Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does God Commit Genocide in the Old Testament? | Questions You're Asking | Leviticus 18.20-26

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're answering questions that you're asking. A lot of these are coming from our Facebook page. So if you follow 10-minute Bible Talks on Facebook, you can ask questions that you want us to answer or vote on questions that other people are asking. Welcome back to 10-minute Bible Talks. We're in a series right now where we are answering questions that.

Starting point is 00:00:36 you guys are asking. And in the last couple episodes, I've tried my best to answer questions about whether Christians should be watching The Bachelor and whether you will ever find the one person that you were meant to marry, that one person who will satisfy your heart. Today we're going to wrestle with maybe what you'd think of as a more traditional Bible question, and it's a good one. And here's the question that we've been asked. Does God commit genocide in the ultimate? Testament. Now, this question has been around for a really long time, but it's made its way back into the forefront of the conversation because of Richard Dawkins' book, The God Delusion. In the God Delusion, Dawkins, who you are probably familiar with, he's an atheist,

Starting point is 00:01:21 he attacks Christianity on the basis that God is a genocidal maniac. But maybe before we go any further, it just might be smart to have a good, solid, working definition of genocide. It's one of those words that we hear, and we probably know what it means, but let's try to get a more precise definition. And here's a really simple one. Genocide is the mass killing of a particular ethnic group. In other words, it's intentionally trying to wipe out, kill, murder a group of people because of their ethnicity. So you could think of the Nazi campaign against Jews as genocide.

Starting point is 00:02:02 In fact, the Nazi leadership was charged with genocide. at the Nuremberg trials. But unfortunately, that's not the only example of ethnic cleansing or genocide throughout human history. There are plenty of other examples, sadly so. Now, everybody agrees that genocide is deeply, morally wrong, which is why the charge that God calls his people to commit genocide, to commit ethnic cleansing, it's why it's so serious. The charge is that God commanded genocide when he called Israel to kill all the Canaanites. And there are a few passages that say that. Those passages can be found in Deuteronomy or Joshua, 1st Samuel. Let's look at a couple. So here's Deuteronomy chapter 7, the first couple verses. When the Lord your God brings you into the land, you are about to

Starting point is 00:02:55 enter and occupy. He will clear away many nations ahead of you. And then he lists some of these nations. These are nations that make up the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gyrgyzites, the Amirites, the Canaanites, the Parasites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. These seven nations are greater and more numerous than you. When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them, make no treaties with them, and show them no mercy. So it sounds as if God has called his people to utterly and completely destroy these particular nations that lived in the promised land. Here's another example that people cite to say that God causes people to commit genocide. It's found in 1 Samuel 15. It says, now go and attack the amicalites and totally destroy

Starting point is 00:03:47 all the belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. Well, that sounds like genocide, doesn't it? So how should we as Christians respond to this charge? Well, I think we should start by just trying to understand what the author meant. The Bible is read as the inspired word of God, but it comes to us as a piece of writing, a piece of literature. And what we have to ask ourselves always, not just to answer this question, but to understand the Bible in general, is what did the author, whether you're thinking of that as God or the human being that he worked through to write this, what did they intend to communicate in this text that we're reading? Did God really call his people to wipe out nations and commit ethnic cleansing? I think the answer is no. I think part of what we're seeing here is a

Starting point is 00:04:44 literary device called hyperbole. We often say things that we don't mean to be taken literally. We might say, after an athletic competition that they crushed that team, or we got destroyed, or we killed them. When we use those phrases in that context, we're using hyperbole or exaggerated language. We didn't literally kill someone, nor were we utterly destroyed. So some scholars believe that hyperbole is the best way to understand the language of Israel's conquest in the promised land. Well, why? Well, there's really important clues inside the text. So I read earlier the passage out of Deuteronomy 7, the first couple verses, where it ended by saying that these people should be completely destroyed, make no treaties with them, and show them no mercy.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Now listen to the very next verse. You must not intermarry with them. Do not let your daughters and sons marry their sons and daughters, for they will lead your children away from me to worship other gods. then the anger of the Lord will burn against you and he will quickly destroy you. So did you catch that? If you're not to intermarry with them, then you obviously didn't kill all of them. So when it said to utterly destroy them, it didn't mean to kill all of them. Was there a military battle?

Starting point is 00:06:08 Absolutely. Were soldiers killed? Sure. But he is not saying to wipe out a whole ethnic group of people. Because if he did, why in the world would he tell them to not. intermarry with them. It just doesn't make any sense. Now, we'll come back to this in a moment, but did you notice that when I was reading verse four, it said that the reason that these people are to be driven out of the land and the reason that you're not to intermarry with them is because

Starting point is 00:06:36 they will lead you away to worship other gods. So this isn't about ethnicity. It's about worship. God warns Israel in plenty of places in the Old Testament that if it turns to idols, turns away from God to worship other gods that are really not gods at all, then God's wrath will turn on them too. This is not about ethnicity. It's about worship. But let's stick on this issue of hyperbole, that the Bible uses hyperbolic language to communicate a point.

