Was God justified in exterminating the Canaanites?

Here is what I said in the other thread that got this topic going

But when the archaeologists did a dig where the Canaanites once lived, what was discovered was so bad that the archaeologists remarked why didn't God wipe them out sooner! If God had them wiped out it was because they were evil and unable to be reformed, God can see these things humans can't.

Yet in the rare instance that non-Israelites were seen by God to be reformable he spared them, Rahab in Jericho a prostitute, but not just her her whole family that sided with her risking there lives by betraying their fellow Jerichoans to protect the Israelite spies.

Some intelligent Egyptians that protected their first-born from the tenth plague and then left with Moses via the Red Sea, leaving behind a devastated Egypt.

The Gibeonites were also spared, as they were a reformable people that accepted that the God of Israel was real and would not and could not be stopped. Joshua's treaty with the Hivites After the destruction of Jericho and Ai, the people of Gibeon (Hivites) sent ambassadors to trick Joshua and the Israelites into making a treaty with them. According to the Bible, the Israelites were commanded to destroy all inhabitants of Canaan.
The Gibeonites presented themselves as ambassadors from a distant, powerful land. Without consulting the high priests, Israel entered into a mutual pact with the Gibeonites. Joshua realized he had been deceived, but he kept the letter of his covenant with the Gibeonites to let them live.
If you would submit and listen to the God of Isreal he would spare you Jew or not, however the bible shows that very few ever did.

The historical account shows that the populations of the Canaanite cities conquered by the Israelites were subjected to complete destruction. (Nu 21:1-3, 34, 35; Jos 6:20, 21; 8:21-27; 10:26-40; 11:10-14)

This fact has been used by some critics as a means for depicting the Hebrew Scriptures, or “Old Testament,” as imbued with a spirit of cruelty and wanton slaughter. The issue involved, however, is clearly that of whether God’s sovereignty over the earth and its inhabitants is acknowledged or not. He had deeded over the right of tenure of the land of Canaan to the ‘seed of Abraham,’ doing so by an oath-bound covenant. (Ge 12:5-7; 15:17-21; compare De 32:8; Ac 17:26.)

But more than a mere eviction or dispossessing of the existing tenants of that land was purposed by God. His right to act as “Judge of all the earth” (Ge 18:25) and to decree the sentence of capital punishment upon those found meriting it, as well as his right to implement and enforce the execution of such decree, was also involved. The justness of God’s prophetic curse on Canaan found full confirmation in the conditions that had developed in Canaan by the time of the Israelite conquest. God had allowed 400 years from Abraham’s time for the ‘error of the Amorites to come to completion.’ (Ge 15:16)
The fact that Esau’s Hittite wives were “a source of bitterness of spirit to Isaac and Rebekah” to the extent that Rebekah had ‘come to abhor her life because of them’ is certainly an indication of the badness already manifest among the Canaanites. (Ge 26:34, 35; 27:46)

During the centuries that followed, the land of Canaan became saturated with detestable practices of idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed. The Canaanite religion was extraordinarily base and degraded, their “sacred poles” evidently being phallic symbols, and many of the rites at their “high places” involving gross sexual excesses and depravity. (Ex 23:24; 34:12, 13; Nu 33:52; De 7:5) Incest, sodomy, and bestiality were part of ‘the way of the land of Canaan’ that made the land unclean and for which error it was due to “vomit its inhabitants out.” (Le 18:2-25) Magic, spellbinding, spiritism, and sacrifice of their children by fire were also among the Canaanites’ detestable practices.—De 18:9-12. Baal was the most prominent of the deities worshiped by the Canaanites. (Jg 2:12, 13; compare Jg 6:25-32; 1Ki 16:30-32.)
The Canaanite goddesses Ashtoreth (Jg 2:13; 10:6; 1Sa 7:3, 4), Asherah, and Anath are presented in an Egyptian text as both mother-goddesses and as sacred prostitutes who, paradoxically, remain ever-virgin (literally, “the great goddesses who conceive but do not bear”). Their worship apparently was invariably involved with the services of temple prostitutes. These goddesses symbolized the quality not only of sexual lust but also of sadistic violence and warfare. Thus, the goddess Anath is depicted in the Baal Epic from Ugarit as effecting a general slaughter of men and then decorating herself with suspended heads and attaching men’s hands to her girdle while she joyfully wades in their blood. The figurines of the goddess Ashtoreth that have been discovered in Palestine are of a nude woman with rudely exaggerated sex organs. Of their phallic worship, archaeologist W. F. Albright observes that: “At its worst, . . . the erotic aspect of their cult must have sunk to extremely sordid depths of social degradation.”—Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 1968, pp. 76, 77; see ASHTORETH; BAAL No. 4. Added to their other degrading practices was that of child sacrifice. According to Merrill F. Unger: “Excavations in Palestine have uncovered piles of ashes and remains of infant skeletons in cemeteries around heathen altars, pointing to the widespread practice of this cruel abomination.” (Archaeology and the Old Testament, 1964, p. 279)

