Canaanites by the Israelites was not driven by self-interest but was a “judgment” directed by God against the wickedness of the Canaanites (Genesis 15:16). The Israelites were not the dominant force capable of oppressing the weaker Canaanites through mere military might, as seen in many modern “holy wars” or invasions. Instead, scriptures repeatedly state that the Canaanites were stronger than the Israelites (Deuteronomy 4:38, 7:1, 9:1, 9:14, 11:23; Joshua 23:9): they were descendants of slaves who had labored under Egyptian bondage for four hundred years and wandered in the wilderness for forty years, wearing the same clothes throughout and surviving solely on provisions from God. They lacked sophisticated weaponry and training in warfare (Judges 3:2). Without God’s promise and assistance, they could not have defeated the Canaanites, who possessed fortified cities and advanced military equipment.
Furthermore, the Israelites were initially reluctant to enter Canaan due to fear, not out of a desire to wage a “holy war” or invade in the name of God. Their first military encounter involved God causing the walls of Jericho to fall without any physical attack from the Israelites (Joshua 6). Thus, their conquest was not driven by their own strength or desire for land but was a one-time divine ordinance for the Israelites to execute judgment on the seven Canaanite nations 1. In conclusion, the divine command was a specific, historical judgment, not a model for contemporary actions or policies.
1. The Destruction of the Canaanites Was Religious, Not Racial, and the Term “Utterly Destroy” Is Hyperbolic
Following the phrase “utterly destroy” in Deuteronomy 20:18, the underlying reason is explained:
Deuteronomy 20:16-18 (ESV):
16 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,
17 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,
18 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.
From the scripture, it is clear that the command to exterminate the Canaanites primarily aimed at eradicating their corrupt religious practices rather than their race:
Deuteronomy 7:1-4 (ESV):
1 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you—
2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.
3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,
4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
Why does Deuteronomy 7:2 mention the complete destruction of the Canaanites, but the very next verse, 7:3, discuss not intermarrying with them? If the Canaanites were ultimately exterminated, the command not to intermarry would seem entirely pointless. Therefore, it implies that some Canaanites were spared, thus potentially becoming in-laws to the Israelites.
Deuteronomy 7:5-6 (ESV):
5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
6 For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
Following the prohibition against intermarriage, the focus shifts to destroying Canaanite places of worship and idols. This indicates that (1) “complete destruction” is hyperbolic language, and (2) the primary goal was to eliminate the religious influence of foreign nations on the Israelites.
Joshua 8:32-35 (ESV):
32 And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.
33 And all Israel, sojourner as well as native born, with their elders and officers and their judges, stood on opposite sides of the ark before the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, half of them in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, just as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded at the first, to bless the people of Israel.
34 And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessing and the curse, according to all that is written in the Book of the Law.
35 There was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all the assembly of Israel, and the women, and the little ones, and the sojourners who lived among them.
By the time of Joshua, after Moses’s death, when the new generation of Israelites made a covenant with the Lord, there were still sojourners among them participating in the covenant ceremony, indicating that God’s judgment primarily aimed at eliminating the sinful religious practices of Canaan, not targeting the race (this point is further exemplified by additional examples discussed in the third point).
2. The Canaanites Were Justly Punished
God’s foreknowledge and the justness of the punishment meted out to the Canaanites can be traced back to Genesis 15, where God speaks to Abram:
Genesis 15:13-16 (ESV):
13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age.
16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.
The lengthy span of time mentioned in Exodus 12:40 highlights God’s patience:
Exodus 12:40 (ESV):
40 The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.
Genesis 15 first shows that God did not judge the inhabitants of Canaan immediately. God had already told Abram that his descendants would later return to the land, but specifically added that “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). At minimum, this means that the judgment of the Canaanites did not happen simply because God wanted to give their land to Israel; judgment was delayed until their wickedness had reached the point at which God would judge them. This long delay may reasonably be understood as divine patience, but the text itself does not explicitly say that the four centuries constituted a formal period of opportunity for repentance, so the argument should not be made stronger than the text.
