The Terrible Sovereignty of God Text: Joshua 11:16-20
Introduction: A Stumbling Block to the Modern Mind
We come now to a passage that is, for the modern, sentimental mind, one of the great stumbling blocks of the Old Testament. Our generation wants a God who is manageable, a God who fits neatly into our categories of niceness, a God who would never do anything to make us uncomfortable. We want a divine therapist, a celestial butler, but not a sovereign King. We want a God who makes suggestions, not a God who issues commands. And we certainly do not want a God who judges, who wages war, and who hardens the hearts of His enemies before destroying them.
But the God of the Bible is not a God of our own making. He is who He is, and He does not audition for the role. This passage in Joshua is a bucket of ice water to the face of our therapeutic, man-centered age. It presents us with the raw, untamed, and terrible sovereignty of God. Here we see a summary of Joshua's conquest, a long and bloody affair, culminating in a theological statement that is utterly breathtaking in its implications. God did not just permit the Canaanites to resist; He ordained it. He did not just watch as their hearts grew hard; He hardened them. He did this so that they would be utterly destroyed, without mercy, in fulfillment of His command.
This is not a passage to be explained away, or apologized for, or softened with pious platitudes. This is a passage to be faced head-on. It is a revelation of the character of God, and if we are to worship Him as He is, and not as we wish Him to be, we must grapple with texts like these. For in the unyielding sovereignty of God in judgment, we find the very same sovereignty that is the bedrock of our salvation. The same hand that hardened the hearts of the Canaanites is the only hand that can soften our own. The same God who showed them no mercy is the only reason we have received any mercy at all. This is not a peripheral issue; it is central to understanding who God is and what He has done for us in Christ.
The Text
Thus Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negev, all that land of Goshen, the Shephelah, the Arabah, the hill country of Israel and its Shephelah from Mount Halak, that rises toward Seir, even as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon at the foot of Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them down and put them to death. Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings. 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 Yahweh to strengthen their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might devote them to destruction, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses.
(Joshua 11:16-20 LSB)
The Summary of Conquest (vv. 16-19)
We begin with the sweeping summary of Joshua's military campaigns.
"Thus Joshua took all that land: the hill country and all the Negev, all that land of Goshen, the Shephelah, the Arabah, the hill country of Israel and its Shephelah from Mount Halak, that rises toward Seir, even as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon at the foot of Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them down and put them to death. Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings. 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." (Joshua 11:16-19)
This is the highlight reel of the conquest. It covers the entire geographical expanse of the land, from the far south ("Mount Halak") to the far north ("Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon"). This is a statement of total victory. God had promised this land to Abraham centuries before, and now, through Joshua, He has delivered it. The promise has been fulfilled. Joshua did what God commanded him to do.
Notice the thoroughness of the victory: "he captured all their kings and struck them down and put them to death." In the ancient world, the king embodied the people and their gods. To execute the king was to execute the kingdom and pronounce judgment on its false religion. This was not simple warfare; it was covenantal warfare. It was the visible, historical enactment of God's judgment against centuries of accumulated idolatry, child sacrifice, and sexual depravity. The Canaanites were not innocent farmers caught in the crossfire. Archaeology confirms the utter vileness of their culture. God, in His patience, had given them over 400 years to repent (Genesis 15:16), but they had only used that time to fill up the measure of their guilt. Now, the bill had come due.
The text notes that this was not a quick campaign: "Joshua waged war a long time with all these kings." This was a hard-fought, grinding war. God could have given them the land in an instant, with a single word. But He ordained that they should fight for it. Why? Because God builds character through conflict. He teaches His people to depend on Him, to obey His commands, and to value the inheritance He gives them by making them work and fight for it. The Christian life is not a peaceful stroll to the Celestial City; it is a long war. We are called to be soldiers.
Finally, we see the near-universal resistance of the Canaanites. Only one group, the Gibeonites, made peace, and they did so through deception. Everyone else chose to fight. "They took them all in battle." From a human perspective, this seems like a series of independent political and military decisions. Each city-state looked at the advancing Israelites and decided to resist. But the next verse pulls back the curtain of history and shows us the hand of the divine Puppeteer.
The Divine Explanation (v. 20)
This brings us to the theological heart of the passage, the verse that causes so many to recoil.