Halley’s Bible Handbook (1964, p. 161) says: “Canaanites worshipped, by immoral indulgence, as a religious rite, in the presence of their gods; and then, by murdering their first-born children, as a sacrifice to these same gods. It seems that, in large measure, the land of Canaan had become a sort of Sodom and Gomorrah on a national scale. . . . Did a civilization of such abominable filth and brutality have any right longer to exist? . . . Archaeologists who dig in the ruins of Canaanite cities wonder that God did not destroy them sooner than he did.”—

It is clear that God looks at a society as a whole and if it degrades to a certain point he wipes it out. It is a warning for our time. And it is never other humans place to do what only God is allowed to do, unless he specifically assigned them. But since that time is over, no God based human violence can be justified after Jesus came because it would represent false religion.

Is God justified, since his justice is perfect, the answer is yes.
Man has free choice, BUT God expects humans to use their free choice wisely and fairly.
Abuse of privileges always has consequences.

if violence was not justified after jesus,
then god is not justified

you have to choose, human perspective
or gods perspective, including the human perspective

he did it for reasons...reasons to let our hearts never feel
pain anymore...but also to only feel what was functional, not more then that.
if god is not one, he would be divided,
that is the 'source' god, the 'quantum' god,
the 'parallell' universes god,
it means a god that is everything,
including you somewhere in never ending pain

to avoid that, he shaped a minor pain world
where pain is minimal (for humans it looks heavy,
but when you will live forever you will understand it
to be good)

this pain world allows his logic to be true,
paradox.

A god that is everything needs himself
and is not free.

truth can only be truth if it is free from having to be truth.
because then it is subjected to a higher truth.

I know i talk russian for most people.


succes with your search.
jonathan.

[edit on 22-8-2009 by pasttheclouds]

reply to post by pasttheclouds

if violence was not justified after jesus, then god is not justified

No, I mean by man, that God authorizes, Jesus told them to put away their swords on his arrest, from that point on there would be no violence endorsed by God done by man to his fellow man. That epoch ended with Jesus statement, but Christians never listened and thought they could do what the Israelites did to the Canaanites. Especially during the period known as "The Dark Ages"
None of the crusades were endorsed by God, in fact that's all a false Christianity, so that just shows how misguided Christians became after all the Apostles died.

yeah you are right

but there are two levels,try to understand the two levels

level 1 : God
level 2: human

level 1:
LOGIC and Science: Truth is absolute, because even when 2 looking opposite
truths are both true, they come together in One truth that they are both true

RELIGION: God is one (Deut.Isaiah, Gospel, Quran, ... )

so everything that happens is included in god,
and god is justified to Himself
so what happens has to be good always, everything really,
including the most horrible truths we know

level 2:
humans

What is evil really ?
IF you forgive someone that hurted you, you first HAVE to become
angry, afterwards you can CHOOSE to understand

forgiving = understanding it to be good, turning it
as a motor from negative into positive

so you know truth is one, but you are not truth, behaving like it,
so you know you're seperated
but still you know you are one with truth, truth includes everything,
it is not seperated, it includes.

so to see your OWN truth , God is one, you have to start seeing,
you do that with being angry = care = cross
by this way you make what is wrong yours, you make it good
(for example this post shows your care, you want it to be good,
even when you dont really see it, and if it didnt happen, you want
to understand hwy relgion or humans are like that, you care,
you try to make truth part of you, and be in peace with it, yourself)

when you ignore, do not care, you will not be angry,
you will not do something 'evil' but actually you will
never be justified to yourself because you do not care about yourself
as truth, you do not make one.

now logic is complicated, and easy, but it DEMANDS you to
come towards it

If god is one, and he suffers pain, it is because he NEEDS it
so as a human you can decide to not carry the cross of care
and it is NOT sin, but it is CHOICE to not carry your own cross
so it ends with nothing, because there is only Life as One
in both logic, which is truth as heart which is One, so is
actually logic.

