Truth Unites - The Conquest of Canaan: Genocide or Just?

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Gavin Ortlund addresses the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua. Was it a just punishment of evil or itself an evil act of genocide? Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

The conquest of Canaan described in the book of Joshua as one of the toughest objections that can be brought against Christianity. In my opinion, it may be the single toughest one, and the things we're going to get into in this video are such that I would encourage people who are under the age of 18 or who are sensitive to violence to just not watch this video because there's no way around addressing this topic, but to get into some pretty brutal historical realities. I've been studying hard to make this video. I'm excited to share it with you all. I started thinking about this more. Though I've struggled with this in the past, but I started thinking about this more after Alex O'Connor had William Lane Craig on his channel to talk about this. Dr. Craig is one of the world's leading Christian philosophers and apologists, and they were discussing this. And the specific issue of the killing of children that is involved in this event, listen to how Alex responded at one point. There's nothing I can say to prove that that's wrong, that maybe God can just permit things like the killing of innocent children by an Israelite clan. Maybe that is just okay.

But the problems this raises include things like this is raised by Randall Rouser. He points out that this seems to undermine our ability to trust moral intuition. In other contexts, such as in the moral argument of the existence of God, you might appeal to the fact that we all know that certain things are morally right and morally wrong. And we sort of use that feeling to say that there must be some objective element of morality in the universe, and we use that to construct an argument for the existence of God. It seems, as Rousa points out, that nothing could be more intuitively wrong to me in this regard than the killing of an innocent child.

I think this worry about the undermining of our basic moral intuitions is a totally fair one. And as a person who knows what it's like to be mistreated by those in power and who has resolved to give my life to being a peacemaker and to stand against violence, I appreciate it. the concerns that a lot of people have about this topic. I want to just start by acknowledging. Tough, tough area, tough topic. And I know a lot of Christians who struggle with this. I've, I've known Christians who, when they take a deeper look at this and kind of open their eyes to really look into it, they have this deep sense of fear and kind of an uneasiness, like, God, can I really trust you? You know, are you the God that I thought you were? Are you, have I misunderstood you

well along, you know? Are you the person I thought you were when I surrendered my life to you? Those are terrible fears to be stabbing at your heart, these dark fears like this. And they contribute to people not only struggling with faith, but in some cases departing altogether from faith. And I understand the pain of that. So, but I think there are answers that I'm going to try to share in this video that can help people in this area, that really can change our perspective about it, I hope. And I've been reading book after book on this topic like a kid at the library, you know, curious reading. And I want to share in this video with you. I want to offer context and perspective that I think can reduce those fears. And my goal is to try to help people feel a sense of assurance

about the gospel, that to feel a sense of assurance that God is real, God is trustworthy, your sins can be forgiven, there is real hope. You know, the gospel is a message of tremendous good news, and I want people to feel assured in that. That's really the goal of all my apologetics work. Let me share a metaphor that captures the kind of change that can come when we have context about something. So last week, I was in New York City with Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics gathering all the other fellows whom I respect so much, and I was studying this topic, so because I admired these other apologists so much, I was asking them all, whenever we have like a meal, a sitting next to someone I'm saying, what do you think about this? You know, and we're

So lots of conversations about the conquest of Canaan. We're at a Yankees game one night, and I'm sitting next to my friend, Glenn Scribner, whom you know, I've shared his videos. He has a wonderful YouTube channel called Speak Life. Check it out. I'm asking his thoughts. He shared this metaphor that's so helpful for the importance of context. He said, and I'll put it in my own words,

imagine that you're watching Star Wars episode four, the original Star Wars movie, 1997-ish, but you don't watch the whole movie. All you watch is from the moment Luke SkyW, Walker shoots the torpedoes and you see them going into the exhaust port of the Death Star and you see Grand Moff Tarkin, you see the Death Star gunners pulling levers, you see Rebel Ships flying away, and then you see the Death Star explode, and then you stop watching at that point. So maybe you've watched a minute, less than a minute. If that's all you watch, that's going to give you one kind of impression and you might basically be saying something like, why are they killing all these people,

you know? If you watch the entire movie and you see that scene in context, you have a completely different perspective. It may not even occur to you to ask a question like that. That's the difference that context can make. That's what I hope this video will do for the conquest of Canaan, situating it in relation to the entire biblical story. I have basically two arguments that I want to make. The first is about ancient warfare rhetoric, and the second is about divine judgment. Before diving in, just a quick note, I'm going to have a separate video on the specific issue of how Israel treated women in the context of war and the concern that a lot of people bring up about basically war rape. Did the Israelites commit war rape? And we'll talk about Numbers 21 and especially

Deuteronomy 21, 10 to 14. I'm just flagging that. So if that isn't addressed in this video, you'll understand why. That's so important that it merits its own full video. Look for that about a week, a week and a half after this one comes out, probably a week after. So with that said, let's dive in and don't forget if you're willing to like the video, subscribe, share the video, et cetera, that all helps. So first, let's talk about warfare rhetoric in the ancient world. And basically what I want to emphasize here is that right at the beginning, this point is not an answer to the problem.

Okay. This point is simply a framing remark that helps us locate what the problem is that needs to be answered. So I hope that people won't respond to this video, responding. to this point as though I treated this as like a solution to the problem. It's not a solution, it's a framing of what the problem is. Okay, so I just want to make that very clear, but it's really important still. It changes things significantly. So here's my argument. The biblical descriptions of these military expeditions into Canaan involve ancient warfare rhetoric, which employed hyperbole

or exaggeration for effect of various different kinds, so that if you interpret these passages accurately it's not describing genocide or a wanton destruction of non-combatants as commonly supposed. Of course, if you're familiar with these issues at all, you know, I'm not making up this argument. I'm drawing from some scholarship. I'm not an Old Testament scholar. A lot of what I'm doing in this video is just popularizing some of the scholarship that's out there. But this isn't as crazy as you might first think. It's just like today, you know, we use almost in any competitive context.

there are these forms of sort of trash talking. In sports today, for example, we say things like, oh, we totally destroyed them, we mopped the floor with them, we annihilated them, we demolished them, et cetera, and what we mean is we won. We had a decisive victory. And that's the same in the ancient world with military conflicts. The language that sounds universal to us,

like every man and woman, young and old, everything that breathes, is actually speaking about not all people literally, but it's talking about the formal military opposition, and it's just a way of describing a decisive victory. Okay? So, and by the way, this is not a point that liberal theologians bring up or just an occasional apologist here or there. This is a well-represented view among conservative biblical scholars.

