Understanding the Wars of Canaan in the Book of Joshua

Introduction

Some Bible passages make the reader tremble. The conquest narratives in the book of Joshua are among them. How could a good God have commanded the extermination of the peoples of Canaan, men, women, children, and the elderly? This message, preached at the Tabernacle in the series on Joshua (overall theme: the key to courage), confronts this difficulty without sidestepping it. It does not seek an easy answer, but solid theological footing to stand firm in faith before a text that remains, in part, an enigma.

Sermon Outline

1. Facing the difficulty head-on

• Joshua 6:21: at Jericho, the Israelites devote to destruction "both men and women, young and old, and oxen and sheep and donkeys."
• Joshua 10:28 and following: Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, city after city, the same formula recurs.
• Deuteronomy 20:16-18: the command is explicit, "you shall not leave alive anything that breathes."
• Matthew 5:43-45: Jesus says "love your enemies." How do we hold these two texts together?
• Two images to avoid being trapped by appearances: a Martian walking into an operating room would see a massacre, without understanding it is actually an act of love; an archaeologist confessed that after seeing Canaanite civilization, he wondered why God had waited so long to intervene.

2. Three false trails to rule out

• Separating the Old and New Testaments. This is the temptation of Marcion, that 2nd-century heretic who set the "wicked" God of the Old Testament against the God of the New. Impossible: the God of Israel is the Father of Jesus. Jesus says he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. And love for the foreigner is already present in Leviticus 19:34.
• Disqualifying our modern sensitivity, under the pretext of end-times apostasy or cultural relativism. A dangerous trap. It is not only our culture that reacts: it is Jesus' own words about loving our enemies that raise the question.
• Reducing it to a cultural accommodation. There is some truth here, God made pedagogical compromises in the Old Testament (polygamy, divorce). But the extermination of the Canaanites is not a mere tolerance: it is an explicit command. "You shall show them no mercy," the text even says.

3. What the New Testament settles clearly

• For us as Christians, the matter is clear-cut: there is no question of acting as Joshua did. "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh" (2 Corinthians 10:4). The battle of the kingdom is spiritual.
• The question of armed service for one's nation is a separate matter: it concerns the kingdom of Caesar, not the kingdom of God. Jesus said as much to Pilate: "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have fought for me" (John 18:36).
• The history of Christendom is shameful in this regard: after Constantine, Christians used armed force "for the kingdom of God." This was an immense error.
• The first state to enshrine religious freedom of conscience in its constitution was Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams, a Baptist pastor expelled from Massachusetts. As Spurgeon put it with humor: "Baptists are the only Christians who have never persecuted other Christians, because they never had the chance."

4. The theological key: two regimes, one God

• The theocracy God established through Moses was set up on the fleshly level. Israel was a kingdom of this world, with its own constitution, army, and borders. One entered it by natural birth.
• Paul calls this "Israel according to the flesh" (1 Corinthians 10:18). In Hebrews and in Galatians 4, Paul speaks of the "elements of the world" that God had incorporated for pedagogical purposes.
• The kingdom of Christ is different: one enters it through new birth, and it is "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Romans 14:17). The fight against evil there is spiritual, not carnal.
• Israel according to the flesh prefigured (it was a "type" (1 Corinthians 10:6, 11)), the Israel of God, the Church. This regime was temporary, awaiting the coming of the Savior.

5. God's justice upheld: intention and patience

• The protective intention is explicit in Deuteronomy 20: it was so that the people would not be contaminated by the pagan worship of the Canaanites, child sacrifice, sacred prostitution. A truly horrific cult.
• God waited. Genesis 15:16 tells Abraham that his descendants would be slaves in Egypt "about 400 years" because "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete." God did not strike before the cup was full.