I know russian, sorry, i try to help you,
but you have to see as much as possible
what is not true

logic in this world you see by seeing what is NOT true
otherwise you observe random instead of knowing

maybe it sounds crap for you, if not, feel free to ask me more.

take care !

I try to make it as easy as possible,


If you forgive, then you understand
if you do not forgive
then you do not understand
and then you do not forgive truth
you do not justify truth
you do not give freedom to what is true
what happens is part of truth,
the question is, do you want to see it's truth or hide it
and if you see it, you will react to change it
but in the end it comes from truth, and is good,
because truth is not justified to something
outside it

people desire to make someone guilty,
but
nothing ever happens
from a persons perspective to be bad

everyone is 'stable' in his logic
and thinks to be justified in his logic
growing is allowing self doubt to conquer
your own previous justification

it means everyone acts from his own truth
that he REALLY believes to be true
he doesnt see another logic then doing what he does

if someone reacts evil, it is because he doesnt see another
logic in it, even when he has doubts and does it
it is because he did not prepare himself to conquer
the doubts first, he neglected the doubts
ignorance
but !! before you are one with god, truth, you only grow,
this means you xill do mistakes ALL the time, you will
never be stronger then the mistakes until they set you free

anger is also a blind reaction, but it is needed to understand,
so you have control - no control - control - no control
it shows us we
are not in control, and is actually good
if you use it for care
people who ignore have
control - control - control - so they justified themselves
to be not one with god, they choose against giving up control
to their selves as one

but i's a stairsystem, a clockwork , turning 360 degrees
you can be angry and still ignore, then your anger
can start to be an easy action as intended murder (example)

look, everything is relative, some do bad to do good,
some do good to be bad, its very relative,
it depends where your clock is pointing to,
it has to turn around to become good.

god inside out. paradox.


so you have a lot of nuances, grey areas
and people try to think in absolutes
before they are allowed
first relative, then absolutes.

So how does this relate to Canaan ?
well, you have to start from truth out
to understand the symbolic issues of life

you start first with basics,
then with details
basic is
what is logic ?
what is truth ?
what is the essence of logic and truth ?
is it an atom, is it belief ?

later, much much later, logic will give you the answers
for every horror that ever happened,
because you will see it as LOGIC

i know it sounds easy to say this,
but without israel conquering canaan
you would not know what horrors happened
that made us struggle for truth
that truth is so complicated,
stories of 2000 years ago had to prepare it
it comes together in this time..
its a very nuanced logic that is to be believed,
and it is so close to the real logic
that it allows logic to be free but including all
truth can not be sunject to itself or it is not free
and truth means it is free.
very complicated and very easy.


religion doesnt understand god used 'israel'
not the nation of now
both as blessing and curse

evil is grey, not black.

Martin Luther King mentioned once a thought,
that the biggest block in his striving for freedom for blacks
was not klu klux or haters,
but the normal white man who said lets keep the peace
and thought to halt time for his own selfish use of time and peace.

evil is grey. ignorance.

you have to be black/white first
to make the black white
sometimes when doing it
you will be a beast in anger sometimes
but if you see yourself while doing it,
you prevent worse and
you will change it into a child
children do not see full
they grow

World war 2 horrors were allowed by ignorance,
not by hitler by himself, he was just acting out history,
without giving him now clearance, i let that open now.

to be safe means war against yourself first.



[edit on 22-8-2009 by pasttheclouds]

[edit on 22-8-2009 by pasttheclouds]

[edit on 22-8-2009 by pasttheclouds]

I believe those nations that Israel went against were giants which did extreme evil. I also heard that they were doing human/animal experiments back then.

Thanks,
TT

Israel was one of the most evil nations itself,
thats why god 'punished' them

as a christian its better to see evrything
the king of babylon for example is in christian circles the bad one
but he was gods servant, he was an example just as israel

he did 'wrong', he repented, god saw him as his child
yes, the king of babylon was destined to do wrong
that story was planned by your god
your god allowed 'evil' to be
god is one, he is everything, but
because he is one, he is good,
before a human is good
he has to be one too
and you become that by giving and forgiving, by setting free.

christians are not that forgiving sometimes,
but it's not their fault totally,

do yourself a pleasure, listen to nobody,
except to your own truth,
but always remember truth is honest,
thats how you can see it,
by loosing way sometimes

just be honest always always and always,
ask god why he would be so bad with so many people,
why he would judge people from other geographical zones
just because they dont know the name Jesus.
when Jesus said he is One, Truth, Way.

honesty, not someone else, brings you there

jesus said im here for the lost sheep