Page 67 - Advanced OT Survey Revised

God was angry. Indeed, He was furious. And with good reason. Even by ancient standards, the
Canaanites were a hideously nasty bunch. Their culture was grossly immoral, decadent to its roots. Its
debauchery was dictated primarily by its fertility religion that tied eroticism of all varieties to the
successful agrarian cycles of planting and harvest.

In addition to divination, witchcraft, and female and male temple sex, Canaanite idolatry encompassed a
host of morally disgusting practices that mimicked the sexually perverse conduct of their Canaanite
fertility gods: adultery, homosexuality, transvestitism, pederasty (men sexually abusing boys), sex with
all sorts of beasts, and incest. Note that after the Canaanite city Sodom was destroyed, Lot’s daughters
immediately seduced their drunken father, imitating one of the sexual practices of the city just
annihilated (Gen. 19:30-36).

Worst of all, Canaanites practiced child sacrifice. There was a reason God had commanded, “Do not give
any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech” (Lev. 18:21 NIV). Molech was an underworld deity with
the head of a bull and the body of a human. He had a hole in his belly in which a great fire was built. He
was formed with outstretched arms. The stone god would heat up almost red hot, then children were
placed on his arms and would slowly “cook” to death. They not only sacrificed infants, but children as
old as four year were sacrificed. xlviii Their death has been described as thus:

As the flames surrounded the body, the limbs would shrivel up and the mouth would appear to grin
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as if laughing, until it was shrunk enough to slip into the cauldron.
Archeological evidence indicates that the children thus burned to death numbers in the thousands.
The judgment of God against the Canaanites was a judgment because of their sin. The consequence of
sin is death. The conquest was an exercise of capital punishment on a national scale, payback for
hundreds of years of idolatry and unthinkable debauchery. Indeed, God brought the same sentence of
destruction on His own people when they sinned in like manner.

So did God break his own commandment (sixth of Ten Commandments) which says, “Thou shalt
not kill?”

In the Old Testament, God commanded the children of Israel to enter the Promised Land and kill all the
inhabitants of the Land, including women, children, and even animals. This does not make sense!
Doesn’t God killing people make Him a murderer?

The sixth of the ten commandments says, “Thou shalt not kill.” (KJV - Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy
6:6-17). Actually, the translation of the King James Bible is unfortunate because the Hebrew translation
of the word ratsach means intentional killing without cause. A better rendering of the word is
“murder.” Most modern translations render the word correctly (ESV, NIV, NASV, HCSB, and even
paraphrases like the Living Bible). The best paraphrase of the commandment would be, “Do not put
anyone to death without cause.”

Think about it. God destroyed the world with a flood, killing all inhabitants, including animals which
breath air, because of the gross wickedness of man’s heart. God had just cause to eliminate all except
righteous Noah and his family (Genesis 7:21-23). Does killing evil mankind make God a murderer?

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