Scripture itself describes some Canaanite religious practices as gravely wicked, including burning children as offerings to their gods (Deuteronomy 12:29-31; 18:9-12). Thus, at least within Deuteronomy’s own narrative and theological framework, the judgment of the Canaanites was connected to practices it calls “abominable,” not merely to Israel’s need for land. Archaeological evidence is sometimes cited as proof that child sacrifice was widespread among the ancient Canaanites, but that claim needs to be stated more cautiously. The clearest archaeological evidence comes mainly from the later Phoenician-Punic world, and its interpretation remains debated. For this point, therefore, this article relies primarily on the biblical text itself rather than claiming that archaeology has directly verified Deuteronomy’s description.
Deuteronomy 9:4 (ESV):
4 “Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.”
Here, it is clear that the conquest of Canaan was not due to the righteousness of the Israelites but rather the wickedness of the Canaanites. God’s actions were just and were based on the moral failings of the Canaanites, not racial or arbitrary preferences.
3. The Canaanites Also Had Opportunities for Repentance or Escape
Examples such as Rahab and the Gibeonites illustrate that God also allowed those who feared Him the opportunity to repent and survive. The Canaanites witnessed the Israelites achieving great victories under God’s guidance for many years, yet they did not come to fear God and surrender. Moreover, God did not allow the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites all at once; they actually had opportunities to either submit or flee (Caleb was 40 years old when he spied out the land (Joshua 14:7), and it was 38 years later when they entered Canaan (Deuteronomy 2:14), making Caleb 78 at the time of entry. Caleb received his inheritance at the age of 85 (Joshua 14:10), thus there were at least 7 years in between).
Joshua 11:18-19 (ESV):
“Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. 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.”
Deuteronomy 7:22 (ESV):
“The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.”
As the Israelites continued to drive out the remaining Canaanites, the Book of Judges records another individual who chose to surrender to the Israelites out of fear of God, thereby saving himself and his entire family:
Judges 1:22-26 (ESV):
22 The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel, and the LORD was with them.
23 And the house of Joseph scouted out Bethel. (Now the name of the city was formerly Luz.)
24 The spies saw a man coming out of the city, and they said to him, “Please show us the way into the city, and we will deal kindly with you.”
25 And he showed them the way into the city. And they struck the city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man and all his family go.
26 And the man went to the land of the Hittites and built a city and called its name Luz. That is its name to this day.
From the prostitute Rahab in the city of Jericho, it was known (Joshua 2:9-11) that the Canaanites were aware of how the LORD judged the Egyptians and saved the Israelites, and they also knew about the fate of the Amorite kings Sihon and Og who had attacked the Israelites. There were opportunities for the Canaanites to either surrender or flee.
Joshua 10:1-2 (ESV):
1 As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them,
2 he feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors.
Thus, even in the time of Joshua, there were Canaanites who chose to surrender and repent, and they were spared. This continued even later, as seen when the Gibeonites were protected under a covenant, despite the deceptive means by which they had secured it (Joshua 9). Even though the covenant was obtained through deceit (since God had commanded not to make any with the people of the land), God expected Israel to honor it, providing assistance to the Gibeonites when they were attacked by their own kin rather than letting them be destroyed. Later, the Israelites even faced God’s punishment due to King Saul’s attempt to exterminate the surrendered Gibeonites (2 Samuel 21:1-14). Thus, even up to the time of Joshua, there were Canaanites who were spared through surrender and repentance.
4. God is Holy and Does Not Spare Sin
Sin is infectious and influential, and it can continue through families, cultures, and communal life. God, being just, does not spare sin. Deuteronomy especially emphasizes that if Canaanite religion continued among Israel, it could draw the Israelites away from the LORD through teaching, shared life, and intermarriage. The focus of these commands, therefore, was not Canaanite ancestry itself, but the ending of a religious and cultural influence that would turn Israel toward other gods.
Deuteronomy 7:3-4 (ESV):
3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,
4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.
Deuteronomy 20:18 (ESV):
“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’s wrath against sin stems from His love for mankind; love that encompasses justice, which also involves judgment. A God who does not judge cannot truly be said to love nor to uphold justice.
