The slaughter of the Canaanites is a difficult topic for Christians, especially for those committed to any robust form of Biblical inerrancy. I happen to be one of those Christians committed to a robust form of Biblical inerrancy.
Here are the key passages:
“However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.” Deut. 20:16
“They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” Josh. 6:21
Christians often pride themselves for their view of God as loving, forgiving, and extending of mercy. We condemn the religious violence of the expansionist religion of Islam. But given the above verses, it appears that we may have elements of this same sort of violence embedded in our own religion. Ours is a religion that at one point justified the killing of children. How are we to deal with this?
One possible move is to neutralize the language. Phrases like “do not leave anything alive that breathes,” and “destroyed every living thing in it--... young and old,” may just be artifacts of Middle Eastern hyperbolic war-language, similar to how a boxer may say “I knocked his head off his shoulders!” The phrases aren’t meant to be taken literally, but rather as hyperbolic phrases that signify the defeat of the enemy. There is reason to believe that the phrases should be understood this way, too. We know of other cases of NEA literature in which such phrases were used and yet we know that the descriptions were not carried out in a literal way--we know that some individuals survived, or that the women and children survived from conflicting sources, despite the presence of such strongly worded phrases in other sources. It isn’t that the phrases are factually wrong, it’s that they are meant to convey the total defeat of the enemy. We even have reason to believe that the Bible itself takes the phrases in a hyperbolic way. We see the occurrence of such phrases in Joshua like “every inhabitant was killed” in some city, and yet a couple of chapters later that same city is shown to be active and still causing problems. The phrases seem like they definitely can be taken in a hyperbolic sense at least in some cases. This move has garnered the support of Alvin Plantinga and is defended by Paul Copan.
But I don’t actually think this move is possible, at least as a way to completely remove the command to slaughter children (I do think the language is, often, hyperbolic. But not always). The hyperbolic language route is excluded by Deuteronomy 20 especially--the ban to exterminate all living things in the Canaanite settlements is specifically contrasted to the command to leave some individuals alive in non-Canaanite settlements. This contrast only makes sense if the language of “do not leave alive anything that breathes” is taken in a literal way. I think the best interpretation of this chapter is that God really did command the killing of Canaanite children.
So what other moves are left open? A suggestive path is to look at the apocalyptic doctrines affirmed by orthodox Christians: We believe that God will judge the world in the end, and this will result in the deaths of many (including, presumably, children.) We also have cases in the Old Testament, such as the flood, where God exercised judgement on the world in such a way that children were presumably killed along with the rest. These cases may be troubling, I think, but not nearly as troubling as the Canaanite slaughter. Why is it that these cases of apocalyptic judgment are less troubling? I think for two reasons:
First, it seems that God has no obligation to keep us in existence. He created us and owns us in a way that no human owns us. All humans have the obligation to not kill another human, but God himself does not have this obligation.
Second, God is himself the direct actor in these judgments. God himself brought about the flood, and God himself will bring about the final tribulations. The Canaanite slaughter seems more troubling than these cases because God used intermediaries, humans, to carry out these killings.
(Some Christians have even taken the Canaanite slaughter to prefigure final judgment of the world.)
The basic ingredients for an answer are in place. It’s a short step to this principle:
Delegation: God has the ability to delegate his authority over human life to other agents
If Delegation is right, and it certainly seems plausible, then it seems possible for God to have commanded the slaughter of the Canaanites. Humans do have a moral prohibition against killing others. But Delegation suggests that this prohibition may, in highly unusual situations, be defeasible, specifically in those situations in which God delegates his authority to human agents.
I think we still have two problems: (a) Why would God delegate his authority to humans in order to kill children? (b) How do we know when God has so delegated his authority? What if I believe God told me in a dream to kill my family--does that make it right for me to do so?
The first is a question concerned with the character of God. Even though God may have the right to terminate the life of any human at any point, it still seems like he’d have a particularly strong reason for doing so. I think the historical narratives contained in Deuteronomy and Joshua have the answer. God, in his Middle Knowledge, knew what the preservation of the life of the Canaanite children would do to Israelite culture in an alternate future where they survived--it may have tempted the Israelites to replicate the Canaanite culture in which all sorts of immoralities were advocated and the worship of the true God abandoned. WLC also suggests that the death of the children was a means by which God guaranteed their entrance into heaven, as WLC doesn’t take it that children who die young are destined to hell.
As for (b), I think Kant had a point when he said that we should usually (or did he say always? If so, he’s wrong) trust our general prohibition against killing more than a belief that a purported case of Delegation has actually occurred--presumably this would rule out dreams providing a justified case of Delegation. We almost always have more justification to hold to our prohibition to not kill other humans than we do to believe that God has legitimately delegated his authority to kill to us. But I do think that purported cases of Delegation can have sufficient evidence to where we’re justified in believing that a candidate case of it may be legitimate. And remember, the narratives in which the Canaanite slaughter occur are also the narratives in which some of the most public and powerful miracles also occur, attesting to the fact that the Delegation is really from God.
As a close, it’s important to note that Christianity does not make Delegation a universal command for Christians. I’m not saying that God has delegated his authority in this way to anyone today.
Two minor points: Richard Hess claims that the cities put to the ban were military outposts with little civil presence, and it's important to keep in mind that the goal of the ban was to drive the people from the land and not to exterminate them wherever they were to be found.
Aron Wall has presented the best treatment of these difficult passages. His treatment can be found here:
http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/when-god-kills-the-innocent/
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