Page 115 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

6 5:17 homicide 19:1-22:12
7 5:18 adultery 22:13-23:14
8 5:19 theft 23:15-24:7
9 5:20 false charges 24:8-25:4
10 5:21 coveting 25:5-26:15
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At this point with Israel about to enter the Promised Land and evict the people living there, it is valuable
to consider God’s command to eliminate certain peoples, called “the ban.” Sometimes the word is used
in reference to devoting an object in service to God. The action is
optional as the person is expressing their thanks to God (Lev. 27:28, 29). ~rex]h – “the harem” - the ban
Most of the time the word refers to “utter destruction, the compulsory
dedication of something which impedes or resists God’s work, which is considered to be accursed before
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God” The word alone may not communicate the meaning to us in Numbers 21:2 and 3 where it first
occurs. “They completely destroyed them and their towns (v. 3).” When we get to Deut. 7:1-6 we read
the command in its stronger form. The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzzites, Hivites
and Jebusites are to be destroyed totally without mercy (v. 2). How can a just and loving God do such
things?

God is pictured as the judge of the world from the very beginning of the Pentateuch. He cast Adam and
Eve out of the garden. He destroyed the world with a flood. He rained fire from heaven on Sodom and
Gomorrah. Egypt felt the successive plagues from his hand of judgment. In his wisdom this Sovereign
also waits to carry out judgment. YHWH had promised the land to Abraham. He told Abraham that the
promise would not be fulfilled for another four generations. The reason? “The sin of the Amorites has
not yet reached its full measure (Gen. 15:16).”

Archeologists confirm the presence of child sacrifice in the
ancient Near East. In the North African city of Carthage,
where Phoenicians lived, large cemeteries dedicated to
Ba’al, Astarte, and other gods have been excavated.
th
Extending from the 8 century to the second century B.C.,
the cemeteries have as many as nine levels containing
some 20,000 burial urns. The urns contain the charred
bones of children or animals sacrificed as substitutes for
children.

So while Israel was not perfect by any means and often
deserved punishment as a nation, the people living in the

Fig. 75: Child cemetery Promised Land were doing things particularly despised by

123 This outline is modified from Kaiser, Toward Old Testament Ethics, p. 129. Much debate surrounds
the division of the first and second commandment. Many authors put the two together and split the
tenth commandment, much as the Catholic Church does. Yet chapter twelve with its focus on a central
place of worship would seem to highlight the importance of turning from idols specifically. Stephen A.
Kaufman writes (“The Structure of the Deuteronomic Law,” Maarav, Spring, 1979, Vol. 1. No.2, p. 122),
there is a “formal demarcation between chaps. 11 and 12 and the notable difference in style and
message between chaps 6-11 and chap. 12.”
124 Leon J. Wood, “ban,” Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Harris, et al eds. (Chicago: Moody
Bible Institute, 1980), 1:324.

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