Injustice in Joshua?

The book of Joshua records the military campaign of Israel, under the command of Joshua, in which they conquered the land of Canaan.  In the process numerous cities were destroyed, many people were killed, and the land was left reeling from the Hebrew onslaught.  Critics of the Bible have often used this historical account as ammunition in their efforts to discredit and cast aspersion upon Christianity in general and God in particular.  In response to the issue of whether the Israelites, and God through them, were justified in their brutal conquest of Canaan, a number of points need to be addressed.

I believe the very first item of importance for the Christian who finds themselves in this situation must happen prior to entering into the verbal discussion.  That is, they need to settle in their minds and accept the possibility that, apart from the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, odds are they will ultimately be disagreed with.  At the end of the day, no matter what evidence is presented and regardless of the conviction of the argument, a modern-day critic of the Biblical record is going to have a tough time reconciling what happened in Joshua with their cultural worldview.

That being said, I believe a solid defense and explanation can and should be offered.  I think it begins with the Israelites themselves before we even get to the question of the conquests.  In Joshua chapter 7 we read of Israel’s first defeat after crossing the Jordan.  They are repulsed by the army of Ai.  After inquiring of the Lord Joshua learns that someone has disobeyed the command of God in the recent sacking of Jericho.  And it is God’s anger over this disobedience that has resulted in His allowing Israel to be defeated by Ai.  Ultimately, it is determined that a man named Achan is the thief who stole items God had ordered destroyed.  And here is where it gets interesting.  Achan is executed for his crime.  But not only the man himself but also his family is killed alongside him.

The initial reaction to this is that it is both incongruous with the Law of God, and it is unfair.  The apparent incongruity comes from the previous book, Deuteronomy.  In chapter 24 verse 16 God says that fathers should not be puth to death because of something their children have done.  Likewise, children should not be put to death on account of their fathers.  With that in mind, why does the Lord now come along and instruct Joshua to execute Achan’s entire family for his sin?

I think the answer lies in examining the particulars of the case.  Achan reveals that the items he stole are buried in the ground inside his tent.  It seems less than credible to suppose that his family was not aware of this.  And if they were it would make them complicit in his crime.  Even if they were not the ones to take the items, if they knew about it and said nothing then they were just as guilty for the deaths of the people who died in the first assault on Ai.  In that context, God was not being unjust at all in ordering the death of the whole bunch.

Moving on from that point we come to the one that most critics will probably camp on; that of the wholesale slaughter and destruction of the native Canaanites as Israel conquered each city.  Reading Joshua in a vacuum, without considering the rest of Scripture, could certainly lead one to conclude that the Israelites were a murderous, bloodthirsty people in thrall to a genocidal, wicked God.  After all, the author of Joshua clinically records the events without much in the way of commentary.

But by examining what God reveals in other parts of the Bible, a picture begins to emerge of an evil group of people who, to coin a phrase, “had it coming”.  In Genesis 9:25 Noah pronounced a curse on the descendants of Ham, his youngest son, due to the dishonor he had shown his father.  Those descendants were the Canaanites.  They were a wicked people, steeped in cruel and sadistic religious practices. 

Perhaps the most infamous of these was the ritualistic child sacrifice to Moloch that was done by the Canaanite peoples.  Infant children would be literally burned to death in the heated metal arms of this bull headed false god.  It was this despicable practice that would later be one of the proverbial “straws that broke the camel’s back” when Manasseh, king of Judah, subjected his own sons to this hideous death and caused God’s patience to run out, thus condemning the entire nation to death, enslavement, and/or exile (2 Ki. 21:1-16).

This is just one example.  We could go on for pages in describing the evil of the Canaanites.  But the point is that we live in a created order where personal responsibility is unavoidable and punishment will always come calling in the end.  It was the wickedness of the Canaanites that doomed them to destruction (Deut. 9:4-5).  In fact, after taking the time to understand the people the Israelites faced in battle, far from being unjust in decreeing their deaths, God would actually have been unjust if He did not decree their deaths.

Theology in Numbers

One of the covenantal promises that God made to Abraham back in Genesis 12 was that he would be made into a nation by the Lord’s sovereign hand.  The Lord God would take this man, who was childless, and grant him such an abundance of offspring that they would grow beyond the confines of merely a single family into such vast numbers that they would have to be re-classified as a nation of people.  And every single one of them would be directly descended from Abraham.

Here in the book of Numbers, we find another step in that process.  God commands Moses to number the people.  Now obviously, this was not for the Lord’s benefit in terms of gaining knowledge He did not possess.  He knew perfectly well exactly how many Hebrews were encamped at Sinai.  The point of this census was so that the Israelites would know how many they were.  He wanted to demonstrate visibly to them that He had gloriously fulfilled His promise to His servant Abraham.  And in the process, God’s intention, as it always is, was for greater glory to be ascribed and worship to be given to Him.

