Why some people hate the God of the Old Testament
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| English: The Great Wall of China (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Do these passages depict genocide? Are Jesus' grandparents carrying out vicious massacres at his Father's command? How do we reconcile these tough passages with the goodness of God and help our people understand them well? How do we preach on holy war? Here are a few angles I've found helpful.
Military cities
The cities Israel takes out are military strongholds, not civilian population centers. Say the word city today and most of us think of metropolitan centers flooded with civilians: houses, restaurants, businesses, hospitals, and schools. But in the ancient Middle East, things were different.
The cities in the book of Joshua were military outposts that defended the roads leading up to where the people were (think "the Great Wall of China" as a military defense against invasion). Women, children, and other civilians were in the towns and villages of the surrounding countryside, looking to the "cities" for military protection.
Add to this: the kings in Joshua were, for the most part, not top-dog political leaders like we think of today, but local military leaders who led their soldiers into battle and reported to a higher ruler off-site. In other words, the picture is one of Joshua's armies attacking military strongholds, knocking out generals, and putting their soldiers to flight; not invading cities, assassinating presidents, and slaughtering civilians. Israel is taking on Napoleon and his militias, not Paris and Jericho, for example, was the first line of defense, a fort only six acres large guarding the travel routes up to Jerusalem, Bethel, and Ophrah.
Civilian populations lived in villages and towns up in the hills. For example, Jericho and Ai (the two cities given the most attention in the book of Joshua), probably only held 100 - 150 soldiers each. So when Israel "utterly destroys" a city like Jericho, we should picture a military fort being taken over—not a civilian massacre. God is pulling down the Great Wall of China, not demolishing Beijing.
Israel is taking out the Pentagon, not New York City or Brisbane.
Another tricky issue involves numbers. The Hebrew word commonly translated as "thousand" ('elep), in a military context often simply means "unit" or "squad." So some of the numbers might not be as high as English translations suggest. For example, when 12,000 are defeated at Ai in Joshua 8:25, Old Testament scholars note the more likely translation is actually 12 squads of combatants (probably around 100 - 150 people). This is more consistent with modern archaeological findings on the cities and other uses of 'elep’ in the Old Testament.
The phrase "all men and women, young and old" shows up in a few places, but in English this phrase is misleading. Hebrew scholars note this was a stock phrase used to imply totality and did not require that women and children were actually present in the militarized outposts, only that the forts were totally depopulated in the aftermath of victory. So when we're told no survivors were left in a city, it is simply stating the obvious: the fort has been taken over, and all its defenders have either fled or been killed.
Ancient trash talk
The Old Testament makes use of exaggerated war rhetoric, common throughout the ancient Middle East. It was something like sports trash talk today: when a basketball team beats their opponents, you expect to hear them say things in the locker room like, "We wasted them! Wiped the floor with them! They couldn't get a thing past us!"
Eavesdropping, you might think the score was 120-0, but when you ask your friend on the team what the actual score was, he replies, "120-105." You realize it was still a decisive victory, but not anywhere near as drastic as the rhetoric alone would lead you to believe. The basketball team is not telling lies in the locker room. They simply expect you to understand trash talk is an exaggerated way of speaking. Throughout the ancient Middle East, there are loads of examples of this trash talk. It was the way they talked about war.
The Old Testament itself makes clear it is using hyperbole. The drastic language is very rare; it only shows up a few times, and every time it does, we only have to go a little farther in the story to find the same enemies (that were supposedly wiped out) are still very much alive, still very powerful, and still causing problems.
Joshua 9-12, for example, is one of the few places this language shows up. Thirty-one Canaanite kings rally their powerful military forces "as numerous as the sands on the seashore" to take out Israel's rag-tag group of homeless, wandering, ex-slaves. It is worth noting the battle is depicted as defensive for Israel, facing genocidal extinction. But God fights for Israel.
Israel celebrates the victories with exaggerated war rhetoric, saying that Joshua defeated all the kings of Canaan, destroyed all the Canaanites, and captured all the land of Canaan. But this is clearly not the case. We are still in the book of Joshua: most of Israel's encounters with Canaan come in the following books of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel. David's battle with Goliath is still many generations away. When we zoom out from the specific verse to the surrounding story, it is clear the basketball team is simply bragging in the locker room.
Israel is using ancient trash talk.
It is also worth noting in this passage that Joshua is described as having done this, "just as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded." (11:12, 15, 20) This indicates the Old Testament understands God's original commands through Moses, not just the way they were later carried out, to be the hyperbole of exaggerated warfare rhetoric.
Another example like this can be found in 1 Samuel 15, where it is said that Saul "totally destroyed" the Amalekites (with the sole exception of Agag, the military leader killed later in the passage, and the best of the plunder Saul kept for himself), but we don't have to read much farther before the Amalekite armies are back again in 1 Samuel 30, powerful and causing problems as ever.
So, we are expected to read this language, not literally, but as exaggerated war rhetoric. Israel is, like all her neighbors, simply trash-talking.
'Driven out' vs. 'Killed off'
Finally, the Canaanites are "driven out," not "killed off." The phrase "drive out" is the primary language used for the Canaanites, showing up more than fifty times in the Old Testament (in contrast, the drastic marching orders are rare and show up in only a few places).
