Israel’s Canaanite Conquest Presents a Question with Four Possible Answers

Author - Umn ministry

March 21, 2022

The story doesn’t have to be a stumbling block, but we should approach it with fear and trembling.

There is a problem with the Old Testament. At a key juncture in salvation history, the God of Abraham commandeers one nation in order to destroy another. The aggressor nation attacks the second nation because God has judged the latter guilty. The aggressor is merciless, sparing neither women nor children, expelling the inhabitants from their land, and destroying sacred sites and symbols of religious practice—in effect, wiping them off the map. And, according to the Hebrew scriptures, all this happened by the terrible will of the sovereign Lord of Hosts.

It is a harrowing moment in the history of God’s people. But I am not referring to the conquest of Canaan by the tribes of Israel. I am referring to the assault on the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians (a little over 700 years before the birth of Jesus) and the campaign against the southern kingdom, especially the city of Jerusalem and its temple, by the Babylonians about 130 years later.

As the historical and prophetic books of the Old Testament testify, the violence against Israel, north and south, wrought by these pagan empires was nothing less than the judgment of Abraham’s God against Abraham’s children. Their sin? Defection from God’s will for their covenant life as revealed in the law of Moses. They were in covenant with the Lord as a community, and they suffered the covenant punishments as a community. The result: mass ruin, political chaos, incalculable suffering, and death (for some) and exile (for others). It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God, even—or especially—as his chosen people.

This set of events is not typically the first to come to mind when people, including Christians, wonder ...