It’s been 20 years since Richard Dawkins released The God Delusion, the mighty atheist screed that launched a movement, drew headlines around the world, got translated into dozens of languages, and sold more than 3 million copies. A lot has changed since. Memories of 9/11 have faded. Global threats have changed; it has become harder to argue that the chief enemies of peace and justice in the modern world are ethical monotheists. The Christian right has been overtaken by the post-Christian right. Scientific arguments, especially from cosmology, are more likely to be invoked in favor of God’s existence than against it. Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett have died. Dawkins has declared himself a cultural Christian, and New Atheism has morphed into social justice activism or strident anti-wokery. But one passage from Dawkins’s book still packs a punch. If my experience is anything to go by, it’s quoted as often today as it was two decades ago, both by those who agree with it and also by those trying to refute it: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. No doubt the effect of this sentence partly derives from its inflammatory, outrage-baiting content. Most Christians don’t mind hearing arguments against God’s existence, and many of us don’t particularly mind being called insane by famous scientists. But we feel an appropriate level of offense when hearing such vitriolic and blasphemous language applied to the Love that moves the sun and other stars. If we’re honest, part of its effect also comes from the fact that Christians, too, often struggle with the Old Testament passages where God commands Israel to destroy the nations. The most powerful criticisms of any belief are always the ones that believers fear might be true. The most significant of these passages, and the one on which most of the others are based, is Deuteronomy 7. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations,” Moses begins, “then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (7:1, 2, all verses NIV). Yikes. How do we understand what Deuteronomy 7 commands? Why Deuteronomy 7 Is Hard Many people today find Deuteronomy 7 to be the hardest and most troubling chapter in the entire Bible. We may struggle theologically, with how to square these commands with the all-good and all-loving God we meet elsewhere in Scripture (not least in Deuteronomy itself!). We may struggle historically, with whether and to what extent Israel followed through on these commands in the books of Joshua and Judges. Many people today find Deuteronomy 7 to be the hardest and most troubling chapter in the entire Bible. We may struggle hermeneutically, with the apparent tension between this passage and (say) Jesus’s teachings on nonviolence, compassion, mercy, and love for enemies. (In this sense, it’s worth noticing that our emotional objections to passages like this are themselves Christian in nature. We’re troubled by the humans who died in the conquest because of the God who died on the cross.) We may struggle politically, given the ongoing history of conflict between Israel and Palestine in our own day. We may struggle practically, with how (if at all) believers should apply this passage to our lives today. We may even struggle personally, especially if we’ve experienced violent authority figures in our own lives. World of Deuteronomy 7 These are important issues. Before addressing them directly, let me highlight a few details in the text that help frame the way we should think about them. To start, notice the miraculous, divine source of Israel’s victories. It’s the Lord who “brings you into the land” and “drives out before you many nations . . . nations larger and stronger than you” (v. 1). This is a battle like David and Goliath, or Frodo and Sam against Sauron, or even Jack and the beanstalk, with Israel as the little guy who defeats the giants because God is on his side. So yes, Israel defeats and destroys, but this is only possible because the Lord drives out and delivers. This cannot possibly be applied to modern wars in which stronger nations bully or invade weaker ones. Notice also the focus on idolatry, which is the key rationale for God’s commands here. Seven specific tribes are to be destroyed—no treaty, no mercy, and no marriages—“for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you” (v. 4). A similar logic lies behind the fourfold command to wipe out their idols: “Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire” (v. 5). Why? “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God” (v. 6). Ultimately, this is a religious campaign rather than a territorial one. Its purpose is temple cleansing, not ethnic cleansing. The land belongs to the Lord, and there are to be no other gods before him. Consequently, Israel is to show no pity for the nations, no worship for their gods, and no fear of their greatness (vv. 16–18). Given the size and defensive prowess of the seven nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (v. 1)—it would be easy for Israel to wonder how they could ever dispossess them. But standing against the seven nations is the sevenfold blessing we see in verse 13, and the sevenfold appearance and action of “the LORD your God” in verses 17–26. Remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh (v. 18). You saw how the Lord your God brought you out (v. 19). He will do the same for you with all these nations (v. 19), and will send the hornet among them (v. 20). “The LORD your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God” (v. 21), and he will drive out these nations (v. 22) and will deliver them to you, “throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed” (v. 23). As a result of these seven divine actions, their kings will be given into your hand, their names will be forgotten, their fortifications will not withstand you, and their images will be burned in the fire (vv. 24–25). Details of Deuteronomy 7 Two details in this paragraph are particularly important for our questions about the conquest of Canaan. The first is when we hear how the Lord will drive out the nations: “Little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you” (v. 22). This is hard to explain if we assume (as many modern readers do) that the call to “destroy them totally” is meant as a literal summons to kill every last person in each city. It suggests that the Israelite campaign was intended to be a gradual invasion rather than an apocalyptic massacre, less like the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and more like the Norman Conquest of England—as indeed it was in reality (Judg. 