The Terrible Goodness of God: Rules of Engagement
Introduction: Sentimentalism is Not a Christian Virtue
We come now to one of those passages that causes our modern, sentimental age to break out in a rash. The instructions for holy war in Deuteronomy are, for many, a stumbling block, a scandal, and a reason to dismiss the God of the Old Testament as a moral monster. Our generation has been catechized by a soft and squishy therapeutic deism, which imagines a god who is always nice, never severe, and who would certainly never command the wholesale destruction of a city. This god is a cosmic grandfather who pats everyone on the head, and his chief attributes are niceness and tolerance. The only problem is that this god does not exist. He is an idol, fashioned from the syrupy platitudes of our effeminate age.
The God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is holy. And because He is holy, He is just. And because He is just, His wrath against sin is not a bug; it is a feature. It is a glorious attribute. A god who is not angry at sin is not a good god. A god who is indifferent to the abominations of the Canaanites, which we will touch on, is not worthy of worship. He would be a moral jellyfish. The God of Scripture is a consuming fire, and we should be grateful that He is.
This passage lays out the rules of engagement for Israel as they prepare to enter the Promised Land. And in these rules, we see a crucial distinction that our age desperately needs to relearn: the distinction between justice and vengeance, between lawful warfare and lawless brutality. God is not commanding random violence. He is commissioning Israel to be His instrument of judgment against a culture that had filled up the cup of its iniquity to the very brim. This is not an ethnic cleansing, as the scoffers would have it. This is a divine pest control. It is a surgical strike against a cancerous culture that threatened to metastasize and infect the entire world.
We must approach this text with fear and trembling, yes, but also with a robust confidence in the perfect justice of God. We must not try to explain it away or apologize for it. We must understand it, submit to it, and see in its terrible severity the same holy character of the God who sent His own Son to the cross to bear the full measure of that same wrath which was poured out on the Canaanites. The cross is far more violent than the conquest of Canaan. If you are comfortable with the cross, you have no grounds to be squeamish here.
The Text
“If you come near a city to fight against it, you shall call for terms of peace. Now it will be that if it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And Yahweh your God shall give it into your hand, and you shall strike all the males in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the little ones and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and you shall consume the spoil of your enemies which Yahweh your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. Only in the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall devote them to destruction, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as Yahweh your God has commanded you, so that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against Yahweh your God.”
(Deuteronomy 20:10-18 LSB)
Two Kinds of War (vv. 10-15)
The first thing we must notice is that God establishes two distinct protocols for warfare. There is one set of rules for distant cities, and another, far more severe, for the cities within the promised land of Canaan.
"If you come near a city to fight against it, you shall call for terms of peace... Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you..." (Deuteronomy 20:10, 15)
For cities outside the land of Canaan, Israel was required to first offer terms of peace. This is a crucial point. God's people are not to be bloodthirsty aggressors, delighting in war for its own sake. The default posture is an offer of peace. This is not the action of a genocidal maniac. It is the action of a just king extending an opportunity for submission before executing judgment.
If the city accepted, its people would be subjugated and put to forced labor. This sounds harsh to our ears, but in the context of the ancient world, it was an act of immense mercy. The standard practice of empires like Assyria was to flay their enemies alive, pile their heads in pyramids, and deport the survivors. Here, God commands a path that preserves life. The people become vassals, yes, but they live. They are incorporated into the commonwealth of Israel, where they would be exposed to the law of God and the knowledge of the true religion. This was a missionary war, in a sense. Subjugation was an opportunity for evangelism.
If they refused peace and chose war, the consequences were severe. All the adult males were to be executed. The women, children, and property were to be taken as plunder. Again, this is not wanton cruelty. This is the just consequence for rebellion against the emissaries of the Great King. The men who took up arms against God's people were bearing the sword, and they would perish by the sword. God was establishing a principle of corporate responsibility. The leaders and fighting men of a city determine its fate. But even here, in this judgment, there is a limit. The non-combatants are spared. God places a guardrail on the violence, distinguishing His laws of war from the unrestrained butchery of the pagans.
The Ban of Judgment: Herem Warfare (vv. 16-17)
When it comes to the cities of the Canaanites, however, the rules change dramatically. There is no offer of peace. There are no survivors.
