Divinely Mandated Genocide and Its Ethical Implications

7/27/2019 Divinely Mandated Genocide and Its Ethical Implications

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Barnabas Aspray

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Divinely Mandated Genocide: The Ethical Implications of the Conquest

Narratives in Joshua

The Canaanite conquest account in the book of Joshua is among the most troublesome stories

in the Old Testament, a prime example for many of God’s unethical nature. Richard Dawkins

considers it “morally indistinguishable from Hitler’s invasion of Poland, or Saddam Hussein’s

massacres of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs.”1

Christians also have difficulty reconciling Jesus’

instructions to love our enemies and turn the other cheek with the God who commands mass

slaughter. Even within the OT, it is hard to see how God can order his people, whom he chose to

be a blessing to all peoples and a light to the nations, to do something which seems the opposite

of blessing.

How are we to understand these passages? I have in view primarily the texts of Joshua 6:1-

21, 8:1-29, and 10:1-42, in which Yahweh commands the people of Israel to invade and

exterminate entire populations. Although I intend to do justice to their cultural-historical context

for a right understanding of these texts, I am also concerned with bridging from the descriptive

exegetical task to the normative theological task of their application.2 How do they function

authoritatively, as a portion of our Christian canon, for the people of God today? What can we

learn from them to enrich our understanding of God and ourselves?

Numerous answers have been given to these questions. Because the issue is so huge, I have

limited my discussion to certain parameters. I assume the historicity of the events discussed and

the canonical unity of their witness in the OT. I will not discuss whether they happened

historically, or whether the OT offers contradictory interpretations of them. In this essay I will

group approaches to the texts into four broad categories, critically evaluating each in turn. I then

conclude with my own reflections, drawing together different threads of the other approaches.

1 Cited in Paul Copan, “Is Yahweh a moral monster? the new atheists and Old Testament ethics,” Philosophia

Christi 10, no. 1 (2008): 7.2 A few relevant exegetical points about the narratives have been supplied in the Appendices.



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The first approach to the Canaanite conquest is to discredit it entirely based on principles

drawn from elsewhere. An extreme version considers them a “ prima facie reason for rejecting

biblical inerrancy.”3

Because we know (this view states) on other grounds that genocide is wrong

under any circumstance, the OT must be mistaken in asserting that God commanded genocide.

Rannfrid Thelle concludes his exegesis of the conquest by saying, “the indiscriminate killing of

human beings . . . cannot be accepted on moral grounds.”4

Randal Rauser establishes what he

believes to be an axiomatic principle that “every rational, properly functioning person cannot

help but know: it is always wrong to bludgeon babies.”5 Consequently, “if Yahweh is God then

Yahweh did not command the Canaanite genocide.”6

Others find principles in the New Testament which invalidate the possibility of divinely

mandated genocide in the Old. C.S. Cowles writes, “the starting point in forming a truly

Christian theology is not what the Bible teaches about God in general but what Jesus reveals

about God in particular.”7

For Christians, Jesus is the perfect representation of God’s character,

the standard by which everything else, including the OT, is judged. “We must resist all efforts to

defend Old Testament genocidal commands as reflective of the will and character of God. Since

Jesus has come, we are under no obligation to justify that which cannot be justified, but can only

be described as pre-Christ, sub-Christ, and anti-Christ.”8

Hershberger sees the genocidal

commands as a concession due to Israel’s inability to live up to God’s perfect standards. “Israel’s

wars ‘were the consequence of her own sins, and contrary to the original intention of God.’ . . .

This concession is similar to God’s allowing for kingship (1 Sam 8:1ff ) and divorce (Mk 10:2-

9).”9 Violence never was part of God’s original purpose, but he permitted Israel to use violence

as a moral compromise.

3 Wes Morriston, “Did God command genocide? a challenge to the biblical inerrantist,” Philosophia Christi 11,

no. 1 (2009): 25.4

Rannfrid I. Thelle, “The biblical conquest account and its modern hermeneutical challenges,” Studiatheologica 61, no. 1 (2007): 77.5 Randal Rauser, “‘Let nothing that breathes remain alive’: on the problem of divinely commanded genocide,”

Philosophia Christi 11, no. 1 (2009): 33. Italics original.6 Ibid., 41.7 Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide, Counterpoints (Grand Rapids, Mich:

Zondervan Pub. House, 2003), 23.8 Ibid., 36.9 Willard M Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation , 1982

(Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 1983), 114.