5. God’s Love for Israel Did Not Spare Their Sins
God saved the first generation of Israelites from Egypt, but also let them perish in the wilderness over 40 years due to their sins. He values the covenant made with His people deeply. Although God continually showed grace even when the Israelites broke the covenant (as seen during the era of the Judges or the Prophets), He is not without standards and boundaries. When the Israelites persistently disregarded God’s commands and the prophets’ calls for repentance over hundreds of years proved ineffective, God similarly punished the Israelites through the hands of Babylon.
Lamentations 2:20-22 (ESV):
“Look, O LORD, and see! With whom have you dealt thus? Should women eat the fruit of their womb, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity. You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side, and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.”
These passages reflect that God’s love integrated with His justice, does not excuse sin, even among His chosen people, thereby upholding His holiness and the sanctity of His commandments.
6. God Does Not Delight in the Death of the Wicked
God is not cruel or bloodthirsty. He has made it clear that although He hates sin, He does not delight in the death of the wicked:
Genesis 6:5-6 (ESV):
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”
Jonah 4:10-11 (ESV):
“And the Lord said, ‘You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?'”
Ezekiel 18:23 (ESV):
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?”
7. The Cross of Jesus is the Ultimate Proof of God’s Love for Humanity
Regardless of any perception that God is cruel or unfair because of the innocence of a child and the seeming injustice, the cross of Jesus clearly affirms God’s love for the world. Moreover, it is not unfair for the Son of God to bear our sins. God’s justice and mercy are both fully demonstrated on the cross, reassuring us that God is not a deity who delights in cruelty or killing. The Scriptures condemn the act of murder, establish cities of refuge, and indicate that human life is precious to God.
Genesis 9:6 (ESV):
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”
Numbers 35:6 (ESV):
“The cities that you give to the Levites shall be the six cities of refuge, where you shall permit the manslayer to flee, and in addition to them you shall give forty-two cities.”
Deuteronomy 22:8 (ESV):
“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it.”
Through these actions and commandments, it is evident that God values human life and desires not just the cessation of sin but the redemption and life of those who have strayed.
8. What About the Children?
This is one of the most troubling questions raised by the command to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites. If the adults were judged for long-standing wickedness, what about the children? Did God really command Israel to kill every Canaanite child, leaving none alive?
Before answering, we first need to ask whether totalizing warfare language such as “leave alive nothing that breathes” and “devote them to complete destruction” should be read in the most literal, modern demographic sense.
Deuteronomy itself creates a noteworthy tension. Deuteronomy 7:2 commands Israel to devote these nations to complete destruction, but the very next verse says, “You shall not intermarry with them” (7:3), and then explains that they could turn Israel’s children away from the LORD to serve other gods (7:4). Deuteronomy 20:18 likewise says that the purpose of the command was “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices.”
This naturally raises a question: if “complete destruction” meant that every Canaanite man, woman, and child was literally killed, why would Israel immediately need a prohibition against intermarriage with them? And who would remain to “teach” Israel their religious practices?
The narratives themselves also contain many exceptions. Rahab and her family survived. The Gibeonites were not destroyed, and Israel was later obligated to protect them because of the covenant it had made with them. Joshua and Judges also continue to describe substantial Canaanite populations remaining in the land. We therefore have good reason to ask whether phrases such as “all,” “none left,” and “complete destruction” function as conventional ancient warfare language of total victory rather than as a modern statistical report of casualties.
This does not mean that the conquest was merely symbolic or that no one was killed. It was real war and real judgment. The question is narrower: does the text actually require us to understand that every person of Canaanite ancestry, regardless of age or sex, had to be individually killed?
If Deuteronomy’s central concern was that Canaanite religion and culture would continue among Israel and, through shared life, teaching, intermarriage, and the formation of the next generation, lead Israel away from the LORD, then Canaanite ancestry itself was not the problem. Young children themselves would not teach Israel to worship other gods. If some Canaanite children survived and were absorbed into Israel’s community and came to worship the LORD, their ancestry would not by itself constitute the danger Deuteronomy warns against. Rahab’s story especially reminds us that Canaanite identity was not an irreversible death sentence.