Not content to limit the revelation of His character to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant alone, we find that throughout the book of Numbers God is continually unveiling nuances of Himself to His chosen people, and in turn the modern Bible reader today.  A few examples of this revelation are as follows.

In chapter 3, verses 39 to 51, the Lord instructs Moses about the redemption of the firstborn.  God had staked a claim to the firstborn male of every household in Israel, both of men and of animals.  He demanded that every firstborn was to be consecrated to Him as His due.  But rather than take the firstborn of every family in the nation, God decreed that He would instead take the entire tribe of the Levites as His.  The Lord was so serious about this that when a discrepancy was found in the count He exacted the precise cost of the difference from the people.  The firstborn of every home in all Israel numbered 22,273.  But the entire tribe of the Levites was only 22,000.  Meaning that if God took the Levites instead of the firstborn of every household He would be short 273 people. 

The human tendency might be to overlook this seemingly minor detail.  Not so with the Lord.  He instructed Moses to take five shekels per head for the 273-person difference, and give that sum to Aaron and his sons as a redemption price.  I think this demonstrates a truth about God’s character.  First, He is inhumanly precise.  The Lord God does not fudge numbers.  He does not estimate.  He does not guess.  He perfectly and accurately orders every piece of His creation.  Secondly, what is His is very important to Him.  The honor He is due, represented here by the consecration of the firstborn, is of such significance to God that He extracted the exact price from the Israelites so as to make sure He received every drop of glory that was His by right.  If God takes His honor so seriously, then we had better be extremely careful not to play games with our Christian walk.  There is no room for nominal Christianity in the body of Christ.

Then in chapter 6 we read of the instructions regarding a special Nazirite vow that people could make to God.  Particularly in verses 2 to 8 of this chapter, God outlines exactly how a Nazirite should behave, what they should look like, and what they should eat.  The requirements are stringent.  And they would have immediately set someone apart and made them quite noticeable to everyone around them.  There would have been no mistaking that a Hebrew had taken the vow of the Nazirite.  I think this is noteworthy, because it demonstrates that God is holy and He demands holiness from His followers. 

In this context, holiness points to uniqueness and purity.  The Nazirite was to avoid grapes so as to stay far away from the potential for drunken loss of self-control that could have come with wine consumption.  Rather, they were to be pure in their lifestyle even as God is perfectly pure.  The Nazirite was to leave his hair uncut and avoid all contact with the dead, even those of his own family.  This was to demonstrate that he was separate and unique from the normal mass of humanity.  In the same way, God is inherently separated and unique, or transcendent, over all created things.  And those who would serve and follow after Him must order themselves according to His standard of measure.  This means, for the Christian, that they must be righteous where the world is unrighteous and pure where the world is unclean.

Later, in chapter 11, there is frankly an astonishing account of God’s patience with His servants, in particular Moses.  The Israelites have complained once again, and Moses is tired of dealing with it.  He begins to focus on himself and elevate his private concerns and feelings over and above the Lord.  In verses 11 to 15 of this chapter, and then again in verses 21 and 22, Moses displays an incredible level of arrogance and rebelliousness.  He essentially throws a temper tantrum right to God’s face, even going so far as to accuse Him of being unfair, creating straw man arguments to artificially tear down, and questioning God’s ability to work miracles.

What is most shocking to me about this incident is God’s response.  Here is the most holy and sacred being that exists, and He is getting symbolically slapped in the face and spit upon by one who is hopelessly contaminated with sinful evil.  Moses, by all rights, should not have even been allowed to be on the same continent as the Lord’s presence, let alone 10 feet away from Him inside the tent of meeting.  Yet, in spite of the rank injustice of the situation, God responds patiently and kindly to His childish servant.  When I think of how impatient and unkind I am to other people, at the slightest infraction of what I believe I deserve, I am ashamed of my behavior.  If God can display this level of compassion toward us, how much more should we strive to be compassionate toward others.

Finally, in chapter 15 God describes the process of dealing with unintentional sins.  In other words, when a person commits a sin but they did not realize it at the time.  In spite of the oversight, God still demands that appropriate sacrifices be offered to Him so as to make atonement for their error.  I find this to be distinctly different from how humans often operate.  A phrase I have heard many times from people, in response to the breaking of a rule or a mistake that has been made, is “it’s not like I meant to do it.”  Such a response does not track with God’s perspective of sin.  Clearly, here in Numbers 15 as well as throughout the Bible, if a sin has been committed the sinner is at fault, regardless of whether they meant to sin or not.  The obvious implication for us is that our sin is serious, God takes it seriously, He demands repentance, and a failure to do so leaves us in a very precarious position indeed.

All of these examples plus many more throughout Numbers and beyond form the great heartbeat of the Scriptures.  That is, they are a window through which the diligent reader can begin, in some small measure, to comprehend the character and nature of God.  This is the very essence of theology; to know and understand God.

