Learning To Love A God Who Commanded Genocide
“16 But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.” — Deuteronomy 20:16–18
One of the biggest challenges with reading the Bible is dealing with the verses that your pastor may not. The list of verses that act as knee-buckling curveballs for many Christians is a bit lengthy. Chief among them is written above, Deuteronomy 20:16–18 where God, seemingly, commands the Israelites to “save alive nothing that breathes” and “devote [the Canaanites] to complete destruction.”
The first time I read this on my own, it made my stomach turn.
This passage, along with others, has long been chipping away at the collective faith. Some haven’t found a way to reconcile what seems to be an all-loving creator dressed in a violent war king’s clothing. The juxtaposition of the two is too much, and they walk away from the tension.
Atheists like Richard Dawkins capitalize on verses like this. His rhetoric spins this verse like a top, appealing to our inherent moral compasses to suggest that God, if real, is not a good God.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” — Richard Dawkins
Two Modes of Reconciliation
The way I see it, there are two primary models to be used when reading these verses. These aren’t clever reading tricks or loopholes used to quickly patch the hole in a sinking boat — these are recurring themes in the Bible that elevate the text as an accurate showcase of humanity.
Firstly, there is hyperbole, or extreme exaggeration.
Additionally, there is anthropomorphism, or incorrectly attributing human wants or desires to God.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a literary devices that overstates the facts for the sake of emphasis. It’s unbelievably common, and it drives home the author’s point very well. Take these examples:
“My suitcase weighs a ton.”
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse-sized GoGurt.”
“My neighbor is the dumbest guy in town.”
“I ate a million GoGurts”
“The king [Solomon] made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills.”
See?
Though inspired by God, the Bible was not penned by God. It was penned by man. And men (especially) are hyperbolic. Picture this: an Israelite returns to his tribe and writes down “God told us to kill everything that breathes” because in a war-based tribal culture, you’re trying to show those around you that your God isn’t looking to play games — he means business.
We know that ancient societies used hyperbole. Preston Sprinkle, in his book Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence highlights this:
“Outside the Bible, hyperbole appears frequently among ancient nations, especially in their warfare accounts. For instance, the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III said that ‘the numerous army of Mitanni was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally.’ But historically speaking, manky folks of the Mitanni survived well after Thutmose had died. They weren’t ‘annihilated totally.’ They were simply defeated.”
At some point we have to step back and read the Bible as a work written by normal humans; not historical record keeping. There are contradictions, errors, and inaccuracies which do not take away meaning; they only elevate authenticity. We get ourselves into trouble whenever we equate “inspired by God” with “one meaning.” It is only when we put those two ideals together that we become disappointed with what we find. Pete Enns wrote in Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament:
“It is worth asking what standards we can reasonably expect of the Bible, seeing that it is an ancient Near Eastern document and not a modern one. Are the early stories in the Old Testament to be judged on the basis of standards of modern historical inquiry and scientific precision, things that ancient peoples were not at all aware of? Is it not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to standards they understood, or are modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have made use of them?”
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is when we project our own desires and wants on God, then act like he is the one who truly desires those things for us.
#Blessed
Anthropomorphism is sort of like giving your parents a Christmas list, then telling them they are great gift givers when you get all you asked for.
We do this all the time. When something unfolds the way we wanted it to, we attribute it to God whether we actually know if it was his will or not. But we don’t know the will of God as it pertains to daily living, so how can we attribute our wants to what he wants?
I have friends who have bought new cars which they attributed as a blessing from God. The car they had worked fine, but somehow this new vehicle (which was very fancy) was handed to them as another crucial part of God’s divine plan for them.
Another friend of mine became the top salesman in his region, which he believed was what God planned for him long before he was born.
I am in no way saying these things aren’t part of God’s plan, but I do raise an eyebrow when everything we do seems to hit the bullseye with God’s will.
The nation of Israel is as human as any other nation, and I have no doubt they struggled with this. If the world around them is centered on war, taking land, and growing your nation via fighting, would you not attribute your sacking of a city to God?
This was common practice in the ancient world. The Mesha Stele offers a look at ancient worldview from the perspective of the Moabites, who worshiped Chemosh. Take this excerpt:
“And I have built this sanctuary for Chemosh in Karchah, a sanctuary of salvation, for he saved me from all aggressors, and made me look upon all mine enemies with contempt.”
Attributing your war successes to your God was the norm.
And it’s still the norm now.
Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense, believed that invading Iraq was the will of God.
The Bible Lied?
Certainly not. The Bible houses a collection of truths that were passed down to us, not to be taken at face value. We must account for adjustments in our own reading that, in turn, account for translating, scribes, oral tradition, and worldview/context. Ultimately, the objective meaning of the text is created by the author, not the reader. Our job as the reader is to do our best to understand the authors’ intent, and then we can draw our own meaning.
Pete Enns said it much more eloquently than I in his book The Bible Tells Me So (which I cannot recommend enough):
“Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it’s not meant to be, isn’t a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It’s actually thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of an inner disquiet, a warning signal that deep down we do not really trust God at all.”
To read the Bible as a word-by-word concrete vault of absolutism is to deny it as the ultimate display of humanity’s full spectrum. Embracing all the nasty parts of the Bible — the ones that make you fidget in your seat and force questions out past the lump in your throat — make the work of the cross more powerful. By recognizing the grit and grime, we understand the saving power of the cross.
God, though so high above us, repeatedly stoops to our level and meets us where we are. In the midst of our misunderstandings and shortcomings, he still chooses to commune with his creation — those he loves to no end.
Which is what it’s all about.