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My overall difficulty with this approach is its failure to treat the text as normative in any way.

In the first case, it is judged by standards which are neither explained nor justified, simply

assumed. This amounts to the suggestion that, since genocide is self-evidently immoral, the text

is discredited, which is a complete avoidance of the issue. The authors of Joshua at least did not

see genocide as self-evidently immoral, or we would not have a problematic text in the first

place! What seems self-evident to one may not be self-evident to all. The issue at stake here is

whether conscience should be shaped by scripture, or scripture judged by conscience. Here we

are given not so much an argument as an assertion that conscience overrides scripture, without

reasons given as to why this should be the case, or why one person’s conscience is more reliable

than anyone else’s when perspectives differ.

Attempts to judge the OT by NT standards also encounter difficulties. It is true that for

Christians the NT is an interpretive lens for the OT. But if the NT were an interpretive standard

apart from the OT, the OT would not be scripture. Christ is indeed the perfect representation of

God’s character , but there must be a hermeneutical circle between Christ’s illumination of the

OT and the OT’s illumination of Christ. The OT must contribute to and correct our

understanding of Christ, otherwise it has no authority and becomes for us no different than any

other text.

There have also been efforts to invalidate the conquest by means of other OT texts which

give an alternative view of God’s character . But although the texts must indeed be read in the

context of canon, as part of the canon they also contribute their own voice to it. Stronger OT

themes cannot be used to silence weaker themes, as Goldingay notes: “if [theology decides what

is right] in the light of what is central and fundamental, and if righteousness and justice are

central, then the kind of election that links with the elimination of the Canaanites can disappear

from Old Testament theology.”10

In short, the genocides are unavoidably part of the Christian canon. Although understood in

dialogue with other sources of truth (conscience, the NT, the rest of the OT), they must not be

muted by them, but instead help to shape them.

10 Reading the Hebrew Bible for a New Millennium: Form, Concept, and Theological Perspective, Studies in

antiquity and Christianity (Harrisburg, Pa: Trinity Press International, 2000), 170.



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The second approach seeks to justify the genocides on the basis of Canaanite wickedness and

God’s justice. On this view Daniel Card writes, “A more pertinent question than why God

commanded such brutal practices as the extermination of the Canaanites is why he did not

command the destruction of the entire human race in time and history.”11

Clay Jones argues that

“a closer look at the horror of Canaanite sinfulness . . . reveals that God was just in His ordering

the Canaanite’s destruction. But Western culture’s embrace of ‘Canaanite sin’ inoculates it

against the seriousness of that sin.”12

He concludes, “it is no surprise that when we see God’s

judgment upon those who committed the sins we commit, that complaint and protest arises

within our hearts . . . But studying these things over the years has led me to wonder if the

Canaanites might not stand up at the Judgment and condemn this generation.”13

The fundamental problem with this view is that it fails to recognise the real difficulty with the

conquest narratives. God’s justice and human sinfulness are not the key question here. Many

scriptural passages speak of God’s judgment on wickedness; distinctive in Joshua is that the

judgment was enacted, not directly by God, nor by an unwitting agent, but through Israel at

God’s command . If God once commanded his people to commit genocide, why would he not

command the same thing again today? Any answer to this question renders irrelevant the issue of

God’s holiness or human wickedness: other factors are in play. This approach either implies that

Christians should kill people whose practices correspond to the Canaanites’, or it assumes a

discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, which is instead the key issue.

A third way of dealing with the OT genocides – traditionally the most popular – is to adopt a

‘spiritual reading’ of them. It takes two forms: one interprets the texts as representing the internal

battle against sin in the believer’s life, the other sees their contemporary equivalent in the cosmic

battle against Satan. 3rd

century theologian Origen pioneers the former stance. He writes about

Joshua 10, “if we understand these things spiritually and manage wars of this type spiritually,

and if we drive out all those spiritual iniquities from heaven, then we shall be able at last to

receive from Jesus . . . a share of the inheritance[.]”14

Tremper Longman, taking the latter stance,

11 Show Them No Mercy, 140.12 Clay Jones, “We don’t hate sin so we don’t understand what happened to the Canaanites: an addendum to

‘divine genocide’ arguments,” Philosophia Christi 11, no. 1 (2009): 53.13 Ibid., 72.14 Origen, Homilies on Joshua, trans. Barbara J Bruce, 2002, 12.3.