"For it was of Yahweh to strengthen their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might devote them to destruction, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses." (Joshua 11:20)
Let us not mince words. The text says that God was the ultimate cause of the Canaanites' suicidal resistance. The Hebrew says He "strengthened their hearts," which is the same language used for the hardening of Pharaoh's heart in Exodus. This does not mean God forced innocent people to sin against their will. It means He took their existing rebellion, their pride, and their hatred of Him, and He solidified it. He gave them over to their own choices. He removed His restraining grace and allowed their sinful hearts to become what they always wanted to be: implacably hostile to God and His people. The same sun that melts wax hardens clay. The same gospel that softens the heart of the elect hardens the heart of the reprobate. The issue is not with the sun, but with the substance it shines upon.
And God did this for a stated purpose. He did it "in order that he might devote them to destruction." This is the Hebrew word herem. It means to devote something or someone to God, usually through complete destruction. It was a form of corporate capital punishment. These cultures were cancerous, and God, the divine surgeon, was cutting them out of the land to preserve His covenant people from their corrupting influence. This was not genocide; it was judicial execution on a national scale.
The text goes on to say this was done so "that they might receive no mercy." This is the part that truly offends our democratic sensibilities. We believe everyone deserves a chance, that mercy is a right. The Bible teaches that mercy is a gift. Justice is what we all deserve. The fact that God shows mercy to anyone is the great astonishment. The fact that He justly condemns the wicked is not a problem to be solved; it is a display of His holiness. God is not obligated to show mercy to those who have spent centuries shaking their fist in His face. His sovereign decision to withhold mercy from the Canaanites is just as righteous as His sovereign decision to extend mercy to Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute.
And all of this was done in perfect obedience to God's prior command: "just as Yahweh had commanded Moses" (Deuteronomy 7:1-2; 20:16-18). Joshua was not an innovator. He was a faithful steward, carrying out the revealed will of God. This establishes a vital principle: God's actions are never arbitrary. They are always in accordance with His Word. The standard of righteousness is not our fluctuating feelings, but God's unchanging character as revealed in His commands. This was a holy war, not because Israel was inherently holy, but because they were the instruments of a holy God, carrying out a holy judgment that He had commanded.
The Gospel in the Hardness
How do we, as New Covenant believers, process a passage like this? First, we must see that the principle of divine hardening is not limited to the Old Testament. The apostle Paul, in Romans 9, uses the example of Pharaoh to establish the very same doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty in salvation and judgment. "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires" (Romans 9:18). Paul anticipates our objection: "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?" His answer is not to soften the doctrine, but to double down on the Creator/creature distinction: "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" (Romans 9:20).
The God who hardened the hearts of the Canaanites is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. His character has not changed. The difference is not in God, but in the administration of His covenant. The warfare we wage is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age (Ephesians 6:12). Our sword is not made of iron, but is the Word of God. The judgment of herem that fell physically on the Canaanites is a terrifying picture of the final judgment that will fall on all who do not repent and trust in Christ.
And this is where the glorious good news breaks in. The only reason our hearts are not as hard as the Canaanites' is because of a divine, unilateral act of grace. We were, by nature, children of wrath, just like them (Ephesians 2:3). Our hearts were stone. But God, in His rich mercy, made a promise: "I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh" (Ezekiel 11:19). This is the new birth. It is a sovereign work of God, just as much as the hardening of Canaan's heart was a sovereign work of God.
You do not get to have a sovereign God who can save you unless you also have a sovereign God who can judge. You cannot have the comfort of Romans 8:28, that God works all things for good for those who love Him, without the terror of Joshua 11:20, that God works all things for destruction for those who hate Him. It is the same sovereignty. The cross of Christ is the ultimate intersection of this terrible sovereignty. At the cross, God took the rebellious hearts of Judas, Caiaphas, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers, and He used their wicked choices to accomplish His perfect plan of redemption. God devoted His own Son to destruction, pouring out the full measure of His wrath against sin upon Him, so that we, who deserved no mercy, might receive it all.
Therefore, do not read this passage and puff out your chest. Read it and fall on your knees. If your heart is soft toward God today, it is not because you are better than the Canaanites. It is because the God of Joshua, for reasons known only to Himself, chose to show you mercy. He chose to break in, to conquer your rebellion, and to give you a new heart. And He did it "just as Yahweh had commanded," through the finished work of His Son.