Commands of Destruction
Deuteronomy 20 contains one of the most straightforward commands in the wilderness-conquest narrative from God to the Israelites to destroy Canaanites. It and its preceding chapters provide a similar (though expanded) series of instructions to those of Exodus 23. Laws for the humane treatment of the vulnerable precede an apparently ruthless command to destroy the peoples of Canaan. It emphasizes that the people who live in the cities the Israelites will settle must be killed without exception:
As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. Instead you must utterly annihilate them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God. (NET)
We don’t have a catalog of the Canaanites’ infractions here, though some items are mentioned elsewhere. Exodus 23 communicates the importance of shunning the Canaanites’ gods and religious practices. Deuteronomy 7 similarly admonishes the Israelites to destroy images of gods and not to be tempted to participate in their religion. Deuteronomy 18 lists sacrifices of children in the fire, divination, reading omens, soothsaying, sorcery, spell casting, conjuring spirits, practicing the occult, and necromancy as the reason God will drive out the Canaanites. Psalm 106 recalls a similar list of Canaanite activities as a warning to the Israelites.
Fruitfulness and Protection
In Genesis 1, God blesses the people to “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the land and subdue it.” In Genesis 2, God charges the man to tend and keep / care for and maintain / cultivate and guard the garden. In the Eden garden-like Tabernacle and Temple, Levites function as guards, armed to protect its holiness (Numbers 1, 1 Chronicles 26). In each place, God meets with people and appoints them to cultivate and protect its fruitful holiness as part of their relationship with him.
Matthew Lynch in his article An Old Testament Critique of Modern Violence[1] recognizes a link between human violence and the fruitfulness of the ground. Increasing violence ruins the land (Genesis 6, Numbers 35) ultimately necessitating a de-creation act such as the Flood to restore the land’s fruitfulness.
In Judges 7, the account of Gideon’s raid on the Midianites, God first tells Gideon to thin the ranks of his small army based on self-identified fear and how they drink. Deuteronomy 20 similarly begins (and its initial passage ends) admonishing against fear, but its primary focus appears to be unrealized fruitfulness – a house not yet dedicated, a vineyard not yet yielding, an engagement not yet a marriage. Any man in these circumstances, like Gideon’s fearful men, is released from fighting. These laws appear to apply to the Israelites at a future time as they are already living in the land rather than ones currently living in tents without land of their own, expectantly waiting to enter Canaan.
Cities as Rebellion
In Genesis 4-11, cities result from and harbor seed of the serpent / anti-God activity. The righteous standard in the early chapters of Genesis includes being the image of God, mastering sin as it crouches at the door, and fruitfulness. In contrast, those who reject God make names for themselves and violently assault and kill, polluting the land. They consolidate in walled cities for their own protection and power rather than filling and cultivating the land. As late as Revelation 11, John compresses Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem into one representative rebellious city. Rebellion that leads to the founding of cities is a consistent feature of Torah narrative beginning in Genesis 4. Canaanite cities represent the same rebellious spirit that Egypt, Shechem, Sodom, Babel, and Cain’s city all do.
Pattern of Judgment
Regarding earlier similar passages, we’ve discussed a pattern of judgment that includes God forming people in the wilderness, bringing them into a fruitful land for relationship, giving guidance for living in the land, people increasing rebellion until the project is no longer viable, God coming down and assessing, judgment via de-creation, and the preservation of a remnant to return to the land.
In this Deuteronomy 20 iteration of the pattern, God goes before and is present in judgment. The Israelites act as God’s representatives, fulfilling his purpose. Because it is people rather than weather, “plagues,” or other natural forces delivering the judgment, many readers view this iteration of the judgment cycle differently than previous instances – as morally fraught, even as genocide. Arguably, the biblical authors/editors do not.
God judges using various means across generations and locations. As he brings his people into the land, he does not de-create it as in earlier instances. Rather, he orders that the fruit trees be preserved (Deuteronomy 20) and allows Canaanites to continue to occupy parts of the land until the Israelites are ready to settle in them, so wild animals do not overtake it and make it an uninhabitable wilderness (Exodus 23). Contra earlier examples such as the Flood or the plagues on Egypt, his purpose here appears to be to gradually but decisively displace rebellious inhabitants with ones who will embrace relationship with him as he and they together maintain the fruitfulness of the land.
In the pattern of judgment, God alone evaluates when and whether judgment is necessary, so this is not a passage well adapted for practical application in our own lives. There is no evidence this is a model for future religiously motivated action.
[1] Lynch, Matthew, An Old Testament Critique of Modern Violence, Violent Biblical Texts New Approaches (2024): 34-47.