The motive for this view. Let me say this clearly, because I get attacked like this. The motive here is not to downplay what the Bible is saying or to soften it. the motive is accuracy to honor the scripture and be accurate about what it's saying. I really think this is what the scripture suggests. And so let me make my case here. First, I want to canvas examples of this warfare rhetoric from non-Israelite texts. And then second, we'll work through Deuteronomy, Joshua, judges, and I'll offer a series of reasons that I think are conclusive that show that there's, we might differ on the details of how much hyperbole there is, but there's a lot of hyperbole. You can't

deny hyperbole in these passages. It's actually not talking about. killing everybody. Okay? It's not talking about the targeting of non-combatants. Let me make that case. So one of the decisive ways you can see this in terms of outside of the nation of Israel is the way other nations will brag like this about destroying Israel. Okay? Pharaoh Mernepta in the 13th century BC. This is a commonly referenced example. He is a famous monument where he's boasting about destroying all these nations. And he talks about Israel and says Israel is no more his seed is not. Of course, we know that's not literally true. There's not a literal destruction of all Israel. King Meshah of Moab, similar language to describe the Israelite city of Nebo

on a monument that he built where he basically says, I sent by night and fought against it from the break of dawn until noon, taking it and slaying all. 7,000 men, boys, women, girls, and made servants where I had devoted them to destruction. There's that word harem. We'll return to that word a lot throughout this video. Actually, I'll come back to that just a moment. But just first to explain on this point, Matthew Lynch in his book, Flood and Fury, notes that the context of this claim suggests that it's not true that everybody in Nibo was killed. And he points out that a few lines earlier, Misha had also boasted, I have triumphed over him, that's Ahab, and over his house, while Israel hath perished forever.

So again, when you have these, later we're going to get verses in Joshua where there's this language of, you know, they perished, we destroyed them, et cetera. The verb harem is used. We'll talk about that. We have to remember these other passages that say the same thing about Israel. We destroyed Israel. There's so many examples of this. I'll just give a couple of representative examples.

You can get into the literature on this yourself and see a lot more. If you're interested, you could read Kenneth Kitchens' work on this, or you could read the work of Lawson Younger. There are two scholars working in this. Paul Copan has written a number of books, helpful books in this area that summarized a lot of these claims as well. You can see lots of examples. Here's a couple. Ramsey's the second. He's an Egyptian pharaoh.

He's describing the Battle of Kadesh, which is a famous battle against the Hittites. Somebody should make a movie about this battle. Kind of a fascinating event. And listen to how Ramsey describes it. I found the mass of chariots in whose midst I was scattering before my horses. Not one of them found his hand to fight. Their hearts failed in their bodies through fear of me. I slaughtered among them at my will.

Not one looked behind him. Not one turned around. Whoever fell down did not rise. Elsewhere, he says, speaking about himself and the third person here, His majesty slew the entire force of the foe from Kati, together with his great chiefs and all his brothers, as well as all the chiefs of all the countries that had come with him, their infantry and their chariotry falling on their faces one upon the other.

So you get a sense of kind of how people are taught, how wars can be described. But this is an example of where in this case, most scholars think that this battle resulted in a draw. Ramsey's was unable to capture Kadesh, though he killed a lot of Hittites. Nonetheless, you can see how people describe their military actions. Here's another example from Pharaoh Setti I, the first. He's boasting about his northern wars describing himself in the third person. he leaves not a limb that is an heir among them, and he that escapes his hand as a living captive is carried off to Egypt.

Well, clearly, the carrying off of the captives shows that the first claim, leaving not a limb, is hyperbolic. Another pharaoh, Tupmost the Third, or Tupmost the Great. He's a 15th century military leader. Some have called him the Napoleon of Egypt, and he's describing his military campaign against the Mitanians. He says, the numerous army of Maitani was overthrown with his, in the hour annihilated totally like those now not existent. But we know that the Metanians lived

on, and you can read about them fighting further into the 14th century. Here's one from a 10th century, Assyrian king, describing a victory over the Aramaans. I annihilated them. I scattered their substantial auxiliary troops, and I broke up their troop contingents. I captured those who attempted to escape. I caused their blood to flow like the waters of a river. Okay, Webb and Est, I hope I'm pronouncing his right, two authors of this book, which I'll talk about more in a second. Just note that just a few lines later, he admits that several hundred enemy troops did escape. And so the language of I annihilated them, I captured all who attempted to escape is an exaggeration. I'll put up one example from Sinakarib, a later Assyrian king whom you may be familiar with from the Bible.

And there's the phrase, no one escaped. So I'm just trying to give a little bit of a sampling. You can dive into this for more, but this gives you a little flavor. And this is not the only kind of hyperbole that's used in ancient warfare rhetoric. But the specific kind here, this is my own summary. I would say it's the language of totality in order to convey decisiveness. So people are saying, we destroy it everybody. But what they're really meaning is we won decisively.

okay and there so that happens a lot and there are good reasons to see that that is going on in the Bible as well to describe the conquest of Canaan so let me get into this and just make my case here again I think the Bible is actually pretty clear on this point so just to get into it a little bit we've already seen this Hebrew word herm often translated when it's a verb to totally destroy and this can also be used in other ways you can talk about something being given over to the Lord completely, like in the temple, for example. In Leviticus 27, this verb is used to describe a field or an animal that's been set apart to the Lord. But in the context of battle, it is a very particular meaning. Chris Wright refers to a to harem as that specific form of warfare in which

Yahweh is the chief protagonist and the enemy is renounced or devoted to him. So the conquest of Canaan is an example of what we can call harem warfare. I know I'm probably pronouncing the word wrong, but that's all right. I'm going to say it a lot, so I'm just going to say it like that, so I don't have to worry about it. This is a distinct kind of war from their typical war outside of the nation. So outside of the nation, your typical warfare that Israel would engage in Deuteronomy 20 versus 10 to 15 describe as you have to offer peace terms at the front end. But then in verse 16 and following, it's talking about harem warfare, where that's not the case. you devote them to complete destruction.

