The Terrible Goodness of God Text: Joshua 11:10-15
Introduction: Sentimentalism is Not a Christian Virtue
We come now to a passage that makes modern Christians nervous. It makes our therapeutic, conflict-averse, sentimentalist generation blush and stammer. We read of swords, and destruction, and judgment, and we want to quickly turn the page to the Sermon on the Mount, as though Jesus were some kind of divine reset button to make the Old Testament God go away. But this will not do. The God of Joshua is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The terrible swift sword of the Israelites in Canaan is a foreshadowing of the terrible swift sword that will proceed from the mouth of the conquering Christ at the end of the age.
Our age has confused niceness with goodness. We believe that a good God must be a tame God, a safe God, a God who would never offend our modern sensibilities. We have constructed a god in our own image, a divine therapist who affirms everyone and judges no one. But the God of the Bible is not nice; He is good. And goodness, true goodness, is a terrifying thing to behold in the presence of evil. Goodness does not coddle evil. It does not compromise with evil. It confronts evil and destroys it. The conquest of Canaan is not an embarrassing episode we must apologize for; it is a revelation of the holiness of God, a holiness that is both our only hope and a consuming fire.
The events at Hazor are not random acts of Bronze Age brutality. They are a judicial sentence, pronounced by the Judge of all the earth, and carried out by His appointed executioners. The Canaanites were not innocent farmers caught in the crossfire. God had given them centuries, four hundred years, to repent. He told Abraham that the iniquity of the Amorites was "not yet complete" (Genesis 15:16). But now, the cup of their iniquity was full to the brim and overflowing. Their culture was a septic tank of child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and demonic idolatry. God, in His mercy, was cleansing the land to plant a people through whom He would bring salvation to the world. This was not genocide; it was sanitation. It was divine surgery to cut out a cancerous tumor before it metastasized and infected the entire planet.
If we cannot stomach this, we will never understand the cross. The cross is the ultimate act of herem, of devoting something to destruction. At the cross, God took all the filth and rebellion and idolatry of His people, concentrated it upon His only Son, and executed Him. God poured out the full measure of His holy wrath against sin upon Jesus. He did not spare Him. If we are squeamish about what happened to Hazor, it is only because we fail to grasp the far greater violence that was inflicted upon Christ for our sake. This passage, then, is a severe mercy. It teaches us to hate sin as God hates it, to rejoice in His justice, and to cling to the cross where that justice was satisfied.
The Text
Then Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword; for Hazor formerly was the head of all these kingdoms. And they struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, devoting them to destruction; there was no one left who breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire. And Joshua captured all the cities of these kings and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and he devoted them to destruction, just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded. However, Israel did not burn any cities that stood on their mounds, except Hazor alone, which Joshua burned. Now all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, the sons of Israel took as their plunder; but they struck every man with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them. They left no one remaining who breathed. Just as Yahweh had commanded Moses His servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he left nothing undone of all that Yahweh had commanded Moses.
(Joshua 11:10-15 LSB)
The Head of the Serpent (v. 10-11)
The focus of the action here is the city of Hazor. This was not just another town.
"Then Joshua turned back at that time and captured Hazor and struck its king with the sword; for Hazor formerly was the head of all these kingdoms. And they struck every person who was in it with the edge of the sword, devoting them to destruction; there was no one left who breathed. And he burned Hazor with fire." (Joshua 11:10-11)
The text makes a point to tell us that Hazor was "the head of all these kingdoms." This was the command center, the nerve center of the northern Canaanite confederation. Jabin, the king of Hazor, was the one who rallied the other kings to oppose Israel. In taking Hazor, Joshua was not just mopping up; he was cutting the head off the serpent. This is strategic. God's judgment is not haphazard; it is precise and targeted. He goes after the leadership, the source of the rebellion.
The command given is the law of herem, or "devoting them to destruction." This is a technical term for holy war. These people and their city were to be utterly consecrated to God through their complete destruction. This is why it says "there was no one left who breathed." This was not about plunder or territorial gain in the first instance. It was a sacrifice. It was a judicial act of removing that which was under God's curse from the earth. The evil was so profound, so deeply ingrained in the culture, that it had to be eradicated completely to prevent its contagion from spreading to Israel.
Notice the burning. Hazor is singled out to be burned with fire. Fire in Scripture is a consistent symbol of divine judgment, purification, and the presence of a holy God. The burning of Hazor was a visible sign to all that this was not a mere human conquest. This was the judgment of Yahweh. It was a burnt offering, a city sacrificed to the holiness of God. This is what Sodom and Gomorrah prefigured, and it is what the lake of fire ultimately signifies. God's holiness consumes that which is implacably opposed to it.
The Scope of the Judgment (v. 12-14)
The narrative then broadens to describe the fate of the other allied cities and kings.
