Holy War or Genocide?
When you go out to war against your enemies, and seehorses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for theLordyour God iswith you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.And when you draw near to the battle,the priest shall come forward and speak to the peopleand shall say to them, Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them,for theLordyour God is he who goes with youto fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory.Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, Is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has notenjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man enjoy its fruit.And is there any man who has betrothed a wife and has not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man take her.And the officers shall speak further to the people, and say,Is there any man who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.And when the officers have finished speaking to the people, then commanders shall be appointed at the head of the people.When you draw near to a city to fight against it,offer terms of peace to it.And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you.But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.And when theLordyour God gives it into your hand,you shall put all its males to the sword,but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, youshall take as plunder for yourselves. Andyou shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which theLordyour God has given you.Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here.
Butin the cities of these peoples that theLordyour God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes,butyou shall devote them to complete destruction,the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as theLordyour God has commanded,thatthey may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so yousin against theLordyour God.
When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it,you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you?Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls.
Introduction:
Why is this a tough text? Much of this passage might seem like normal rules for war that would fit any nation and almost any context throughout history. For much of history, and especially for Israel in this Ancient Near Eastern context, war was a normal part of life. Some of you know this more than others. If you have been in the military or have a family member or friend in the military you know more than most about the ins and outs of war. Much of this text falls into that category, and most people apart from pacifists believe this kind of war can be morally justified. Regular Bible readers are used to much of this kind of language as well. In v1-4 God promises to be with His people as they go out to fight, and because of that they dont have to fear, because God will fight for them. In v5-9 God even allows different categories of people to go back home and leave the warfront. In v10-15 there is an offer of peace extended to conquered foes, a command for tribute to be made to Israel, and a charge to make the defeated people slaves to Israel. If they refuse to submit to these commands, Israel was to kill all the men of the city and plunder all their goods. Theres even a command to not cut down all the trees at the end of this chapter in v19-20. Again, language like this isnt all that surprising to read.
The tough part of this text comes in v16-18 when God gives commands for a certain kind of war. A war where God commands His people to devote His enemies to complete destruction. Where no man, woman, or child is to be left alive. Where nothing that breathes is to remain. What are we to do with this? Questions abound here: is God a moral monster for commanding this? Is this just an example of primitive barbaric religiosity? Does this bring into question the credibility of the OT? Does this bring the doctrine of inerrancy into question? Does this reveal that the God of the OT really is different than the God of the NT? Well touch on some of these, but perhaps the main question in view tonight is this: is this genocide or is this holy war?
This is the tough text before us tonight. What are we to think of this? Well, as you can imagine there are options on how to interpret this passage and others like it. Five options to be specific. For the rest of our time, Id like to take you through those five options, critique and comment on them while also encouraging you toward two of them over the others, and finish with some conclusions to keep in mind.
Option 1: Re-Evaluating God
One very common way to interpret texts like this in our modern day is to conclude that the warfare presented here is nothing more than unwarranted violence, and that God who commands this must, therefore, be re-evaluated. This God is either wicked Himself, or He simply doesnt exist altogether. In effect making the warfare here a prime example of one people using their own religious dogma to fuel, not just hatred of other peoples, but to justify the entire slaughter of other peoples. In this view the religious dogma itself is the problem, making the remedy the removal of all religion in the world. If this occurs, peace will reign and war will end. Much like the song Imagine by John Lennon.
It should go without saying this is not a good option to take on this text. It is generally only taken by those who embrace an atheistic worldview. Thus, this view is at odds with and contradicts every tradition of Christianity. It is overly utopian and unrealistic.
Option 2: Re-Evaluating the OT
This second option is yet another very common way to interpret this passage in our modern day. While the first option throws God into doubt for His seemingly barbaric ways, this second option throws the Bible into doubt for the same. But there is some nuance to notice with this view. Rather than casting doubt on the whole of Scripture, this view believes our passage tonight and all others like it are either not authoritative texts or not historical texts. There is some variety in this view, and the differences tend to come down to what the interpreter believes about the inerrancy of the Scripture. Remember inerrancy is the doctrine that teaches there are no errors in the Bible. So for example, one person who falls into this second option could hold to a form of inerrancy yet deny that these texts were ever a part of the original due to seemingly severe nature of our passage. This would make the rest of the Bible inerrant, just not in these passages. Another example would be one who denies inerrancy. This person would believe our passage is an example of a place where the Bible does contain an error due to seemingly severe nature of it.
As before, it should go without saying this interpretation is also not a good option to take on this text. There does seem to be a struggle within the individual who takes this view to see the Bible as being from God in a way. But ultimately this passage is denied due to how it offends a persons sensitivities.