6. The question of the children

• The most painful question: the children had done nothing to deserve this. Here we must recognize that our view is partial. God sees beyond, factoring eternity into his reckoning.
• Nearly all evangelical theologians who honor the authority of Scripture hold that God grants children who die in infancy the benefit of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. They are saved.
• This is not stated with explicit clarity in Scripture (no doubt so as not to encourage abuse), but the support for it is solid: Jesus' particular tenderness toward little ones (Matthew 18); God's compassion for the 120,000 people of Nineveh "who do not know their right hand from their left" (Jonah 4:11); David's words about his dead child: "I shall go to him" (2 Samuel 12:23), David knowing, from Psalms 16 and 73, that a blessed eternity awaited him; and finally the strange story of Jeroboam's child in 1 Kings 14, whose death is presented as a mercy, because "he is the only one in whom the LORD, the God of Israel, has found anything good" in that family.

7. A door always open: Rahab

• This was not racism, nor an extermination with no way out. Rahab, the woman of Jericho, recognized that the God of Israel was the true God. She was saved along with her family and grafted into the people of God.
• Faith opened the door, even at the very heart of judgment.

Key Takeaways

• The God of Joshua and the God of Jesus are one and the same God. It is impossible to separate them without destroying the Christian faith.
• For the Christian today, the path is clear: the weapons of the kingdom are spiritual, never carnal.
• The difference between the two regimes is explained by the nature of the kingdom: Israel was a fleshly, prefigurative kingdom; the kingdom of Christ is spiritual.
• God did not act on a whim: he waited until the cup of the Canaanites' iniquity was full, and his intention was protective.
• We do not understand everything. Many mysteries will only be resolved when the Lord comes in full light (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Personal Application

1. When you get stuck on a difficult Bible passage, what is your first reaction: to flee, to disqualify the text, or to bring your questions to God?
2. Are you sometimes tempted to separate the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New? How does Christ bring you back to the unity of the two?
3. Have you clearly understood that the kingdom's spiritual battle never relies on carnal weapons, whether force, manipulation, or economic or psychological pressure?
4. Are you willing to leave certain questions open, confessing that your view is partial, without letting that shake your confidence in God's goodness?
5. Do you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus (our Joshua), who, at the cost of his own life, brings you into the conquest of eternal life?

Verses Cited

• Joshua 6:21 · The fall of Jericho
• Joshua 10:28-43 · The conquest of the South
• Deuteronomy 20:16-18 · The command of destruction
• Matthew 5:43-45 · Love your enemies
• Genesis 15:16 · The cup of the Amorites' iniquity
• Leviticus 19:34 · Loving the foreigner
• Jonah 4:11 · The 120,000 of Nineveh
• 2 Samuel 12:23 · I shall go to him
• 1 Kings 14:1-18 · Jeroboam's child
• Matthew 18:10 · The angels of little ones
• 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 · The weapons of our warfare
• John 18:36 · My kingdom is not of this world
• Romans 14:17 · Righteousness, peace, joy
• 1 Corinthians 10:16-18 · Israel according to the flesh
• 1 Corinthians 13:12 · We see as in a mirror
• Galatians 4:3 · The elements of the world
• Joshua 6:22-25 · Rahab saved

Frequently Asked Questions

How can the command to exterminate the Canaanites be reconciled with the God of love revealed by Jesus?

It is the same God, but two different regimes. Under the Old Covenant, God had established a fleshly kingdom (Israel, with its borders, its army, its constitution), for a pedagogical and temporary purpose, to prepare the way for the Savior's coming. Under the New Covenant, the kingdom is spiritual: one enters it by faith and new birth, and the fight against evil is spiritual, not carnal. The difference between Joshua and Jesus is not a contradiction in God's character, but a change of regime willed by God himself.

What becomes of the children killed in these judgments?

Evangelical tradition, drawing on passages such as Matthew 18, Jonah 4:11, 2 Samuel 12:23, and 1 Kings 14, holds that children who die in infancy are granted the benefit of Christ's sacrifice and receive eternal life. God sees beyond this visible life: he factors eternity into his equations, which we cannot do.

Can a Christian today invoke Joshua to justify a religious war?

Absolutely not. The New Testament is categorical: "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh" (2 Corinthians 10:4). Jesus told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world. Any violence carried out in the name of the kingdom of God is a betrayal of the gospel. The history of Christendom, after Constantine, offers painful examples of this that call for humility and repentance.