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writes: “The Bible makes it clear that we are still involved in ḥerem15

warfare; but rather than

being directed toward physical enemies, it is a spiritual battle.”16

He then cites Ephesians 6:12:

“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against

the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Likewise Eugene Merrill writes, “Yahweh war as articulated in the Old Testament has no

justification in the age of the church except in terms of spiritual conflict.”17

Whether or not the genocide texts are spiritually instructive, the problem is not solved if one

believes they also happened historically. With the greatest respect for Origen, I find no evidence

that his spiritual reading of the genocides is done as a supplement to the literal reading, rather

than a replacement for it. Given all the wisdom offered by spiritual interpretations, I still wish to

understand the significance of the historical event that the ‘literal sense’ records. What does

God’s command to commit genocide say about his character and how he wants his people to

behave?

The second stance – ‘cosmic-spiritual-battle’ – is also problematic. It depends, like the

previously discussed ‘Canaanite-wickedness’ approach, on assumptions about intertestamental

discontinuity. For example, Longman writes, “When Jesus told Peter to put away the sword, he

was telling the church that would follow that physical violence could not be used to further his

cause.”18

This leaves unexplained both why God would suddenly change tactics when Jesus

came and why he commanded physical warfare previously. More importantly, it leaves

unexplained why, if God radically altered his strategy in Jesus, we still read the OT expecting

God to speak to us through it. Without a concomitant explanation of the continuity between the

Testaments, the OT becomes irrelevant, and the above views nothing more than problem-solving

exercises without normative value for today.

The fourth approach offers a part-way solution to the above difficulty by providing reasons

for the genocides’ particularity as arising from an unrepeatable historical situation. Merrill thus

writes, “the genocide sanctioned by Scripture was unique to its time, place, and circumstances. It

15 The Hebrew term ‘ḥerem’ – used consistently of the genocides – refers to irrevocable devotion of items to

God, usually by destruction. For a more detailed exegesis of this term, see Appendix I.16 Show Them No Mercy, 186.17 Ibid., 91.18 Ibid., 181.



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is not to be carried over to the age of the church.”19

For Christopher Wright, “The conquest

narratives describe one particular period of Israel’s long history.”20

For Copan, they are “an

example of how Israel at different stages of development faces different challenges that require

distinct responses.”21

This approach is closest to my own, insofar as I agree with the perspective offered but do not

think it a complete solution. Having established the uniqueness of the event, it remains to be seen

what made it unique and in what way, despite its uniqueness, it can still be considered normative.

Why was genocide legitimate for Israel but not for us?

A popular answer to this question is provided in the ESV Study Bible: the genocides were

legitimate for Israel as a nation-state, but “Christians are not to carry out this kind of warfare,

because the people of God are no longer identified with a particular nation-state.”22

Card also

writes that “Israel, along with its theological identity, also had a political identity. . . . But as to

the church herself, her identity is only as a theological entity, whose warfare is spiritual, not

fleshly.”23

Peter Craigie makes the same point. “The laws of war . . . specifically concerned the

functioning of the state of Israel; Israel was the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in Old

Testament times. But the conception of the Kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus is quite

different; the Kingdom is no longer identified with the nation state.”24

Craigie goes on to divide

Christian duties between state-loyalty and Kingdom-loyalty.

In my opinion this explanation distinguishes too sharply between the sacred and the secular

and fails to get to the root of the issue. Does the OT have nothing to say to Christians engaging

in politics? What are the Biblical principles for governing a nation-state? Would genocide be

legitimate if, theoretically, a Christian nation-state were formed today? If not, why did God

change his political strategy? This raises again the problem of intertestamental relations. An

emphasis on discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments without any stated underlying

continuity renders the OT little more than a curiosity about how God used to treat his people. It

19 Ibid., 94.20 Christopher J. H Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity

Press, 2004), 474.21 Copan, “Is Yahweh a moral monster?,” 26. 22 The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 391.23 Show Them No Mercy, 137 – 138.24 Peter C Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1978), 102.



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fragments God’s character, making him seem arbitrary, commanding one thing in the past and

another in the present without explanation for the difference. If the Bible is a revelation of God’s

character to guide our actions, then we cannot be satisfied with an inconsistent picture of who

God is and what he wants of us.

