A verse faced honestly
The Conquest of Canaan
In Deuteronomy 20:16-18 Israel is told, of the cities of the promised land, to "save alive nothing that breatheth," and the book of Joshua narrates the taking of Jericho and Ai and the rest with the refrain that they "utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old." For many honest readers this is the hardest thing in the Bible.
“But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:”Deuteronomy 20:16
Why it troubles honest readers
Why it troubles honest readers The difficulty is not squeamishness; it is a genuine moral collision. God, who forbids murder and whose mercy is said to be over all his works, here appears to command the killing of whole populations, including women, children, and infants who could have done nothing. If a modern nation did this we would call it genocide and mean it, and we would not accept "God told us to" as a defense. The command reads not as a tragic byproduct of ancient war but as the deliberate objective. Worse, later readers have used these texts to bless their own conquests and cruelties, from crusades to colonization. A troubled believer feels the ground move: if God can command this, how do I trust his character, and how is this the same God who in Christ says to love enemies? The skeptic presses harder still. Either the command was never really given and the text libels God, or it was given and God is not good in any sense we can recognize. Appeals to Canaanite wickedness do not obviously reach the children. This is where many people, sincerely, lose their faith, and pretending the problem is small is itself a kind of dishonesty.
Facing it honestly
Facing it honestly Several things are legitimately clarified, and one thing is not. First, the language. The term often rendered "utterly destroy" translates the Hebrew herem, a devoting to destruction, and the conquest accounts are written in the stock idiom of ancient Near Eastern war reporting, which routinely used total-destruction hyperbole. The same book of Joshua that says the Canaanites were wiped out also assumes, chapters later, that they are still present in force (Josh 15:63; 16:10; 17:12-13; Judg 1), and the emphasis on driving out and dispossessing sits beside the emphasis on destroying. Many scholars conclude the primary aim was the removal of entrenched Canaanite religion and its practices, not extermination for its own sake, and that the numbers and totality are rhetorically shaped. Second, the framing. Scripture presents this as a specific, bounded, unrepeatable act of judgment after long delay (Gen 15:16, "the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full"), against practices the text names as horrific, including child sacrifice (Deut 12:31). It is never offered as a standing template; Israel is warned it faces the same judgment if it does the same things, and later does. Sincere believers still divide over how much the hyperbole explains: some hold that the killing was real but limited and judicial; some emphasize the literary conventions heavily; some accept a real and terrible historical judgment and rest in God's prerogative over life he gives. What is not dissolved is the infants. Hyperbole may reduce the scale, but it does not tenderly resolve every death, and honesty requires saying that this remains, for many faithful readers, genuinely and permanently hard.
Where it leads
Where it leads John 1:18 says no one has seen God at any time; the Son has made him known. If Jesus is the clearest picture of God's heart, then whatever these texts mean, they cannot mean that God delights in the death of children, for the same God incarnate took children in his arms and warned of millstones for any who harm them. The trajectory of Scripture bends away from herem toward a King who conquers by being conquered. At the cross the judgment that fell on Canaan is turned inward: God in Christ absorbs into his own body the wrath that wickedness deserves, so that the final answer to human evil is not a sword raised against sinners but a Savior slain for them. That does not make the conquest comfortable. It does mean the story is not finished at Jericho. The God who once commanded the destruction of the wicked came, in the flesh, and let the wicked destroy him instead, and rose to offer them mercy. We hold the hard text and the crucified God together, and refuse to let go of either.
Questions people ask
Isn't calling it hyperbole just a convenient escape?
It would be if it were invented for the occasion, but the totalizing war idiom is well attested across ancient Near Eastern texts and is visibly at work within Joshua itself, which reports the Canaanites both destroyed and still present. That said, hyperbole lowers the scale; it does not by itself answer for every real death, and honesty means admitting the remainder.
What about the children who could not have sinned?
This is the sharpest edge and we will not pretend it away. Some believers hold the children who died went into the mercy of the God who made them; some rest in his prerogative over the life he gives and takes; some simply confess they do not know and will not defend more than Scripture claims. What we refuse to do is either celebrate their deaths or use their deaths to abandon the God revealed in Christ.
Does this justify religious violence today?
No, and the text itself forbids it. The conquest is framed as a one-time, bounded judgment, never a rule for God's people to imitate, and the New Testament explicitly reroutes the people of God away from the sword: our warfare is not against flesh and blood, and our King told Peter to put up his blade. Anyone quoting Joshua to bless a modern conquest is misusing it.