It is often taken for granted that the book of Joshua and some passages in the Pentateuch, especially parts of Deuteronomy 7, condone or command a ‘genocidal’ attitude towards the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the Promised Land, or some sort of ‘ethnic cleansing’, with both YHWH (“The Lord”) and the Israelites under Joshua’s leadership assuming an active role in the murderous plot.

For many, this kind of violence is one of the main reasons to be embarrassed about the Bible, or at least the Old Testament; for some, the topic is so toxic that they either lose their Christian faith or feel compelled to redefine it in ways that purge it from all connections to violence. And for yet others, what they hear about these acts of violence is enough to deter them from considering the Bible or Christianity as possible options in the search for spiritual guidance. Indeed, we may ask: How acceptable is a faith that contains as one of its building blocks belief in a God who commanded genocidal acts?

Let us step back and look at some of the issues more closely!

1) Whether one finds ‘genocidal’ traits in the legal passages dealing with the occupation of the Promised Land or in the descriptions of the conquest in Joshua and Judges depends, among other things, on the definition of the term ‘genocidal’. If one uses a relatively narrow definition, according to which ‘genocide’ is an attempt to the complete violent annihilation of all members of a defenseless religious or ethnic group, fully initiated by the perpetrators, in a premeditated systematic manner, unprovoked by specific actions of the opponents targeted at them, and directed at each individual of the opposing group regardless of his or her personal attitudes, one cannot speak of a genocide against the Canaanites. It is, however, clear, that lethal actions are prescribed in Deuteronomy and described in Joshua, related primarily to the concept of the ‘ban’ (Hebrew root ch-r-m). 

2) All the relevant pentateuchal passages (see especially Exod. 23:20-33; 34:11-16; Num. 33:50-56; Deut. 7:1-5, 16-26; 20:1-20) point to the crucial importance of the notion of expulsion (as opposed to extermination) of the pre-Israelite inhabitants; YHWH promises to expel the Canaanites, and the Israelites are commanded to drive them out. 

This expulsion takes on a clearly lethal character within the law collections only in Deuteronomy. In the respective passages, however, lethal actions are not prescribed in an indiscriminate way, but are directed primarily against the rulers and the cities as the main representatives of the Canaanite religious-political system (see Deut. 7:20, 24; 20:16-17). Deuteronomy 20:16-18 is the most instructive text (translation NASB 1977):

Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God

3) Lethal elements are widespread in the reports of the conquest in Joshua, and not fully absent from Judges. The execution of the ‘ban’ is, however, not depicted as a premeditated program of encompassing and systematic killing, but as part of ordinary warfare, with the initiative for the violent conflict generally lying on the side of the Canaanites. As an example, we can point to the beginning of the report concerning events in the northern half of Canaan in Josh. 11:1-5. The passage mentions how the Canaanite kings – and not the Israelites – take the initiative (translation NASB 1977):

Then it came about, when Jabin king of Hazor heard of it, that he sent to Jobab king of Madon and to the king of Shimron and to the king of Achshaph,
and to the kings who were of the north in the hill country, and in the Arabah — south of Chinneroth and in the lowland and on the heights of Dor on the west —
to the Canaanite on the east and on the west, and the Amorite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Jebusite in the hill country, and the Hivite at the foot of Hermon in the land of Mizpeh.
And they came out, they and all their armies with them, as many people as the sand that is on the seashore, with very many horses and chariots.
So all of these kings having agreed to meet, came and encamped together at the waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.

In all cases, there is at least some kind of active resistance to God’s plans of passing control over the land to the Israelites on the side of the Canaanites, who are fully aware of these plans (see, e.g., Josh. 2:9-11). According to Josh. 11:20, the theological reason behind the Canaanites’ choice to engage Israel in battle lies in YHWH’s hardening of their hearts.

4) It is important to note that the concept of the ‘ban’ is firmly embedded in a cultic context. As far as the legal passages are concerned, it is connected with admonitions to abstain from non-yahwistic cults and to destroy non-yahwistic cult objects. This cultic dimension finds further support in Deuteronomy 13. The main goal of the expulsion (and, where necessary, possible extermination) of the Canaanites is the destruction of their cult, and the protection of the Israelites’ identity and liberty. One text that demonstrates the point is the passage from Deut. 20:16-18 already quoted above:

Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes.
But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
in order that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.

The harsh measures show that Canaanite idolatry is seen as abominable. The ‘ban’ primarily serves to protect the Israelites from being ensnared by the Canaanite cult and losing their independence; in addition, it also serves to exact punishment on the Canaanites for their abominations (see especially Deut. 9:4-5).

5) Both the pentateuchal texts and the reports in Joshua make it clear that the ‘ban’ is nothing that can be used freely by the Israelites; it has its origin in God, and God retains the prerogative to decide when it is applicable. 

6) At several crucial junctions within the book of Joshua, the execution of the ‘ban’ is clearly (and for most readers: surprisingly) understood in a conditional way, and in some cases other procedures are chosen (Rahab; Gibeonites; Josh. 11:19-20; 16:10; 17:13). The text that most clearly points to the conditional character of the ‘ban’ is Josh. 11:19-20 (translation NASB 1977):

There was not a city which made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites living in Gibeon; they took them all in battle.
For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

The fact that v. 19 underlines that no city followed the example of Gibeon shows that the option of making peace with the Israelites and thereby avoid expulsion or extermination, was in fact available. Importantly, the cases of Rahab and the Gibeonites which also point to the conditional character of the ‘ban’, are very prominent in the storyline of the book Joshua: the first one opens the description of the conquest of Canaan, and both are given a disproportionately large amount of space. They show that inclusion instead of expulsion or extermination was a real option.

A conditional interpretation of the ‘ban’ in Joshua may even be compatible with the legal texts themselves, based on the centrality of the snare motif in those texts: if the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the Promised Land do not pose a danger to the identity of God’s people and their independence, the main reason to expel or kill them is gone.

7) The applicability of the ‘ban’ to apostate Israelites in Deuteronomy 13 (and in some ways to the Israelite Achan and his family in Joshua 7, though their extermination is not explicitly labeled ‘ban’) shows that the motivation for the ‘ban’ does not lie in ethnic otherness per se. It is also worth noting that none of these texts exhibits a general denigration and dehumanization of the non-Israelite other, and any indulgence in the use of violence is absent. Canaanites are not to be killed because of their ethnic (non-Israelite) identity, but must be fought only if they resist YHWH’s plans. If they accept these plans, as Rahab and the Gibeonites do, they may become a part of the people of God in spite of their ethnic otherness.

Conclusion

All these observations demonstrate that the use of the term ‘genocide’ is inappropriate with regard to the biblical concepts of the conquest of the Promised Land.

For further details, see the following article:

Markus Zehnder, The Annihilation of the Canaanites: Reassessing the Brutality of the Biblical Witnesses (in: Encountering Violence in the Bible, ed. by Markus Zehnder and Hallvard Hagelia; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013, pp. 263-290)