You can see those words there. Deuteronomy 2017, that's the kind of warfare that's in view here. Now, here's my argument. In the Bible, what this really means is the connotations carried by harem, complete destruction, are decisive victory with the result of a comprehensive overturning of power or a redirection of purpose. But it doesn't mean a universal loss of life. and I think this is just really impossible to deny if you work through the text carefully.

I know people will disagree, but let me make my case here. So starting with Deuteronomy 7-1 through 2, this is an important early text. We have this commandment where the commandment is devote these people to complete destruction. This is talking about various of the Canaanites and show no mercy to them. And then you'll find language a lot like this all throughout the narrative in Joshua, for example. and it sure sounds like, just in English translation on a first pass, it sure sounds like this is talking about, you know, everybody dies, no survivors, right? But already right here out of the gate, the very next verse, if you just keep reading,

there are these prohibitions against intermarriage. And so I'll put it up and you can see the juxtaposition here. And this already just raises some questions. Because if you actually think carefully about this, you wonder, wait a second, devote them to complete destruction, harem warfare, but also don't marry them. And you're saying, wait a second, which is it? Okay, you can't marry dead people. So all the commentators note this.

Ian Provin talks about this, and he says, all of this already raises real questions about the proper understanding of Haram. Long before, we sometimes that's how it's anglicized, long before we go into the matter of the typical language of the ancient Near East Conquest accounts. So the legitimacy of this question of like, what does that really mean complete destruction, harem warfare, ratchets up further when you go through Joshua and judges. Because over and over and over, you see that the people who are utterly destroyed or haremed keep popping up. They're still there in that same region. So looking through Joshua, the first five chapters of Joshua are kind of preparatory.

The people are crossing over the Jordan River. Joshua is commissioned, there's the spying on the land, they're circumcised, there's the Passover, and then the key military offensives are in Joshua 6 through 11. This is that key textual unit, Joshua 12, summarizes all the kings that were destroyed, and then Joshua 13 to the end of the book is describing the various allotments of how the land is divided up and so forth. But a lot of these famous stories like the walls of Jericho falling and so forth is in this unit, Joshua 6-211. And what will basically, it really sounds like they are successful in taking the

land in those chapters. Later in the book that we read that not one of all their enemies withstood them. Okay, that's talking about these battles in Joshua 6 through 11. And at the end of this section, chapter 11, ends saying that Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel. according to their tribal allotments, and the land had rest from war. Okay? So it sounds like, you know, what God promised to the patriarchs, what God commanded through Moses, now has been executed through Joshua.

Then you get through the list of defeated kings in chapter 12, and chapter 13 picks back up. You fast forwarded until where Joshua is older in life, and you see in verse 2, this is the land that yet remains. And in fact, in verse 1 it says, there's very much. much land still to possess. And then what's interesting is it describes a lot of the regions that have already been hermmed or totally destroyed. And you keep reading, they're dividing up the remaining land. Joshua eventually dies by the end of the book. You turn to the book of judges, verse one of chapter one of judges says, who shall go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against

them? So you might say, okay, wait a second. They're heramed and totally destroyed, but now they're popping up again. You might say, well, that's just, because these total victories in Joshua 6 through 11, we're just taking part of the land. But now we're talking about further out, geography, further, you know. But here's what's interesting. That doesn't work because the specific regions that are mentioned are the same places. So, for example, take the city of Hebron, for example. Back in Joshua 10, it says Joshua and all Israel went up to Eglin, from Eglin to Hebron,

and they fought against it and captured, or I think it's Hebron. sorry, and struck it with the edge of the sword and its kings and its towns, and every person in it. He left none remaining, and as he had done to Eglin, and devoted it to destruction and every person in it, as he had done. So there's the claim. Every person in Hebron, none remaining. Every person is to the sword. Well, you just pick up in the book of judges, and verse 10, Judah went again. against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron.

And this is what, now you might say, oh, well, it was retaken. They took the land, this is what people try to say. They took the city, and then in a very short window of time, when Joshua dies, now it's been recaptured and they have to fight, so it's back and forth. People try to say that. This starts to strain plausibility

when it happens to the same over and over and over to all these different regions. You know, because you're saying, are we really to believe that they lost control over all these territories right after Joshua's death. Maybe that could happen here or there, but everywhere, you know. This is the case with Jerusalem.

This is the case with Debra. So back in chapter 10, it says, verse 38, Joshua and all Israel with him turned back to Debra and fought against it, and he captured it with its king and all its towns, and they struck them with the edge of the sword and devoted to destruction. Every person in it, he left none remaining, just as he had done to Hebron. and so forth. Well, up ahead in Judges won. The same thing. They're having to fight against the

inhabitants of Debra. Again, it doesn't seem like there's no mention of it being recaptured or something like this. This happens over and over and over and over. It happens within the book of Joshua itself. Chapter 12 says that they defeated the Jebusites, but then you keep reading, and Chapter 15 says they didn't defeat them fully, and they dwell there to this day. You keep reading in the the historical books later in the Bible, and you see the Jebusites popping up during the reigns of David and Solomon. There's other examples of this in the book of Joshua. Joshua chapter 10 includes the Gaza territory as having all that breathes devoted to destruction. He left none remaining, but one chapter later, there's still people who are there. I'm just giving you a couple

examples. The point is repeatedly, the narrative says they went to this territory and heromed it, none left alive. Man and woman, young and old, every person. And then, like, a few chapters later, there's a bunch of Canaanites there. Now, there's different ways you could try to interpret that. Some people say, well, they didn't fully obey the Lord. Or some people say they sought to obey, but they didn't fully succeed. But both of those are tough.

The text seems to indicate pretty clearly that Joshua did obey the Lord. he left nothing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Moses. It's not disobedience. And the text seems to say they did succeed. And it'll even say that for specific cities like we've seen with Hebron and Deber and Jerusalem and other specific places. So it's really hard. I'll put up those examples of Hebron again.