In short, we need an understanding of intertestamental relations which both respects the

genocides’ historical particularity and maintains their normative quality for today’s context. We

need a theology by which the OT provides insights into God’s unchanging nature across the

changing landscape of history. On this subject Swartley makes the following observations:

[G]enuine historical difference exists between the Testaments . . . God is not bound totime and space, but humanity is. When God’s dealings with humanity are under discussion,

one cannot ignore the different circumstances in the different time periods. All creaturesare bound and limited by time and place; they can perceive morality only within the

restrictions of time and place.25

Two key ideas emerge from this quotation. The first is the narrative trajectory of the Biblical

story, in which God’s relationship with his people grows and changes because they grow and

change. When I was four years old my father forbade me from crossing the road. Later he

retracted the command, not because he had changed but because I had. Nevertheless the

command, although it no longer applies, reveals important truth about my father’s concern for

my welfare which affects my relationship with him today.

The second idea is that of the limited moral horizons of all human beings. Just as we do not

have access to epistemological certainty, neither do we have access to absolute morality. Much

of the ethical objection to the OT emerges from a Cartesian anxiety which cannot imagine God

operating within a moral horizon different to our own. But this is really due to our own short-

sightedness in failing to recognize our own moral horizon, thinking instead that God

communicates absolute certainties to us.

Israel had no such Cartesian delusions. Instead, she recognised the limited relational

perspective inherent in morality. As Goldingay notes, our understanding of ‘justice’ and‘righteousness’ suggests abstract universal principles, for which the Hebrew words mi špāṭ and

ṣĕdāqah are not faithful equivalents. “Characteristically, mi špāṭ suggests the declaring and

implementing of a decisive judgment, while ṣĕdāqah denotes the quality of some act, the way it

25 Swartley, Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women, 141.



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fits into a worldview and a set of relationships that possess, among other things, some moral and

social order. . . . Whereas ‘righteousness’ suggests conformity to a norm or standard, then,

ṣĕdāqah is a relationship word.”26

An overly abstracted morality blinds us to the reality of our distinct perspective from whichwe view the genocides. When an understanding of our limited perspective is recovered, an

analysis of contemporary society reveals two characteristics that make it difficult for us to

comprehend God’s genocidal commands. First, we have an acutely elevated horror of suffering

and death, probably due to its comparative lack relative to other societies throughout history. For

us, death is (almost) the Worst Possible Thing, and killing is therefore the Worst Possible

Atrocity. But in most of world history, people more familiar with the reality of death and the

temporariness of life considered other things far worse: dishonesty, shame, defeat, or simply

being evil, to cite a few examples.

Second, our society is distinctive in considering all human beings equal regardless of race,

gender or ethnicity. I believe this difference to be positive, a progression in our understanding (or

rather, in God’s revelation), but it is condescending to look back and judge previous generations

for not imagining something which seems self-evident to us. The ‘moral and social order ’ of the

ANE27

had no concept of the immorality of interracial war. Israel was no exception. The

commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ uses the verb r āṣaḥ, which “is normally used in the context of

one Hebrew killing another Hebrew. It is not the verb used to describe the killing of foreigners in

war, for example; the verbs hārag and qātal are used in such contexts. Thus the preliminary

meaning of the commandment seems to be: ‘You shall not kill a fellow Hebrew.’”28

Neither Israel nor the Canaanites would have had any moral objection to interracial warfare.

The Israelites were doing to the Canaanites something which, in other circumstances, the

Canaanites might well have done to the Israelites. As Copan writes, “in the ANE, warfare was a

way of life and a means of survival ”29

– far from the ethical dilemma it is today.

26 Reading the Hebrew Bible for a New Millennium, 175.27 Ancient Near East28 Craigie, The Problem of War in the OT , 58.29 Paul Copan, “Yahweh wars and the Canaanites: divinely mandated genocide or corporate capital punishment?

responses to critics,” Philosophia Christi 11, no. 1 (2009): 88.



