The Immorality of God - The Canaanites

[athrock]

 

1. The Canaanites were actually a perverse people, and God patiently waited 400 years (from the time of Abraham to Joshua) allowing the Canaanites time to amend their evil ways. Instead, their wickedness actually increased, so God used the Israelites to punish the Canaanites for their sins – just as He had punished all mankind by means of the flood earlier, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and even the Israelites themselves by means of forty years spent in the wilderness and the Babylonian captivity. Clearly, God was no harder on the Canaanites than He was upon His own people.
   
2. The Canaanites had the opportunity to flee; by choosing to stay and fight, they resisted God and sealed their own fate. 
   
3. It is evident that the Israelites didn’t literally kill every single Canaanite man, woman and child, because the Canaanites continued to appear in the Bible long after the time when they were allegedly wiped out. It is more likely that the authors of the Old Testament books used metaphorical or hyperbolic language to express the message they wanted to convey about Israel’s victories over the Canaanites.
   

 

Late to the party....but:

1.  Since -when- was perversion an excuse for genocide?  If someone (or, in fact, everyone) told you to kill someone for the crime of "perversion" allow me to believe that you would not comply.  
2. Some segment of a populace will -always- fight to defend their lives, even if they were in the wrong by some other standard.  This is hardly a revelation.
3. That a people didn't fully execute, down to every last feotus and child, a sadistic order, is no comment upon the the sadism of the order.

1. If God commanded that the Israelites wipe out the Canaanites for their perversions, you may be sure their sins were not minor in His sight.

3. Suggesting further that the decimation of the Canaanites was not the "sadistic" "genocide" that is often claimed.


And btw, "genocide" is a term normally applied to the destruction of a single ethnic group. Was this a genocide because of race? Or a punishment because of sin?

Why did the God of the OT order the destruction of the Canaanites, Rhythm?

(Hint: http://www.gotquestions.org/Canaanites-e...ation.html)