So it seems really likely that the language of complete destruction and kill everything that breathes and so forth is a kind of rhetoric to describe a decisive military victory. doesn't mean that literally every person is dead. Now you might say, okay, but what about this when it says man and woman, young and old, this kind of thing? These are called merisms, where you have two contrasting parts that express totality. So Genesis 1-1 is a merism, the heavens and the earth, and that means the whole world. And these are also a form of hyperbole. And you can see this in what I think is the strongest argument against warfare rhetoric, and that that's 1 Samuel 15, because the command in verse 3 seems clear enough. God through Samuel says to Saul,

go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction. There's the word harem. All that they have do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox, and sheep, camel, and donkey. So even the animals are included here. That seems like everybody, right? And then you notice God's commandment in verses two to is against the entire people of Amalek considered in contrast to the people of Israel. Now, when Saul doesn't carry out this command, but only partially destroys the Amalekites, he's rejected as king and judged by Samuel. So you might say that settles the discussion. It's very clear.

It's talking about everybody, right? No, even if first Samuel 15, I think proves the point I'm trying to make. Look again at verse 8. it says that he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive and devoted to destruction, he heromed all the people with the edge of the sword. The only thing spared, it looks like, from a superficial reading, you'd say the only people spared are Agag the king, and then these certain choice animals,

because it says he heromed all the people. And that's the narrator saying that, okay? And then of course, Agag himself dies in verses. 32 to 33 at Samuel's hand. So you'd say, this looks like the end of the Amalekites. All the people, totally destroyed, right? Well, if you keep reading once again, First Samuel itself points out, there's lots of other Amalekites still around. They weren't totally destroyed. We find David making raids against the Amalekites just 12 chapters later. Three chapters after that, the Amalekites are making raids of their own, carrying off women, including two of David,

wives, and David has to recover them. And then a few hundred years after that, during the time of Hezekiah, the Amalekites are still around. And so we know that the destruction in First Samuel 15 is not of the entire population. In fact, not even Agag's line was destroyed. In the book of Esther, the evil character, Haman, is a descendant of Agac. So the disobedience of Saul in 1 Samuel 15 is not that, oh, well, you killed all the soldiers, but you should have killed all the women and children, too, or something like that. On the contrary, the Agag's own children survived. The disobedience here is keeping the choice animals and the king. And the reason he does this is not out of compassion. The reason is out of a worldly fear and a desire to consolidate power. He himself admits,

Saul admits that he acts out of fear in verse 24. So to put this simply, Saul is seeking legitimate as king. He's very insecure about his kingship at this point. And sometimes in the ancient near east, taking a rival king as a captive, dispatching a rival king onto a particular kind of service can kind of boost your status. A lot of people think Saul is doing something like this. So the point is even here in 1st Samuel 15, the total destruction language clearly doesn't mean all the people, all the Amalekites. Now maybe some of you still aren't convinced. I'm going to really try to hammer this point home because that actually is so important. maybe you're still thinking, okay, no, no, no, no.

It was a complete destruction, man, woman, and child, every single person, but just somehow there's some Amalekites way off far away who survived or something like that. Okay, here's another point, and I think this point is just conclusive. I think it's devastating for those who want to take a harem as complete literal destruction of every person, and that is that this same language is used for the Israelites during the Babylonian exile, okay? in so the the Israelites themselves are heromed or completely destroyed by the Babylonians 586 587 BC that's how the Bible describes it but we know it didn't mean that all of them were

literally killed it refers again to a decisive military victory in Deuteronomy there's a warning and anticipation that the Israelites if they succumb to the same evil deeds practiced by the Canaanites they will receive the same fate namely removal from the land and that happens with the exile. So in Deuteronomy 8, this is described with the verb perish. And then in Deuteronomy 32, you find the same marisms of man and woman, young and old, and so forth. And then, in Jeremiah 25, God himself threatens the 70-year exile in Babylon, and he says, I will devote them to destruction. That's harem. And the results of this are an everlasting desolation. I mean, look at those words, It's a horror, a hissing.

This sounds like just a bomb drops and everybody's dead, you know. But we know that that didn't happen. We know that not all the Israelites were killed. This is a decisive military defeat. That's how it's being described. Second Chronicles, same thing. The Babylonian attack on Jerusalem is described with the same erasms of male and female, old and young, all are given into the Babylonians' hand and so forth.

So now let's say you're not convinced by that. because even though I think that makes it clear that this language doesn't refer to killing everybody. It refers to a decisive military victory. But even if you're not convinced by that, here's another argument. Throughout Deuteronomy and Joshua and also judges, you have two different verbs used to describe what to do to the Canaanites. Annihilation and expulsion. So on the one hand, there's lots of passages. This is probably the dominant chord that says utterly destroy them, harem them.

But the other is to drive them out. And once again, this raises the question of how do those two things fit together? Just like it says utterly destroy them and also don't marry them. And so you're wondering, well, how do those two things fit together? So also, it's kind of weird if it says utterly destroy them and also drive them out. Okay? Because you're like, well, how do you drive out people who are dead if they're all dead? And Charlie Trim has a book on this.

he talks about these two different kinds of language. He describes the language of annihilation, and then he says in a few places, the Israelites are said to expel Canaanites. Caleb banishes the sons of Anak, and Yahweh is also said to have banished and driven out the Canaanites. When later text emphasizes the parallel between Israel and Canaan by describing Yahweh's action ascending Canaan into exile, a common phrase used to denote Yahweh's judgment of Israel.

So there again, we have the same comparison between the exile of the Israelites to Babylon and the removal of the Canaanites. So, and by the way, on that point again, the end there where Trim is referring to 2nd King 17, this is where that same language is used. And you can see that in that passage as well. Okay. So again, you have, and I don't mean to belabor this point, I'm just about done with this section, but trying to make this point really clear. If you believe that every person was killed, then it's really hard to know how that fits together

with all this language about expulsion. How do you drive people out if everyone is killed, right? So clearly the conquest of Canaan is not describing every single living Canaanite. Okay, what is it describing? Let's try to understand this a little better. What's really going on here? Part of this has to do with how we conceptualize cities.