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The seeming unfairness of God’s preferential treatment for Israel remains a common

objection made against the Canaanite conquest, arising from the importance we place on human

equality. Three points must be made in this regard. First, Deuteronomy 9:4-6 makes it clear that

the genocides were God’s punishment on the Canaanites for their wickedness, not a reward to

Israel for her goodness or any other reason. Second, although God may treat Israel specially as

his chosen people , he does not show her favouritism,30

and she later received punishment

comparable to that of the Canaanites for similar wicked practices.31

Third, the Canaanites were

given opportunity to defect when the reality of their situation became apparent to them,

demonstrated by the story of Rahab (Joshua 2:1-24). As Copan writes:

God was certainly willing to preserve any who acknowledged his evident lordship over

the nations, which was very well known to the Canaanites (Josh. 2:8-11; 9:9-11,24; cf.Exod. 15:14-17; Deut. 2:25). Even Israel’s sevenfold march around Jericho, each

circumambulation serving as an opportunity for Jericho to evade the ban, was sadlymatched by Jericho’s sevenfold refusal to relent and acknowledge Yahweh’s rule.32

To summarise: if we trust the OT testimony, we must believe that God’s punishment of the

Canaanites was fair and in accordance with their injustice. His use of the Israelites to implement

this punishment took place within a moral framework different from our own, to which both

Israel and Canaan belonged, within which God was consistent in his treatment of both people

groups. Israel’s overarching calling to bring justice and salvation to the nations coheres with the

punishment of unjust nations who refuse to submit to God’s righteous rule.

When viewed from its own context, the Canaanite conquest provides a coherent message

about the way God uses his people within their limited perspective, his concern for justice

throughout the world, willingness to give second chances, and even-handed treatment of every

nation. These lessons speak powerfully of God’s character in ways that, when brought into

dialogue with insights from the rest of the Bible, do much to shape our understanding for today.

30 On the nature of election in the OT, see Goldingay, “Justice and Salvation for Israel and Canaan” in Reading

the Hebrew Bible for a New Millennium.31 See Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God , 476.32 Copan, “Yahweh wars and the Canaanites,” 88.



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Appendix I: ם ח (‘ḥerem’) Word Study

The close association of the Hebrew noun ḥerem with the Canaanite conquest necessitates its

examination in order to understand the particularity of the conquest within Israel’s story. The

term is used in every text pertaining to the Canaanite genocides, both the commands in

Deuteronomy and their implementation in Joshua. Yair Hoffman, a source critic, writes: “with

the exception of the book of Joshua, the ḥerem is neither mentioned nor even assumed in the

Deuteronomistic historiography [Deuteronomy-Kings]. One may therefore conclude that the

ḥerem is a concept typical only of some passages in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua.”33

The word and its verbal cognate ḥaram do, in fact, occur outside Deuteronomy and Joshua.

For example, Exodus 22:20 says “He who sacrifices to any god, other than to the Lord alone,

shall be ḥaramed.”34

But because the usage is fairly consistent, we can safely focus on its particular application in the relevant cases.

Brown-Driver-Briggs offers the following definitions of ḥerem: 1) “thing hostile to

theocracy, and therefore (in the strictest application) to be either destroyed, or, in the case of

certain objects (e.g. silver and gold, vessels of brass and iron Joshua 6:19,24), set apart to sacred

uses.” 2) “anything devoted to sanctuary under specially stringent conditions” 3) “devotion, ban,

involving destruction.” BDB definitions of ḥaram are as follows: 1) “to ban, devote, exterminate

. . . most often of devoting to destruction cities of Canaanites and other neighbours of Israel,exterminating inhabitants, and destroying or appropriating their possessions” 2) “devote . . . for

sacred uses the spoil of the nations.”

For every occurrence of the word, the NIV Bible provides a footnote, “The Hebrew term

refers to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the LORD, often by totally destroying

them.” This is a reasonable gloss. Joshua is commanded in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 to ḥaram (‘totally

destroy’) the seven Canaanite nations in the land. There follows in verses 3-5 a catalogue of

ways not to be involved with them, emphasising that the Israelites are to have nothing to do with

these cultures and religions.