"And Joshua captured all the cities of these kings and all their kings, and he struck them with the edge of the sword, and he devoted them to destruction, just as Moses the servant of Yahweh had commanded. However, Israel did not burn any cities that stood on their mounds, except Hazor alone, which Joshua burned. Now all the spoil of these cities and the cattle, the sons of Israel took as their plunder; but they struck every man with the edge of the sword until they had destroyed them. They left no one remaining who breathed." (Joshua 11:12-14 LSB)
The judgment is comprehensive. All the kings who joined the rebellion are executed. All the inhabitants of their cities are put to the sword. The text repeats the dreadful refrain: "They left no one remaining who breathed." The sentence is carried out without flinching. But there is a distinction made. While the people are devoted to destruction, the cities themselves (except for Hazor) are not burned. Israel is permitted to take the spoil and the cattle as plunder.
Why this distinction? This shows us that the primary object of God's wrath was not the material stuff, but the moral and spiritual corruption embodied in the people. The Canaanite people were the carriers of the disease. Their idolatrous system had to be wiped out. Once the judgment was executed upon the people, the "stuff" could be repurposed. The cattle and the goods were not inherently evil. This is an important principle. God's judgments are not against creation itself, but against the rebellion that corrupts creation.
This also served a practical purpose. The Israelites were to live in this land. They needed cities to inhabit and resources to live on. By preserving the cities on their mounds, or "tels," God was providing for His people. But they could only inherit these things after the land was judicially cleansed. We see a pattern here: judgment must precede blessing. The curse must be dealt with before the inheritance can be enjoyed. This is precisely what happens at the cross. Christ endures the curse for us (Gal. 3:13) so that we might receive the blessing of the promised inheritance.
The Unswerving Obedience of Joshua (v. 15)
The passage concludes with a summary statement that provides the ultimate justification for all these actions.
"Just as Yahweh had commanded Moses His servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did; he left nothing undone of all that Yahweh had commanded Moses." (Joshua 11:15 LSB)
This is the key to the entire passage, and indeed to the entire book of Joshua. Joshua's actions were not self-willed. He was not acting on bloodlust or personal ambition. He was acting in meticulous, painstaking, unswerving obedience to a direct command from God. The authority chain is explicitly laid out: Yahweh commanded Moses, Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did. He was a soldier under orders. The moral responsibility for the conquest rests not with Joshua, but with the God who commanded it.
And this is where the modern critic chokes. He wants to put God in the dock. He wants to judge the Judge of all the earth. But the Bible will not allow it. God is sovereign. He is the Creator. He gives life, and He has the absolute right to take it. He is the potter, and we are the clay. For the creature to question the justice of the Creator is an act of supreme arrogance. Our only sane response is to confess, with Abraham, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25).
Joshua's obedience is held up as his defining virtue. "He left nothing undone." This is what faithfulness looks like. It does not pick and choose which commands to obey. It does not edit God's Word to make it more palatable to the surrounding culture. It hears the command and it does it, all of it. This is the standard of obedience that Christ, the true Joshua, fulfilled perfectly. He said, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38). His obedience, even unto death, is the ground of our salvation.
Conclusion: Judgment Begins at the House of God
It is easy for us to read this and thank God that we are not Canaanites. But we must be careful. The principle of herem, of being devoted to destruction, did not end with the conquest. The central warning of the Old Testament is that if Israel adopted the wicked practices of the Canaanites, they themselves would be devoted to destruction. God warned them that the land would "vomit you out... as it vomited out the nation that was before you" (Leviticus 18:28). And this is precisely what happened. When Israel descended into idolatry and apostasy, God raised up the Assyrians and the Babylonians to execute His judgment upon them. He put His own people under the ban.
The principle is this: God's judgment is not based on ethnicity, but on ethics. It is not about who you are, but how you live. And judgment, the apostle Peter tells us, begins at the household of God (1 Peter 4:17). The church is not exempt from the holy standards of God. When a church, a denomination, or a Christian civilization begins to tolerate and then celebrate the very sins for which God judged Canaan, that civilization is marking itself for destruction. When we embrace sexual chaos, when we murder our children in the womb, when we bow down to the idols of materialism and self-worship, we are becoming Canaanites. And the Judge of all the earth will do right.
Our only refuge from this coming judgment is the one who became a curse for us. Jesus is our Hazor. He is the one who was utterly devoted to destruction on our behalf. He was struck with the sword of God's justice. He was consumed by the fire of God's wrath. He became sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). There is no other hiding place.
Therefore, we must not read this passage with detached, historical curiosity. We must read it with fear and trembling. We must see in the destruction of Hazor a picture of the hell we deserve and the holiness of the God we have offended. And we must flee from the wrath to come, taking refuge in the only one who can save us, the greater Joshua, Jesus Christ. He is the one who fights for us, who secures our inheritance, and who, by His perfect, unswerving obedience, has left nothing undone that was required for our salvation.