Starting point is 00:07:10 So let's turn to Joshua chapter 10, verses 36 through 40. And remember, Joshua is the book in which the Israelites are going into the promised land to take possession of it. And you can read 36 through 40 on your own. I'm just going to read a few important phrases. There's a bunch of names of places, and I don't want us to get sidetracked by that right now. But listen to these phrases found in that passage. They left no survivors. They totally destroyed it and everyone in it. Everyone in it, they totally destroyed. They left no survivors. Again, a little bit later, he left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the Lord the God of Israel had commanded. So Joshua 10, 36 through 40, makes it pretty clear that in this particular

Starting point is 00:08:01 geographic area, there were no survivors, that everyone who breathed had been totally destroyed. But the very next book of the Bible, judges, starts with that same geographic location and people living in it. So in other words, if everyone had been totally destroyed, then how in the world were Canaanites still occupying those places? And the apparent discrepancy can be explained by the use of hyperbole, or what people call ancient war rhetoric. They totally destroyed their opponents, but not literally, it simply means that they had a decisive military victory, that God had given them the promised land that he had told them he would give them. God keeps his promises. But ancient war rhetoric is part of the language and the linguistic patterns that you find in the ancient Near East. In fact, you don't just

Starting point is 00:08:59 find it among the Israelites. You find that same hyperbolic language, especially when it comes to war in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Moabite, Aramaic descriptions of war. So when we read about the utter destruction of ethnic groups in the Old Testament, let's be on the lookout for hyperbolic language. The clues are right there in the text. But I think there are a couple other things than we can say besides hyperbole. For example, I think we can go back to the point that I made earlier that genocide is about ethnic cleansing. But that's not what God is calling people to in the Old Testament. See, ethnic cleansing is based on racial hatred. But God's heart has always been for all the nations of the world. All the way back in the beginning of Genesis,

Starting point is 00:09:49 when God makes a promise to Abraham, he promises that he's going to bless all the nations of the earth through him. And all the nations of the earth are invited to believe in Jesus. And we see in the book of Revelation that all the nations of the earth are represented in heaven. In fact, even among the Canaanites in the Old Testament, what we find is people repenting and avoiding. And avoid death, people turning from their sin and turning to the living God. Rahab, the prostitute in Joshua 2, is a great example of that. So we don't find ethnic cleansing. What we find is that those who place themselves in opposition to God eventually face God's judgment.

Starting point is 00:10:34 But all people, from every tongue-tried people and nation, all people are invited to become part of God's family, God's sons and daughters. So why did God wage war against the Canaanites? Well, the Bible is pretty clear. It was as punishment against their sin. In Genesis 15, hundreds of years before Israel takes the promised land, God says this, after four generations, your descendants will return here to this land, for the sin of the Amorites do not yet warrant their destruction. In other words, God was patient with the people who lived in the promised land. He invited them to turn from their sin and to turn from him, but they resisted. They hardened their hearts toward God, and eventually judgment came.

Starting point is 00:11:24 Leviticus 18 tells us about some of the sins of the Canaanites, and it's pretty serious. In verse 20, you see that they're committing adultery. In verse 21, they are offering their children as sacrifices to Molek. There's other specific sexual sins that are mentioned. And then it says this in verse 24. Do not defile yourself in any of these ways, for the people I am driving out before you have defiled themselves in all these ways. Because the entire land has become defiled, I am punishing the people who live there. I will cause the land to vomit you out. You must obey all my decrees and regulations, you must not commit any of these detestable sins. This applies to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you. So do you see that God's judgment

Starting point is 00:12:18 came against sin, rebellion against him? And again, it wasn't just directed toward Canaanites or toward other people. Israel was also warned that if they followed in those same sinful patterns, if they didn't repent of their sin, that they too would experience God's judgment. So does God call his people to commit genocide, ethnic cleansing? Absolutely not. Instead, God promises salvation for all who turn from their sin and believe in Him. From every tribe, from every country, from every race, from every language, people will be worshipping God forever in eternity.

Starting point is 00:12:59 But God also promises judgment against all who refused to say. submit to him. That's true of the Canaanites, but it's true of other nations, it's true of Israel, and it's true of us. So these stories can serve as a warning to us, to wake up to our sin, to treat it seriously, to turn from our sin and put our hope in Jesus. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does God Commit Genocide in the Old Testament? | Questions You're Asking | Leviticus 18.20-26

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