33 Yair Hoffman, “The Deuteronomistic Concept of the Herem,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche

Wissenschaft 111 (1999): 196 – 210.34 NASB base translation



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Rannfrid Thelle translates Joshua 6:17, “and the city shall be ḥerem, it and all that is in it, to

YHWH.” He continues:

This phrase is very difficult to translate into English, because there is no exact equivalent.It has been translated quite variously. For example, we find the Revised English Bible has,

“The city is to be under solemn ban: everything in it belongs to the Lord” and the New American Bible translates part of the verse with the previous one, rendering, “ . . . for the

Lord has given you the city and everything in it. It is under the Lord’s ban.” And the New Jerusalem Bible has, “The city and everyone in it must be devoted to Yahweh under thecurse of destruction”. The question is whether any of these translations capture what is

meant by the ḥerem, and the cultural and religious context of this term.35

The phrase ‘under the ban’ has become so uncommon in contemporary English that it is

unlikely to shed any light on the meaning of ḥerem even if it were an accurate translation, unless

associated with the more familiar verb ‘to ban ( x from y).’ The idea of banning a substance,

person or activity, is helpful as a beginning for an understanding of ḥerem. But it is also

important to understand both the implications of destruction and the overtones of holiness

inherent in the word. Thelle writes:

Ḥ erem denotes destruction, but also more than that. Both in biblical literature in and in

Ancient Near Eastern texts, there is also a range of meanings of ḥerem that denotes “that

which is separated, devoted, consecrated.” In Lev 27:28, for example, ḥerem is used in

parallel with qodesh qodashim (exceedingly holy). This shows the nuance of ḥerem as

something that is set apart from the human realm, or the secular realm. . . . [T]here is aclear understanding in these texts that that which belongs to the deity is set aside, it is outof circulation from the human realm and belongs exclusively to the deity. In this case, we

can understand the destruction of that which is ḥerem as something that was necessary inorder to preserve that state. The things that were ḥerem had to be destroyed, to prevent

them from being abused.36

Two significant extrabiblical attestations offer helpful corroborations of evidence for the

word’s meaning. Lauren Monroe writes, “circumstances similar to those in Josh, viii characterize

the ninth-century Mesha Inscription, which celebrates the victory of Mesha King of Moab over

the Israelites, and his devotion of spoils to the Moabite god Kemosh. . . . He is credited with

taking the town, killing everyone in it, and putting it to the hêrem for Ashtar-Kemosh.”37

Monroe’s particular interest, however, is with the Sabaean text RES 3945, which “shares many

35 Rannfrid I. Thelle, “The biblical conquest account and its modern hermeneutical challenges,” Studia

theologica 61, no. 1 (2007): 63.36 Ibid., 64 – 65.37 Lauren A. S. Monroe, “Israelite, Moabite and Sabean War -herem Traditions and the Forging of National

Identity : Reconsidering the Sabaean Text RES 3945 in Light of Biblical and Moabite Evidence,” Vetus

Testamentum 57 (2007): 324.



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features with the biblical and Moabite hêrem texts. This text describes the civic and military

accomplishments of the Sabaean mukarrib11 Karib-ilu, who reigned during an early period in

the Kingdom of Saba.”38

After an extensive study of this text, Monroe concludes:

The Sabaean text thus contains the following four key elements. First, hêrem is associatedwith destruction wrought on a massive scale and effectuated by conflagration. Second, atleast some segment of the population of the conquered city is killed and consecrated to the

deity. This is expressed in line 16 by the comment, “he gave command concerning those of NSN whose dedication to the gods was allotted, so that they were killed.” Third,resettlement of the conquered territory by the victors is tied specifically to the occupationof individual towns, so that the town in effect becomes an empty vessel ready to receive thenew population. Fourth, a cult installation is erected, signifying that the new population

and its patron god have set up residence. All four of these are elements that the Sabaeantext shares with the biblical and Moabite hêrem accounts.39

Christopher Wright summarises the word as “that specific form of warfare in which YHWH

is the chief protagonist and the enemy is ‘renounced’ or ‘devoted’ to him. Some of the later warsalso had this characteristic, but many are not explicitly so described.”

40

Thelle’s summary is as follows:

That which is ḥerem must be destroyed. This has to do with a way of categorizing the

world into categories akin to those of purity and impurity, sacred and profane, or that

which is for humans and that which is beyond, exempt, outside. . . . This explanation seems

to be the primary one for the concept of ḥerem , and other explanations follow from it.

Seeing ḥerem in this way provides one type of context for understanding the meaning of

the total annihilation of the enemy in the biblical conquest account.41

38 Ibid., 326.39 Ibid., 335.40 Christopher J. H Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity

Press, 2004), 474.41 Thelle, “The biblical conquest account and its modern hermeneutical challenges,” 65.