"Only in the cities of these peoples that Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. But you shall devote them to destruction..." (Deuteronomy 20:16-17 LSB)
This is the law of herem, or "the ban." It means to be utterly devoted to God for destruction. Everything under the ban was consecrated to God, which meant it was removed from common use and utterly destroyed as an offering to His justice. We see this with Jericho, where Achan sinned by taking some of the "devoted things" for himself. He treated holy judgment as common plunder, and was judged for it.
Why this radical difference? Why such an absolute and terrifying judgment on these specific people? The reason is not ethnic. It is judicial and spiritual. God had given the Canaanites over 400 years to repent, ever since the time of Abraham (Genesis 15:16). He told Abraham that his descendants would return to the land only when "the iniquity of the Amorite is complete." That time had now come. The Canaanites were not being judged for being Canaanites. They were being judged for being practitioners of the most grotesque and demonic evils imaginable.
This was a unique, one-time historical event. Israel was acting as God's appointed executioner. This is not a standing order for all nations for all time. This was a specific judgment on a specific people at a specific time, for specific sins. To rip this out of its redemptive-historical context and try to apply it as a general rule for warfare is to grievously misread the Bible. This was not a precedent for future holy wars; it was the final act of a long-overdue divine court case.
The Reason for Severity: Moral Quarantine (v. 18)
God does not leave us to guess at His motives. He provides the explicit reason for this terrible command in the final verse.
"...so that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against Yahweh your God." (Deuteronomy 20:18 LSB)
The judgment was an act of spiritual quarantine. The Canaanite culture was a virulent, spiritual plague, and God was acting to protect His people, and through them, the line of the Messiah, from its deadly infection. The word "abominations" is not just a general term for bad behavior. The Canaanites practiced ritual prostitution, bestiality, divination, sorcery, and most horrifically, child sacrifice, burning their sons and daughters in the fire to the god Molech. Their entire culture was organized around the worship of demons through sex and death.
God knew the weakness of His people's hearts. The subsequent history in the book of Judges and Kings proves God's diagnosis was exactly right. Every time Israel failed to carry out this command, every time they showed a misplaced, sentimental "mercy" and left some Canaanites in the land, those people became a snare. They taught Israel their abominations, and Israel fell into idolatry, which led to their own judgment and exile. God's command, which seems so harsh, was actually a profound act of mercy to Israel and to the future of the world. He was cutting out the cancer before it could kill the patient.
The Gospel of Judgment
So where is the good news in all this? How do we preach Christ from a passage about total destruction? The connection is direct and profound.
First, this passage reveals the utter holiness of God and the reality of His wrath against sin. Without a robust doctrine of God's wrath, the grace of the gospel is cheapened into mere niceness. The cross of Christ is not just a demonstration of God's love; it is the ultimate act of herem warfare. On the cross, Jesus Christ was made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). He was "devoted to destruction" in our place. The full, unmitigated wrath of God that was poured out on the Canaanites was absorbed by Jesus on our behalf. He drank the cup of God's holy fury to the dregs, so that we who trust in Him would never have to.
Second, this passage is a picture of the spiritual warfare in which every Christian is engaged. We too are commanded to show no mercy, to leave nothing that breathes. But our enemies are not flesh and blood. Paul tells us to "put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). We are to wage herem warfare against our own sin. You do not make a peace treaty with your lust. You do not put your pride to forced labor. You kill it. You devote it to destruction. Any sentimental mercy shown to your own indwelling sin is treason against the king, and it will rise up to infect and destroy you.
Finally, this passage points forward to the final judgment. The conquest of Canaan is a type, a foreshadowing, of the day when the Lord Jesus will return, not as a gentle savior, but as a conquering king, to judge the living and the dead. He will come with a sword proceeding from His mouth, and He will strike the nations (Revelation 19:15). On that day, there will be a final, ultimate separation. There will be no offer of peace for those who have spent their lives in rebellion against Him. For those who are in Christ, it will be a day of ultimate vindication and joy. For those who are outside of Christ, it will be a day of terror, the final, eternal herem.
Therefore, the message of Deuteronomy 20 is the message of the gospel. Flee from the wrath to come. The cities of destruction are real, and the judgment is coming. But God has provided a city of refuge, and His name is Jesus. Run to Him. Take refuge in His finished work. For outside of Him is only a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. But in Him, there is peace, pardon, and life everlasting.