Ravi Zacharias talks on God and War in the Old Testament
The rules of war for God ’s people are laid down in Deuteronomy 20, and they represent a control of justice, fairness, and kindness in the use of the sword. Special hardship conditions were defined as a ground for excusing individual soldiers from military duty until those conditions were cleared ( Deut. 20:5–7). Even those who had no such excuse but were simply afraid and reluctant to fight were likewise allowed to go home (v. 8). Unlike the contemporary armies of other nations, who might attack a city without giving it an opportunity to surrender on terms (1 Sam. 11:2–3), the armies of Israel were required to grant a city an opportunity to surrender without bloodshed before moving on to mount a full-scale siege and destruction of the city. In this context, the women and children were to be spared from death and cared for by their captors (Deut. 20:14). Only in the case of the particularly depraved inhabitants of Canaan itself was there to be total destruction (v. 16). The reason g