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Appendix II: The Literary Structure of the Canaanite Conquest

One of the troublesome aspects of the conquest narrative in Joshua is its apparently

comprehensive scope. Joshua 10:40b says “[Joshua] destroyed everything that had breath, just as

Yahweh, the God of Israel, commanded.” However, in later chapters (and in the book of Judges)

it becomes clear that there are still many Canaanites in the land. This produces three difficulties

for the reader. First, the total eradication of men, women and children seems excessively violent

beyond even what may have been necessary in order to conquer the land. Second, on the face of

it the claim appears unrealistic: does ‘everything that had breath’ include even animals? Third,

the claim is contradicted both shortly after in the same book and in another biblical book. How,

then, can we make sense of this claim?

To begin with, comparing the text with other similar texts from the same genre may highlight

certain conventions, such as hyperbole, which relativise the superlative language used. Provan,

Long and Longman have explored this aspect in detail, and deserve to be quoted at length:

Even where our interests may be ultimately in the historical import of ancient texts, we

cannot hope to discern this import correctly unless we approach them on their own literary terms. . . . [W]e stand to benefit greatly from learning as much as we can about the specific

literary conventions, or transmission codes, used in texts we are studying. A model study inthis regard is Younger’s Ancient Conquest Accounts, in which he seeks to place theconquest account of Joshua 9-12 in the broader context of second- and first-millenium B.C.

conquest accounts from Assyria, Hatti, and Egypt.

The result of Younger’s careful comparative study is to confirm that “while there aredifferences [between ancient Near Eastern and biblical history writing] (e.g., thecharacteristics of the deities in the individual cultures), the Hebrew conquest account of Canaan in Joshua 9-12 is, by and large, typical of any ancient Near Eastern account.” The“transmission code” shared by biblical and ancient Near Eastern historiography involves“an intermingling of the texts’ figurative and ideological aspects.”42

What, then, is the historical reality behind a typical ANE conquest account? Rather than a

comprehensive annihilation of literally ‘everything that breathed,’ Younger discovered that the

language referred rhetorically, with immediate comprehension to anyone familiar with the genre,

simply to a successful military conquest . As Younger puts it:

If scholars had realized the hyperbolic nature of the account in Joshua, if they hadcompared it with other ancient Near Eastern accounts of complete conquest, if they haddifferentiated a little more closely in the past between occupation and subjugation, the

42 Iain W Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman, A Biblical History of Israel , 1st ed. (Louisville, Ky:

Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 148 – 149.



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image of the conquest as represented in Joshua would have emerged in far clearer focusthan it has.43

Younger later examined the rhetorical features of the conquest accounts in a separate article.

His conclusions lead him to a further insight: that the narratives even as they stand are not

intended to be exhaustive. He writes that it is “manifest from a careful reading of [Joshua 12]

that the narratives of Joshua 6-11 are partial and are not intended to give a complete history of

the process of Israel’s coming into possession of the land. . . . Thus, the list forms a natural link

to the description of the land that remains unconquered at the beginning of chap. 13.”44

These findings are supported by James Hoffmeier’s comparison of Joshua 1-11 with

Egyptian literary conventions which he believes influenced the biblical passage. Hoffmeier

argues that “the parallels shown here between [Egyptian Pharaoh] Thutmose III’s Annals and

Joshua 1-11 may be attributed to the Hebrews’ borrowing of the Egyptian daybook scribaltradition for recording military actions.”

45

Situating the conquest account in its cultural-historical context, while it does not eradicate the

fundamental ethical issue of divinely mandated slaughter, does at least soften it by removing the

need to see the Israelites as engaging in excessively violent bloodshed beyond what was

necessary to conquer the land. As Christopher Wright points out about the conquest, “we need,

therefore, in reading some of the more graphic descriptions, either of what was commanded to be

done, or recorded as accomplished, to allow for this rhetorical element. This is not to accuse the biblical writers of falsehood, but to recognize the literary conventions of writing about

warfare.”46

43 Cited in Ibid., 168.44 K. Lawson Younger, “The Rhetorical Structuring of the Joshua Conquest Narratives,” in Critical Issues

(Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 32.45 James K. Hoffmeier, “The structure of Joshua 1-11 and the annals of Thutmose III,” in Faith, tradition, and

history (Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 177.46 Christopher J. H Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, Ill: Inter-Varsity

Press, 2004), 475.



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15

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Documents

Divinely Mandated Genocide and Its Ethical Implications