A Foundation for Israel

Not only does the book of Genesis provide a foundation for the rest of Scripture, but it also provides a foundation for the nation of Israel.  As we read of the lives of the men and women in the families of the Hebrews who were descended from Abraham we see God begin to weave the threads of their experiences and their shared history into patterns and themes that will be repeated and reinforced as the centuries of history flow by.

Arguably the most obvious of the ways in which God did this is in His provision of Jacob’s male children.  Each of these twelve men, alternately delivered by Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah (Gen. 29:31-30:24, 35:16-18), would go on to serve as the progenitor of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. 

In addition to this, God deliberately kept the Hebrews in the land of Canaan until He was ready for them to sojourn in Egypt and be grown into a mighty nation in a peaceful and prosperous land.  Limiting our scope to chapters 26 to 50, we see this first with Isaac in Genesis 26:1-5 when God commanded him not to leave Canaan in the face of a famine.  Then again in Genesis 31:13 Jacob is specifically directed to return to Canaan after his time with Laban in Haran.  I think this had the effect of making the land of Canaan somewhat of an ancestral home for the fledgling nation of Israel.  Although prior to their conquests under Joshua they were always strangers and aliens there, God provided them with an initial seed plot of land.  This was the cave of Machpelah where Abraham, Sarah, and later Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah were buried.  So, I think, although certainly not from the perspective of the native Canaanites, and probably not even from the perspective of the Hebrews who crossed the Jordan later, there is a sense in which, by going to Canaan, the Jews were going home.

Another way in which God set the tone for the future nation of Israel in the latter half of Genesis is the way in which He prospered them materially.  Abraham had already been blessed with great wealth.  And in chapters 26 to 50 we see first Isaac (Gen. 26:12-14), then Jacob (Gen. 30:43), and eventually Joseph (Gen. 41:40-45) rise to the heights of earthly welfare and success.  All this divine orchestrating of events had the additional effect of placing the Hebrew people in Egypt, following Joseph’s lead.  Thus, the way was paved for them to walk out of slavery hundreds of years later, overflowing with wealth and possessions.  The foreshadowing we see in Genesis and then Exodus would be repeated numerous times throughout Israel’s history as God worked to cause His chosen people to prosper, even in the face of humanly insurmountable obstacles.

I think there is yet another way in which God weaves a thread of Israel’s future into the patriarchal history of Genesis.  In chapter 32 we read of Jacob’s nocturnal struggle with God.  Following this event, and seemingly based purely on Jacob’s tenacity, the Lord gives him a new name; Israel.  Obviously, this would go on to become the name of the nation itself.  So, in one sense there is clearly a foundational element to Jacob’s name change.  But on a deeper level, what God is really doing is forecasting the tumultuous relationship He knew that He would have with Abraham’s descendants.  Israel means “he strives with God”.  No better prophetic name could have been chosen by the Lord with which to name His rebellious, obstinate, and stiff-necked chosen people.

Finally, I think there is an over-arching theme that runs through Genesis 26-50 that will continue to be evident and pervasive for the rest of the Bible.  That is, God does not make His decisions of who to use and who to discard according to human wisdom.  Instead of the best and the brightest, God chooses the worst and the dimmest.  The mightiest heroes of Scripture were the ones who were initially the least, or the second, or the most treacherous. 

The first hint we see of this pattern is the Lord choosing Jacob over Esau.  Even before the twins were born, God declared to Rebekah that He was going to make her younger child the stronger of the two (Gen. 25:23), in complete defiance of traditional ancient middle eastern custom.  This family habit of nonconformity was carried on with Joseph.  He, although the least of all his brothers save Benjamin, was chosen by God to be the supreme instrument of the salvation of the family via his position as ruler of Egypt (Gen. 45:5-8).  Finally, and perhaps most significantly although least obviously, we find that Judah, although not the firstborn of Jacob’s sons, was prophesied to have pre-eminence over them (Gen. 49:3-4, 8-12).

I do not think the importance of this last point can be overstated.  From a biological perspective, it was the line of Judah that would eventually give birth to the greatest of Israel’s leaders, beginning with David and ending with the Messiah, Jesus.  So, from a genealogical perspective, the elevation of Judah over his brothers was Messianic in nature.  But beyond that, this pattern of God using the lesser of men to accomplish His purposes would see its ultimate fulfillment in the first advent of Christ as the suffering servant that Isaiah speaks of (Isa. 53).  Christ did not initially come in great power and honor.  He came first in humility, in shame, in poverty (Lk. 9:58), and in apparent inglorious defeat at the cross.

However, through this most ignoble of servants God would accomplish the greatest work of redemption the world has ever seen.  Therefore, I think the aspect of God’s choice of the least of men to accomplish the best of purposes, that we see repeatedly in the nation of Israel, is perhaps the most powerfully messianic pattern of them all.