Immorality in the Bible: The Conquest of Canaan

Continuing our theme from yesterday, here are the next “immoral passages” cited at

http://www.religioustolerance.org/imm_bibl.htm

They describe the Hebrew invasion and conquest of Canaan.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2:

"... the seven nations greater and mightier than thou; and when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."

Joshua 6:21:

"And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword."

The Canaanite goddess Astarte standing on a heap of skulls.

As mentioned before, so long as Joshua and the Hebrews were operating under God’s direct command, there was no immorality to this. God has the right to kill as and when he sees fit.

Did all the Canaanites individually really deserve such punishment? It is not punishment, given an afterlife.

Old Bible illustration: An offering to Moloch.

Was it fair of God to favour the Hebrews over the Canaanite nations in battle? Not automatically; but according to the Bible, God had a reason. The Bible says that the Canaanites were dispossessed not because God preferred the Hebrews, but as a punishment for their own transgressions. They were a depraved culture. Remember Sodom and Gomorrah?

The Canaanites are to be destroyed “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” (Deut. 20.18).

What abominable practices? First and foremost, child sacrifice, which is, according to the Bible, “an abomination in God’s sight.”

Buzzard Roost, Georgia, in the wake of Sherman's March.

It might well, therefore, be in the best interests of all concerned if such a doctrine and social structure were anathematized and even wiped out by violence—just as the culture of slavery was wiped out by war in the US South, just as the doctrine of Nazism was wiped out in Germany, just as the Thuggi were wiped out by the British in India. And extirpating the culture might have necessitated and justified a scorched earth policy, like Hiroshima or Sherman’s March.

The bad news is that we again tolerate and even celebrate child sacrifice again today. As abortion.

Uh oh…