Okay, our modern-day cities are, different from the ancient Canaanite cities. What many scholars have proposed is that for both archaeological and textual reasons, the primary locations being targeted by these offensive military strikes from the Israelites, especially in Joshua 9, 10, 11, are military forts or garrisons, and the civilian population lives outside in the surrounding regions outside the garrison or fort. Now, I'm going to draw especially from the scholarship of Richard Hess on this point, but let me first quote from Paul Copan, who's written several important books on this, and I've benefited a lot from them for this video. He says, Jericho, I, and many other

Canaanite cities, were mainly used for government building and operations, while the rest of the people, including women and children, lived in the surrounding countryside. The Amarna letters, 14th century BC, correspondence between Egyptian pharaohs and leaders in Canaan and surrounding regions, reveal that citadel cities or fortresses such as Jerusalem and Shaquem were distinct from and under the control of their population centers. All the archaeological evidence indicates that no civilian populations existed at Jericho, I, and other cities mentioned in Joshua. Other biblical evidence of various cities used as fortresses, citadels, and military outposts

also exists. And he gives several examples there. I'll put these up on the screen. these are referenced as royal cities or as strongholds. So a lot of people think that these Canaanite cities are these kinds of military cities or strongholds or administrative centers and so forth. I'll put up this book by Richard Hess. He has an article in there where he unpacks this.

And then let me quote from how he puts it elsewhere, where he's also responding to those who questioned his claims about the archaeology. And he says the detailed description of Joshua 10, 28 to 32, where city after city is destroyed, should be understood in the context of the city as primarily a fort for the king, the temple, and the army. Understood in this way, there is no reason to assume that non-combatant innocence were slaughtered in these forts, even if the common people of Canaan chose not to join Israel, as did Rehab and her family, they probably did not station themselves in these forts, and then he describes how the common practice of the day was basically the civilians to abandon the area as the war is impending.

And he quotes Jeremiah 4 as an example of that kind of thing. So if that view is correct, that really changes the picture. Because basically we shouldn't envision the Canaanite civilian population, you know, distributed equally among the military and political leaders who are being targeted so that, you know, in an ancient Canaanite city, you've got the king's house, and then next to him, you've got a farmer, and then next to him you've got a shepherd, and then there's a soldier, and so forth, and they're just, the Israelites are coming through and just indiscriminately killing everybody. That's probably not what's happening, okay? See, when we hear the word city,

we think of primarily residential areas, and destroying a city means, you know, you're marching through and just killing everybody. These military strikes in places like Joshua, are probably different. They're probably targeting the opposing military and political presence to take control of the region. It's in that sense that they are utterly destroying or harming the other side. And that's really significant because basically we need not and should not envision Israelites killing infants, Israelites killing young children, the disabled, elderly, women, and so forth. That's not what we should think of. It's probably not what we're what is happening? To this complete destroying is a decisive military victory resulting in a

reversal of power, just like the Babylonians did to the Israelites in 587 BC. 587 BC. All right, hopefully that's clear. Now, by the way, that helps make a lot of sense out of the most poignant part of the whole book of Joshua, well, maybe the most poignant. Joshua 5 and the man with the sword is also fascinating. And there's so much that's subversive of kind of worldly conception. of war actually in the book of Joshua. But I think the most poignant is the story of Rahab. And you might, you know, off the cuff, you might just wonder, well, why are they staying with a prostitute? It wasn't to sleep with her as Samson did in Judges 16 verse 1. The text there makes that very clear. Samson slept with the prostitute. The text here in Joshua is different in

Joshua 2. What a lot of people think is that in these ancient military garrison cities or strongholds or royal cities or forts. There are mostly military personnel, but not only. Sometimes there might be a tavern or a hostel or a brothel, sometimes run by a prostitute or containing prostitutes. And you can imagine in the ancient world in a place where a bunch of military men are stationed, how there can be an appetite for that kind of thing. For some reason, I think of the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I picture the bar in Nepal run by the character Marion. I know that's a couple of completely not a parallel example, but it just makes me, I'm trying to imagine this, you know, this kind of rough and tumble crowd, you know. And what Copan proposes is Rehab was in charge of what

was likely the fortress's tavern or hostile, an innkeeper's home would have been an ideal meeting place for spies and conspirators. Such places notoriously posed a threat to security. Because of this, the Hittites in Turkey and northern Syria prohibited the building of an inn or tavern near fortress walls. And he draws attention to the code of Hamarabi, where you have this kind of scenario that's envisioned where a tavern or a hostel is near the city, and there's a similar concern, basically, about vulnerability that is represented by that. You can see the law that he cites there for that. So, okay, so you might wonder, okay, so if these cities are primarily military and administrative

centers rather than residential areas for civilians, what's going on with the civilians? and this is where the language of expulsion or uprooting or dispossession, all this kind of language all throughout Deuteronomy, Joshua, judges, and then later texts that look back on the conquest of Canaan, this kind of language is so important. The most plausible way to read this story is that the annihilation language, the total destruction language, is applying most directly to the military and political structure, and it is serving the larger end of the expulsion of the remaining civilian population out of the land. So the goal of these strikes is not just as much death as possible. The goal is the elimination of official resistance with the resulting expulsion of the rest of the people.

And, you know, you can imagine, we can have some category for that based upon how most wars go. In fact, John Walton and his son, in their book on this, described this by comparing it to World War II. Quote, after World War II, when the Allies destroyed the Third Reich, they did not kill every individual German soldier and citizen. They killed the leaders specifically and deliberately, compare to the litany of kings, put to the sword in Joshua 10 to 13, and also burned the flags, toppled monuments, dismantled the government, and the chain of command, disarmed the military, occupied the cities, banned the symbols, vilified the ideology, and persecuted any attempt to resurrected, but most of the people were left alone. This is what it means to Herem an identity.

So that's a sense of complete destruction, you know, given over to the Lord, all this overturning and reversal of power. But it's not a universal loss of life. Okay. So I just want to really urge this point. We should not envision the Israelites slaughtering all the non-combatants. that is not what is most plausible in terms of what the text commence. Okay. Legitimate questions about how hyperbolic is the language. What would this mean exactly? Okay, you know, I leave that open. There's people like Michael Heiser who think that, if I understand him correctly, he thinks that the people destroyed were the descendants of the Nephilim. Okay, so there's all different views on there. We can keep working at this, but I'm just trying to say

there's definitely hyperbole. And for that reason, we should not call this genocide. The word genocide, is hard to define. The standard textbook on genocide, Adam Jones, genocide, a comprehensive introduction, has 25 different definitions of what the word genocide means. But typically, we use this word to describe something like an ethnic cleansing, something like this. The goal is the elimination of a certain group of people. That's not the interest of the book of Joshua. The interest is the possession of the land and the expulsion of people from the land and the crippling of the leadership unto that end. Okay? So to summarize this point, we've made six points. We talked about warfare rhetoric and the broader ancient Near East and how it's even applied to Israel itself with other nations saying

