The fact that God commanded a complete annihilation of all the communities inside Canaan upon the Israelites’ arrival has caused no small uproar amongst Bible critics. They charge that God is genocidal, angry, bitter, hateful, and that all He cares about is Himself.
I won’t stand for personal attacks on God, but I also won’t “apologize” for the fact that God wants His name to stand alone. Throughout Scripture, He constantly describes Himself as a “jealous God” and One that refuses to share the spotlight with other gods.
But there’s a very good reason for that: Those idols are not real. At the very least, it would be dishonest to compare the two because there is no comparison, any more than mankind should be equals with a termite.
There’s another good reason why God commanded the extermination of all other gods inside Canaan, and that’s because of their ability to contaminate His people. Even the slightest concessions can open up the door to a full scale abomination—and it did, all throughout the book of Judges.
But God’s command wasn’t without exceptions. God made allowances for certain individuals, such as Rahab, and for entire nations, such as the Gibeonites (although the Gibeonites tricked Joshua into allowing them to stay, so that might not be the best case study). While God commanded destruction of Canaan, adjacent nations had the option of survival through servitude.
Apparently, the Israelites found total destruction just as hard to stomach as some people today. The city of Jerusalem wasn’t even fully conquered until the time of David (Judges 15:63), and countless other pockets of resistance remained intact well past Joshua’s day.
Their refusal was ultimately to their own detriment. As God says in Exodus 23:33, if they remained in the land, “they will make [Israel] sin against [God].” It’s nearly impossible for a group of people to live in such close proximity to paganism and not be influenced by it somehow, especially when most of their pagan practices are so appealing.
Fortunately, God isn’t telling us today to exterminate others around us, but Jesus did tell us to “cut off our right hand” and “pluck out our eyes” if they cause us to sin (Matthew 5:30). We don’t need to maim ourselves, but the command is no less serious to us than it was to Israel: Get the sin out of your life! Your soul is too valuable to lose to half measures.