Option 3: Re-Evaluating Interpretation
This third interpretive option does uphold the inerrancy of the Bible and does try to honor God in handling this passage, but this view does some gymnastics with the text. Instead of taking the passage on its own terms, within the genre of historical narrative that it comes to us in, this interpreter says the language in Deut. 20 is to be taken hyperbolic or metaphorical, instead of taking it literally. In effect making the conquest of Canaan more a spiritual reality than a physical reality.
Now, there are problems with this view. First, while I do believe there is much hyperbole and metaphor in the Bible, this text isnt one of those places. It is clearly within historical narrative and thus ought to be taken literally. Second, this interpretation doesnt do anything to solve the seeming problems of this text. Even if you take this view, there are still dead Canaanites you have to deal with, and this view tends to shy away from that. Third, this view ends up attempting to soften the hard edges of the text using other kinds of speech found in the Bible. It just isnt a very plausible view.
Option 4: Re-Evaluating Violence
This fourth interpretive option upholds the nature of Scripture, seeing it as inerrant. It desires to honor God and not diminish Him in anyway. And desires to not soften away any hard edges in this passage. What does this view do with the language of the text? It affirms it, and it teaches that God truly did command the holy war on Canaan, saying the violence doled out on these peoples wasnt barbaric but morally warranted. In other words, this option teaches that the peoples in the land of Canaan were so sinful and wicked, that God commanded them to be purged from the land. The land, by the way, that God gave to His people. So for the unique purpose of keeping His people pure and holy, ensuring that they would not be infected by the sins of the pagan peoples around them, God gave the order for the holy war. This view makes sure to state this was a unique command, to be given in this moment only, and should not be seen as a justification for any kind of religious war after this point.
This is a good view. Many hold to this view, citing other similar examples like the flood in Noahs day and Sodom and Gomorrah where God carried out similar cleansings. And dont forget the same kind of violence that brought Gods people into the land, God also used against His own people later on in the exile as punishment for their own sins. But, while this is a good view, I see a problem with it. There is a difference with those events and this event, that I dont think this view reckons with. In the flood and at Sodom and Gomorrah it was God Himself who carried out the cleansing, while here He commands His people to do it themselves. This is one reason why those who hold onto the first three views do not like this view, because it gives the impression that God is forcing His people to do wicked acts. But I think that such a critique is easily defensible.
Option 5: Herem Warfare
This last option, to me, seems to be the best option.
It teaches everything that option 4 does, but it adds something more to it that is unique and needed in order to understand this tough passage. It introduces the reality of herem warfare. Herem is a Hebrew word that refers to anything and everything the Lord desires to be devoted to destruction in warfare. This word herem comes from v17. There we read you shall devote them to complete destruction. This phrase in Hebrew is two words, herem heremam. It means as we see here in the ESV, devote to destruction, or destroy them utterly, some translations even say, set apart as an offering to the Lord. This is nothing less than a declaration of divine warfare, for the express purpose of cleansing the promise land of its sinful residents so that Israel could move in. Deuteronomy 7:1-9 makes the same point as our passage does here in chapter 20, including the phrase devote the peoples of the land to complete destruction. Also, this view makes sure to mention that herem warfare was a common reality in many nations in the ANE.
So in this fifth interpretive option, Israel was called by God to herem warfare, that is, they were to utterly destroy everything that had breath in the promise land. In their war against the sinful pagan peoples, God was cleaning house for Israel to move in. Unholy people taken away, Israel comes in. A holy land, for Gods holy people. The land is Gods, the judgment is just, and Hes preparing it for His people. The problem, this view maintains, was that Israel didnt do as thorough a job as God desired, and left many pagan peoples in Canaan, which eventually proved to be thorns in their side.
Conclusion:
These then, are the five options generally put forward to understand the tough passage of Deut. 20. Again, I do not think this is genocide, it is holy herem warfare. This imagery will later taken up throughout history in positive/negative ways.
Negatively, this was something of the incentive given for the things like the crusades. I call this a negative use of herem warfare because it was just meant for a time. Gods people now no longer belong to one nation, but believers of all nations. Thus, we do not fight to extend any geo-political border or nation here on earth. The Kingdom of God moves forward spiritually.
Positively, this image of herem warfare would be taken up by many puritans to describe how God works in the soul of His people to make them holy. They would describe like this: how do we grow in grace and mature in the Lord? Yes, we give ourselves to the Word, to prayer, and to the fellowship of the saints. But in these things we trust that God is waging war on all the sin hiding and lingering in the deep crevasses of our souls. This He does, in us, for us, that we would more resemble the image of His Son.
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