we completely destroyed Israel. We talked about Deuteronomy 7 and the warning against intermarriage. We talked about Joshua and judges and the repeated survival of those who are hermned or completely destroyed. Same with 1 Samuel 15 and the Amalekites. Number four, we talked about the term herm and its corresponding merisms being applied to the Babylonian exile as well, where we know it didn't literally kill everybody. We talked about number five, the expulsion from the land of those who have been hermned or completely destroyed. And then number six, we talked about the proposal by numerous scholars that it's garrisons or forts that are the primary targets of offensive strike in places like Joshua 10. Okay. Now, while that alleviates the

concern and reframes the issue, that is not an answer to this. Okay, the fact that we're not talking about the elderly and women and children and the disabled as being slaughtered doesn't remove the problem. It just helps us see what is the problem, because there's still this concern here about both violence and dispossession. So someone can just say, okay, fine, maybe these wars are not against non-combatants, but it's still wrong to invade another country and kill. killed people who live there, right? Fair enough. Okay, so I haven't addressed that yet. Nothing that I've said thus far as an attempt to address that. Now I can address that. Here's my second point. My second argument is about divine judgment. And I want to make a case for the justice of

the conquest of Canaan as an act of divine judgment against a brutal evil that ultimately served a redemptive purpose. The attack of the Canaanite cities and the taking over of the land, was not motivated by a desire for power. It's not motivated by xenophobia. It's not motivated by personal vengeance, something like this. Rather, it is described as, and we have good reason to take it as, an act of just judgment of evil. And there's a significant moral difference between violence in general and violence within the framework of punishment for wrongdoing and the execution of justice upon evil. For example, if your neighbor imprisons you in their house, that's one thing, but if a judge sentences you to prison, that's a completely different thing. And the claim of the

biblical text is that this is a punishment of evil, as well as a fulfillment of good and redemptive purposes through the nation of Israel. Boy, this is tough to talk about. I am aware of how this come across if someone is steeled against me right now. I'm going to describe how bad the evil is in a second. That's why I said, don't watch this if you're not 18 or older. We have to know how bad it was, okay? But just first to say the claim is that both, this is, by the way, this is both the Old and the New Testament. Okay. The claim is that it's the disobedience and wickedness and brutality of these people living in the land of Canaan that causes this. And I want to propose, we have some good reasons to accept that claim.

So I guess the two questions we need to work through here are these. Number one, does God have the right to execute judgment through human agency? And number two, was the Canaanite behavior worthy of such a judgment? Let's take the second of those two questions first. I don't want to argue that the Canaanites were the only evil people or necessarily the worst people in the world, but they were pretty bad. The behavior of these people, you know, I've actually wrestled with how much do I go into on this. Here's a start to establish some categories.

The repeated language from Scripture is the land vomiting them out. Okay. We're encouraged by the biblical text to think of behavior that's not merely bad, but disgusting. And I think most people can understand that once they start to get into this and see the degree of sexual perversion associated with fertility cults, the sexual abuse, the various forms of beastiality and incense, and what's been most disturbing for me so much so that it honestly made me a bit nauseated today learning about it was the practice of child sacrifice by burning. In Leviticus 25, you can see reference to beastiality as a practice among the Canaanites,

and Dr. Craig actually describes a study on this in his dialogue with Alex. If I might comment, this is not simply biblically attested. I have a colleague, Professor Clay Jones, who has done a study of ancient literature coming out of pre-Israelite Canaan. And it is horrific the culture that is described there. This was one that practiced not only all sorts of human sexual aberrations, but also temple prostitution in the worship of God. They practice bestiality. There are texts describing how a buck would be strapped down to a wooden frame, and then women would mount the buck and copulate with it. They were engaged in offering child sacrifice. Then in Deuteronomy 12, and also in Leviticus, you have reference to this terrible practice of child sacrifice through fire.

Some, of course, question whether this really happened. And they say, oh, the Canaanites weren't that bad. You know, this was just propaganda used to justify the Israelite invasion. Well, I'm going to link to an article, and I'll put up this picture that goes into this question, and it recounts evidence both from literary sources and from archaeology outside the Bible that shows, no, this practice did happen. For example, among other points of evidence, they go through and discuss the discovery from French archaeologists in 1921 of ancient burial sites in the city of Carthage, where the Canaanite religion was also practiced and from which some people think they may have emigrated or some of them. And basically, you can see this picture.

It looks kind of like a graveyard with lots of little tombstones of sorts. underneath each one is a clay urn containing the cremated remains of human infants as well as animals. And the article notes that the soil was rich with olive wood charcoal, indicating fires had been kept burning here for long periods of time. The archaeologist dubbed this place a tophit, which is the Hebrew word for the place of child sacrifice near Jerusalem at Jeremiah 731. In time, many more Tofet cemeteries were discovered, the largest contained the remains of approximately 20,000 infants in urns as well as some animals. Sometimes the bodies will be stacked one on top of each other like this. The article continues. Dr. Josephine Quinn at the University of Oxford conducted extensive research on the burial urns. Regarding the dedication inscriptions, she concluded,

quote, people have tried to argue that these archaeological sites are cemeteries for children who were still born or died young, but quite apart from the fact that a weak, sick, or dead child would be a pretty poor offering to a God and that animal remains are found in the same sites treated in exactly the same way, it's hard to imagine how the death of a child could count as an answer to a prayer. I am not able to describe the actual ritual of these sacrificial burnings of infants and how they would do it, how they would describe it, how they would talk about it, what they would, how they experienced it, you know, the function it played psychologically and sociologically for them, for these people, the Canaanites. I will say that, you know,

words like bone chilling, you know, it's like, okay, this is why we have words like this in our vocabulary. When I was studying this today, just earlier today, to try to finish this video, the thought that came into my mind is when you hear about something like this, you say, oh, that's what evil is. From a Christian perspective, the Canaanite activity of ritually burning infants is demonic. And that's how it's described repeatedly in the Bible. You put up these three examples of that on the screen. You can see that the referent of these infant burnings was demons. That's how it's understood. Now, even if you don't believe in demons, surely you can look at these infant burnings and say, if demons did exist, that's the kind of thing