1:27–36). This would also explain why Moses warns against treaties and intermarriage (Deut. 7:3). How do you negotiate with or marry people if they’re all dead? The Israelite campaign was intended to be a gradual invasion rather than an apocalyptic massacre, less like the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and more like the Norman Conquest of England. The second detail comes in the warnings against idolatry in the last two verses. Some contemporary interpreters have tried to label the conquest of Canaan commanded here as genocide: the attempted extinction of a people because of their ethnicity. This isn’t the case for many reasons, but the key one is that people are judged not for their ethnicity but for their idolatry. Idolatrous Israelites are destroyed, like Achan (Josh. 7). Repentant Canaanites are spared, like Rahab (Josh. 2); she is a particularly important example because she wasn’t only saved but also received into God’s people and even incorporated into the bloodline of Jesus himself (Matt. 1). That focus on idolatry is exactly the point Moses makes in Deuteronomy. “Do not covet the silver and gold on [their gods], and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the LORD your God. Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction” (7:25–26). Being an Israelite won’t save you if you serve false gods, and being a Canaanite won’t condemn you if you serve the true God. We become like what we worship. If you worship a detestable idol, you become like it (Ps. 115:8). If you worship God, the source of all goodness, you’re transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory (2 Cor. 3:18). So it’s vital that Israel not only love the Lord but also regard idols as vile and utterly hate them (Deut. 7:26). Resolving Questions About Deuteronomy 7 Let me summarize where we are so far. We’ve seen that the primary reason why God commands Israel to destroy the seven nations is idolatry. Their destruction is intended both to prevent false gods from ensnaring and leading God’s people astray, and also to cleanse the land from idols to prepare a home for the Lord. That’s the key focus of the chapter. We’ve seen that destruction is the result of idolatry, whether a person is a Hittite, an Amorite, a Canaanite, or even an Israelite, and therefore the underlying motive for the conquest isn’t ethnic or racial but theological. When we add what we know about the “sin of the Amorites” (Gen. 15:16), and the rigorous standards of justice being given to Israel in this very book, we could say that the conquest was much closer to ethic cleansing than ethnic cleansing. In addition to these theological observations about the conquest’s purpose, we’ve also made historical observations about the process of the conquest. One is that Israel was small in comparison to the nations they displaced and relied completely on God to win any battles at all—let alone the entire land. This means that this specific piece of history cannot be used to justify or excuse modern wars between nation-states, let alone wars in which stronger nations bully or invade weaker ones. This means that this specific piece of history cannot be used to justify or excuse modern wars between nation-states, let alone wars in which stronger nations bully or invade weaker ones. Furthermore, there are several indications in the narrative that the language of “destroy them totally” doesn’t mean a complete obliteration of an entire people, although it sounds like that in English. That’s why Moses warns against treaties, marriage, capturing the land too quickly, and being unable to hold back the wild beasts that would otherwise be roaming across it; it’s why he describes the conquest as “little by little.” What we know of the history from Joshua and Judges, as well as from contemporary archaeology, also bears out this point. To all this, we can add literary considerations, as well as historical and theological ones, that indicate a more limited scope to the conquest than we may first think. Modern scholars often point out that ancient sources frequently use hyperbolic statements about battles (“We left nothing alive”) to indicate comprehensive defeats, just as we do about sporting victories (“We crushed them”). Both the writer and his ancient readers knew perfectly well that this wasn’t a literal statement about the death of every single individual. If we were to fast-forward through the Old Testament, we would soon encounter the reappearance of nations (like the Amalekites or Amorites) who have previously been described as “devoted to destruction” (kherem), which suggests that whatever kherem means, it doesn’t necessarily mean the death of every last person. Most revealingly, later in Scripture we find this language applied to Israel itself. Jeremiah declares that Israel will be “completely destroy[ed]” (kherem) and become an “everlasting ruin” in the exile (Jer. 25:9). But we know that this didn’t mean every last Israelite was killed. So no, Deuteronomy isn’t talking about “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing,” whatever Dawkins might say. And it certainly doesn’t give a license to kill to any believers or nation-states today. Holy War Beyond Deuteronomy 7 Having said all this, Scripture is indeed the story of a holy war. It starts in the garden, with the promise to crush the head of the Serpent. It rumbles throughout the narrative of Genesis, from the cataclysmic flood to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—both of which are quoted by the Lord Jesus as examples of what his own coming in judgment will be like (Luke 17:20–37)—and from the call of Abram to the blessing of Judah. Holy war takes center stage in Exodus, with the destruction of Pharaoh. And it carries on through the rest of the Bible in numerous iterations: Joshua versus Jericho, Deborah versus Sisera, David versus Goliath, Hezekiah versus Sennacherib, Peter versus the Sanhedrin, right through to Christ versus Death and the Lamb versus the Dragon. These battles are all fought with different weapons. Against principalities and powers, Christians fight with spiritual weapons, not with guns and bombs against other human beings. But we’re still at war. In the battle between good and evil we still must overthrow idols, attack enemy strongholds, defend the truth, and guard our homes against detestable things. And that, for the practically minded among us, might be the best way to apply Deuteronomy 7. Read and reflect on the fierce resistance to sin and idolatry that Moses urges on Israel, consider their equivalents in your own life—and then go and do likewise.