"Driven out" is the language of eviction, not murder. And like a rowdy dancer bounced from a club, if you're driven out the good news is you're still alive.
God is like a gardener chasing out the hooligans who've been trashing his vineyard for far too long. God chases out "larger and stronger" nations that rag-tag Israel could never take on by herself. "The Lord will drive out these nations before you … nations larger and stronger than you" (Deuteronomy 11:23).
This is not an overnight ejection but a gradual eviction. God evicts Canaan "little by little" over many generations. "Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land" (Exodus 23:30).
If Canaan's getting the boot, God is the foot. God is the primary one doing the evicting, not Israel. "The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you" (Joshua 23:9).In a telling piece of imagery, we're told the Canaanites were so racked by violence and injustice that the land itself "vomited them out" (Leviticus 18:25).
When Israel does enter the picture, they are simply finishing off a battle God has already won, jumping in on a victory God has already brought to the point of completion. The "drive out" passages inspire courage for the fearful, not bloodlust for the greedy. For example, Joshua tells his units, "Though the Canaanites have iron chariots and though they are strong, you can drive them out" (Joshua 17:18).
Joshua is calling for bravery among his outgunned, outmanned, underdog slaves. Reminding them that God is the one leading the charge, and he will fight for them. Canaan's imperial powers have been trashing God's garden for way too long, so God gives it over to his weak and wandering homeless slaves.
Conclusion
Israel's encounter with Canaan was way less violent than many today believe it to be. It was not a "genocide," and did not involve the indiscriminate slaughter of defenseless civilians. When we preach on the holy war passages of the Old Testament, we can help our people reconcile these difficult passages with the goodness of God by: Distinguishing ancient military cities from modern civilian population centers;
Demonstrating the ancient trash talk used in these passages as exaggerated war rhetoric; Developing "drive out" as the primary language of eviction, not murder. Author: Joshua Butler
The word for thousand, in Hebrew, is eleph. That word is directly related to the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet: aleph. As the first letter, aleph also stands for one or unit. In Hebrew, eleph is the highest cardinal numeral or (and now it comes) it refers to a unit at the highest level. So Gideon complains in the book of Judges:
And he said to him, Ah Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my thousand (eleph) is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house. Judges 6:15 (Darby Version)
The context makes it clear that Gideon is actually referring to his family-clan. Something similar occurs in the famous prophecy of Micah 5:2.
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among thethousands (>eleph) of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me [that is] to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old… (KJV)
The rendering thousand(s) is concordant and completely correct with the understanding that it is not necessarily a fixed number. Also in many other languages, thousand, idiomatically represents a large number. In English we have millepedes (one thousand feet). For understanding the many thousands, for example, in the book of Numbers, but also in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, this is a very important fact. I admit: sometimes it also is quite complex, because where is eleph to be taken as a 1000 and where as a unit, clan or family? With the available Hebrew text we now (!) have, it is oftentimes not possible to trace or figure out. I leave that here for what it is, but do point out, however, that when we consider six hundred clans (family groups) that left Egypt, the number of people becomes much more logical. In chapter one of Numbers, verse 16, we find an extensive list of thousands:
These are the called of the congregation, princes of the stocks of their fathers; they are heads of thousands (> eleph) of Israel.
In the remainder of Numbers 1, the tribes individually are listed, beginning with Reuben.
… for the stock of Reuben were forty-six thousand five hundred.Numbers 1:21 (CLV)
Is this about 46,500 men or about forty-six thousands, i.e., forty-six families with a total of five hundred men, rounded off, (from twenty years and older; 1:20)? I believe the latter. When we add up the numbers of the tribes, that gives a total of 598 thousands (clan’s) with a sum of 5500 men of 20 years and older. Now, however, we encounter a problem, because in Hebrew it would be viewed as: 598eleph with a total of 5 eleph 500. The first eleph indicates the number of families (genera) while the second eleph is a specific number. To the writers (copyists) this distinction was not clear. They have added the second eleph to the first group. And so they wrote as a total ( see 1:46): six hundred three eleph five hundred, that is, five eleph added to the first group and five eleph at the second group omitted.
However that may be, if we start with 598 eleph (families), with a total of 5500 men over twenty years, then the total population at the exodus was, roughly speaking, 20,000 and at most 30,000 people. A major undertaking, but one that fits well within the proportions of the Biblical description.
For a population figure of about 20,000 people, it is reasonable to have two midwives (Ex.1:15), but for a population of two to three million, such would be meaningless. A route via the “king’s road” (Num.20:17) with 20,000 people, sensibly presents a procession of 20 kilometers, but with two or three million people, it means a procession of two or three thousand kilometers – that is the distance between Amsterdam – Athens! Having twenty thousand people circling the city of Jericho is impressive, but with two or three million, it is downright beyond all proportions.
In closing: when we want to know what a word in the Bible means, we should not consult the dictionary, but the concordance. How is the word used in Scripture and how narrow or wide is the meaning? The conclusion here must be: the Hebrew word eleph can, besides 1000, also mean clan or family. This concept is of great importance, because it is arming us against unfounded attacks on Scripture.