they would do. And so from this perspective, the destruction of the Canaanites was actually a part of the larger, it wasn't just a judgment upon people. It was a part of a larger spiritual warfare between God and these hostile forces that oppose him. And it can be conceptualized as the uprooting of spiritual strongholds of evil. Okay, that's why it is so despicably wrong when the Israelites themselves fall into these practices later on, which believe it or not they did. That's why God is so angry with them. That's why they were removed from the land in the same way. the land vomited them out because they were doing these horrific things. Again, just look into it yourself. You know, I'm not going to go into details. So here's the thing. This act of judgment

is anticipated all the way back in the time of Abraham, when God tells Abram before his name change, that his descendants will possess this land once the sin of the Amorites is complete. And the time frame being described here is a little more than 400 years. So this is not a knee-jerk judgment. Consider this as a thought experiment that's not exactly parallel, but may help us establish emotional categories for how you could look at something like the conquest of Canaan and say, that was a just judgment of evil. Suppose, here's the thought experiment. Suppose the Nazis had prevailed in World War II and had retained control of all of Europe for the following 400 years. And during that 400-year time period, events like the Holocaust were recurring.

That was a part of their culture. Would any person dare to oppose the justice of an offensive military intrusion into that region to stop these people from doing that? Okay? You can look at the conquest of Canaan with a clean conscience and say, this is God has the right to stop evil. Another way you can establish some emotional categories for this, coming to terms with this, is just try to think of like apocalyptic movies that depict the world in a state of

complete brutality where there's no UN, there's no police. Think of a movie like The Road. Think of the movie Mad Max, the 2015 version. Okay. Think of what it's like to live under the warlord Immorten Joe in that movie, if you've seen this movie and the way his clan functions, you know. It's not an exact parallel. but it's maybe giving emotional categories for what it would be like to live and languish under

one of these Canaanites strongholds. Nor were the Canaanites totally ignorant of the God of Israel. God made his identity known through miracles. And many Canaanites knew of this. When they come to Rehab, the Israelites come to Rehab, she said, oh, we've heard about the crossing of the Red Sea. And there's lots of other passages where it's clear that rumors about the Exodus and other activity from God has gotten out to the Canaanites. They know who the God of Israel is. He's proved his

reality through miracles, but unlike Rahab, most of them still resist him despite that knowledge. And that's why Hebrews 11 calls them disobedient. So they're not innocent, okay? When we envision the conquest of Canaan, we should not think of this as like a stronger superpower bullying a weaker nation and invading to steal their resources. We should instead envision this like police raiding into a gang hideout to put an end to unspeakable evil that is happening there. If there's a David and Goliath in this story, Israel is the David and Canaan is the Goliath. The Canaanites were these huge giant-like people. The Israelites are terrified of them.

The Canaanites have superior numbers, superior strength, superior military experience. The Israelites takes all their courage just to do it. Most of them are too afraid. I'll put up some examples where this is clear from the text. There's so many subversive elements like this, but the main thing to see is basically this was a just judgment upon real, brutal evil. I think a lot of their... So let me ask, so this brings us to the first question to finish off the video.

Does God have the right to execute capital punishment like that? And to do so through human agency, to use one nation to execute judgment upon evil. the evil in another nation. And the simple Christian explanation for that, the theological explanation for that, it can be stated very simply to say, God is our creator and God is our judge. And so it is his prerogative to intervene in history to end evil.

When God wants to stop people burning infants, he can. There's nothing wrong with God intervening to do that. And there's nothing wrong with God using the nation of Israel as an instrumental means to that end. Just like today, God, you know, a judge can be the instrumental means by which justice is achieved with respect to a criminal or something like this. Someone might say, but, you know, how can God murder people or how can God kill people? But you have to, God is in a different position with respect to morality, not because he's not good

and just. He's good and he's just. But he's God. So just as God can never steal, we can never say God steals. We can never say God steals anything because he already owns everything. So also God can never murder. God gives and takes all life, okay? It's his gift to us all.

And here's how Thomas Aquinas puts this. It's helpful because he's saying this actually is the situation that everybody's in. He says, all men alike, both guilty and innocent, die the death of nature, which death of nature is inflicted by the power of God on account of original sin, according to 1 Samuel 2.6, the Lord killeth and maketh alive. Consequently, by the command of God, death can be inflicted on any man, guilty or innocent, without any injustice, whatever. Now, I'm not even going as far as Thomas Aquinas with those words, or innocent for the sake of this video, because I'm saying it's just guilty. And I'm saying, if we have no appreciation for how,

if we have no emotional categories and sympathetic understanding in our hearts for how this kind of violent intervention can be necessary, it may be because we're naive about how evil and brutal the world can be. This book, Chapter 13, goes through, so this is, I hope I'm pronouncing his name right, it's William Webb and Gordon Est, or Oist, bloody, brutal, and barbaric. Chapter 13 is all about warfare in the ancient world, and it describes the most horrific and grotesque forms of torture you can imagine. Okay, I won't go into them again. I'll say the two most disturbing are the flaying of skin and the grotesque forms of impaling people. You can read about that in the book, or you can just use your imagination, or you can read verses in the Bible to talk about these

horrific things that people would both threaten and, in fact, do, like this verse in Isaiah 36. The simple fact is, the ancient Near East was an absolutely jungle-like, brutal place. in which human beings treated each other about as badly as you can imagine. And the point is not only does Israel not engage in those kinds of warfare atrocities, but that that is the context for this action. That's the world they lived in. In that brutal context, God used them as an instrument for judgment upon some of that brutality that was going on.