For this reason, I now incline against beginning with the assumption that God commanded Israel systematically to kill every Canaanite child and then trying to explain why God had the right to do so. The prohibition of intermarriage, the rationale “that they may not teach you,” and the multiple exceptions within the narrative itself all give us reason to reconsider how the totalizing language of warfare should be understood.
Of course, this does not prove that no children died in the wars. These were real wars, and non-combatants may also have suffered. Scripture does not give us enough information to reconstruct the actual casualty pattern of every battle. What we can say with greater confidence is that “children died in the war” and “God commanded Israel systematically to kill every Canaanite child” are two different claims, and the text does not require us to treat them as identical.
On this reading, there is no need to say that children were killed because they bore their parents’ guilt, nor is there a need to appeal to their future resurrection as a justification for killing them. Scripture certainly shows that one generation’s sins can bring terrible consequences upon the next, but suffering the consequences of a parent’s sin is not the same as bearing the parent’s guilt.
I therefore incline to understand these “complete destruction” commands as aiming to bring an end to a Canaanite religious-political order that stood against God and would turn Israel away from the LORD, rather than treating Canaanite ancestry itself as a reason a person had to die. Scripture does not tell us how many children actually died in these real wars. We should neither invent a reason the text itself does not give in order to defend God, nor read conventional language of total victory as though it were automatically a modern report of indiscriminate slaughter.
Summary
This is clearly a challenging question, and the author openly admits to still pondering it. Some believers suggest that the difficult records are merely “historical fabrications” by the ancient Israelites to justify the extermination of their race. However, if the history of war in the land of Canaan is all a misunderstanding of “God’s command” by the ancient Israelites, or even a projection of their “war crimes” onto God, why would they record histories of military failures due to disobedience to God’s commands? The scriptures record that any warfare conducted without God’s special revelation or under sin resulted in defeat (e.g., Numbers 14:41-45; Joshua 7), indicating that the authors wanted to convey that obedience to God was key to success or failure in war, not merely because they were God’s chosen people. Moreover, the Pentateuch contains many commands to treat foreigners kindly (Exodus 22:21, 23:9; Leviticus 19:34; Deuteronomy 10:18-19; God continually reminds them that the Israelites were once foreigners themselves), making it difficult to imagine that on one hand they would record God’s commands, and on the other hand, fabricate orders to annihilate the Canaanites for personal gain.
Furthermore, as previously explained, this command was not about “genocide.” This was a judgment specifically prophesied by God against the “seven nations of Canaan” (the Amorites) 430 years earlier (Genesis 15:13-16), hence it does not include any subsequent wars in the region. More importantly, the author feels that completely erasing the historicity of this event might remove the terrifying and dreadful nature of this unusual command of God, but it would also erase the historical and revelatory significance of the Pentateuch and the entire Deuteronomic history (including Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). It’s like God being accused of “murder,” yet some defend Him by claiming He never did it, but was falsely accused. In the author’s view, this isn’t a true attempt to defend God, but rather a search for a scapegoat. The author prefers to accept this as God’s “judgment” rather than a “massacre.” As mentioned earlier, we can see from this God’s seriousness about sin, whether it’s against the Canaanites or the Israelites. Because God is both just and loving, He judges the wicked.
In fact, the ancient Israelites ultimately did not follow God’s command to exterminate the Canaanites 2. Ultimately, as God had previously warned 3, they were influenced by the Canaanite culture and moral standards, which led them to become as sinful as the Canaanites and thus faced God’s judgment4.
Although we cannot fully understand God’s command to “exterminate the Canaanites” from God’s perspective, similar to how Job could not understand the reason for his suffering, we should be able to trust in God’s goodness and faithfulness. When we meet God face to face, we will have complete answers.
References：
- The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith by Christopher J. H. Wright
- The Skeletons in God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War by Joshua Ryan Butler
- The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: Covenant, Retribution, and the Fate of the Canaanites by John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton
- Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God by Paul Copan
- Numbers 13:27-33 (ESV):
27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”
30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”
31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.”
32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height.”
33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them. ↩ - Judges 1：21，1：28，1：29，1：30，1：31，1：32，1：33 ↩
- Deuteronomy 12：30、Joshua 23：12－13 ↩
- 2 Kings 17：6－15 ↩