Once Again, the Canaanites

Joshua 11-12:  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=josh%2011-12&version=NIV

            Again, we are faced with divinely-sanctioned violence of an almost unimaginable scope.  The verse that struck me was Joshua 11:20, “For it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.”  I’ll admit, ‘without mercy’ was hard for me.

            I’ve made the case repeatedly, and I think it stands up well, that the Lord had a unique concern for ‘sanitizing’ the promised land of all vestiges of idolatry that would entice and ensnare Israel.  That’s certainly part of the story of how the Lord had Israel deal with the Canaanites.

            Beyond that, it might help if we put passages like this into an ‘eschatological’ framework, that is, from the perspective of the final judgment.  The Scriptures are clear: on the last day, there will be a great judgment and those humans who have rejected the Lord and His ways will be condemned.  What we see in the Canaanites is, in a sense, the firstfruits of that judgment.  I suppose the value of that insight is simply this:  if we are offended by the destruction of the Canaanites, we will also be offended by the final punishment of unbelieving humanity, and the solution to that is to get busy in mission so that they are fewer numbered among the goats (Matthew 25:32-33).