And God can do that if he wants to restrain evil. This quote from Miroslav Volf is in this power of, book, Exclusion and Embrace, is often cited, but I'm going to cite it anyway, even though it's, you're probably familiar with it, because it's so powerful and so on point. And it makes the point well. He's basically arguing that believing in a God who has wrath, who does judge evil, who does intervene, who does take vengeance against the violent, against the bullies of this world, helps us practice nonviolence ourselves. And he says, my thesis, that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in

the West, to the person who is inclined to dismiss it. I suggest imagining that you are delivering a lecture in a war zone, which is where a paper that underlies this chapter was originally delivered. Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throat slit, the topic of the lecture, a Christian attitude toward violence. The thesis, we should not retaliate since God is perfect, non-coercive love. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence corresponds to God's refusal to judge. In a scorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably

die. One of the points he's making is that it's very modern and western, the problems we have. Most human beings throughout history haven't taken the same struggle and offense with the book of Joshua that we take today because they understand sometimes that that kind of thing is necessary in the brutal world that we live in. Someone might say, okay, but if that was just for the Canaanites to be destroyed, how do we know that God won't command this same thing today? This is one thing, you know, what's to stop Christians from doing holy war today and this kind of thing? And this is one thing I just need to emphasize here at the end is that this is a unique event in the biblical narrative. The conquest of Canaan is not a paradigm for others to emulate. This is playing a particular

purpose within the biblical story, and it fits in with the broader typology in the Bible about the cultivation of sacred space, and consequently the expulsion of evil from that space. And that starts with the Garden of Eden. It goes through the tabernacle and the temple. It plays into the incarnation. John 114, he tabernacled among us. And then ultimately in the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21. I'll put up this quote by Greg Beale. I'm nearing the end here, so I won't read it, but you can pause the screen and read it if you'd like a little bit of understanding about that. But the point is, this is a unique event. Christians today are not in this circumstance.

Jesus gave us our marching orders in the sermon on the Mount. We are called to advance goodness today through peace and through persuasion. We follow a man who is crucified with non-retaliation. We are called to, and I look, you know, I know this is tough. If somebody out there is wondering, can I really trust the Christian? Can I really trust the Christian God? Those of us who are followers of Christ are called to be the most peace-loving people on the planet. And if you can believe it, this is why I'm not a pacifist, though I've come close to that view at times, but I'm just a notch out of pacifism. There are times where military action is actually good and unto the end of a larger peace and justice in the world. I think the book of Joshua is one of those times. A final question that someone might have is, but why did judgment have to come at that space? time into that specific people. I mean, if this is true, why doesn't God just judge all? You know, there's lots of people who are brutal like the Canaanites. And again, part of the

answer to that is it's serving a particular purpose within the biblical narrative in the history of Israel. It's also serving the purpose of the good that God wants to do through Israel. But the simple fact is, there's always a messiness to historical judgments. Unless we forbid God from intervening in history, there will always be a particularity to it. It has to happen here rather than there, and to these people rather than to those people, if it happens at all. But it helps to remember that these historical judgments are not the final answer. They're mere anticipations of the final judgment where there will be perfect justice, perfect fairness. In a Christian metaphysics, the final word in this universe will be

total fairness, total justice. Every score is settled. Every crooked thing is made straight. That's what's going to happen. And so we have to bear that in mind when we see these messy historical judgments that they're not designed to be kind of the final explanation. And to this extent, the conquest of Canaan is consistent with the New Testament. A lot of, the popular thing right now, especially among more progressive Christian theologians, is to say, well, basically to find fault with the book of Joshua, but then to say Jesus taught us a better way. But Trump or Longman is right to emphasize continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. He says the war against the Canaanites was simply an earlier phase of the battle that comes to its climax on the cross and its completion

at the final judgment. The God of Joshua and the God of Jesus are one and the same God. So, you know, all these books, like this is the perspective of C.S. Cowles in this book, and you can find the Four Views, Zondervin Countervoyance book, you find lots of other books like this that are trying to basically say, well, Jesus taught us a better way. Look, if you want to throw out the book of Joshua, the principles that cause you to do that are going to make you sit in judgment upon Christ himself. The New Testament does not do away with the judgment of God falling upon evil. Look at the portrait of Christ himself in Revelation 19. He's a warrior, making war. in righteousness. And he's got a sword coming out of his mouth to strike down the nations. Yes,

the sword is not literal, but it's still a sword that is striking down. So what it's symbolizing is still judgment. And I have to say, I am not at all ashamed to worship a God who judges. I love Jesus with every fiber of my being for so many reasons. But it's one of those reasons is that he's not a pushover. He's a warrior. He's a king. He's the king of kings. And he judges evil.

And he stands against it. Look at the way he goes toe to toe with the Pharisees. I love this about the character of Christ. I couldn't worship a God who doesn't get angry. And if you have a problem with divine anger, I would say, think of the brutal evil that happens in this world. You can't not be angry about it if you think about it. And a good God is.

However, the deepest part of God's character, as we know, is not his wrath or his anger or his justice, but his mercy. And I think that's why I said earlier that the most poignant character in the book of Joshua is Rahab, the prostitute. Because in her, we see God's attitude of willingness. You know, here's this Canaanite prostitute, and God is happy to make peace with her. The book of Ezekiel says, I have no, God says, I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, so turn and live. The judgment of God upon the Canaanites was not this knee-jerk thing that just fell, came out of nowhere, something like this. He's slow to anger.

But we need to take his severity and his judgment seriously. But God is so willing to make peace with anybody who wants. And the book of Joshua reminds us not just of God's justice, but his mercy. And the ultimate, this is the ultimate message. of the whole Bible. You know, if you're still struggling with the book of Joshua, here's what you can do is, again, like the destruction of the death star in the first Star Wars movie, see it in the broader context of the entire Bible. The ultimate message of the whole Bible is of a God who stood in our place and took judgment upon himself in the person of Christ. That's the meaning of the cross of

Christ, so that basically the Rehabs of this world and the Gavin Ortlands of this world can be forgiven. and you and anybody. That's why I have my YouTube channel. That's what the message I want to spread is that there really is a God, there really is forgiveness, and there really is hope. And that's the message of the whole Bible. And so if you still have questions and struggles with Joshua, you know, you can look at the cross and you can say, I can trust a God like that. I can trust a God who's so willing to have mercy that his justice, he's willing to refract back onto himself.

because at the cross you see both God's justice and God's love. And that should make us not only love Jesus and love God, but it should make us stand for justice and stand against violence in the world today. All right, I'm going to end it there. Look out for the video on the concern about Deuteronomy 21 and the treatment of women prisoners of war by ancient Israel. That's a whole separate topic. I haven't addressed here.

I'm going to get into there. If it would be a source of joy for you. I wonder if you'd consider supporting Truth Unites. You can see how to do that on my website. I'll put up a picture of that. If that's a burden upon you, don't do it. Just do it if it's a joy. But you can share the video, like, subscribe, comment, all that kind of stuff. That also helps. Thanks for watching everybody. I hope this video will help provide gospel assurance through theological depth, and we'll see you in the next one.