D20-12: The ONE KEY WORD That Explains How A Gentile Joined Ancient Israel That Still Applies Today

^“However, if they refuse to make peace with you but prefer to make war against you, you are to put it under siege.  When Adonai your God hands it over to you, you are to put every male to the sword.”-Deuteronomy 20:12-13

In my last post, I discussed how the army of Israel is to treat the citizens of a Canaanite town if they agree to surrender.

Today, we’re going to deal with the opposite.

What should Israel do when they encounter a stubborn Canaanite town who refuses to surrender and instead decides to raise up their swords in defiance against the Hebrew soldiers?

Verse 12 tells us that…

…that town is to be put under seige.

Afterwards, we’re told “every male” is to be put to death.

Finally, all the women, children and all the people’s possessions including the livestock are to be taken as spoils of war.

I know this all sounds pretty harsh but let me clarify a couple of points.

FIRST, where it says that “all males” are to be put to the sword it is referring to only adult males who were old enough to fight in the military.

So we’re talking anywhere from between 16 years to 20 years old and up.

This particular instruction is NOT telling the Hebrew soldiers to exterminate young male children.

SECOND, understand that when the Hebrew army invaded a town, the citizens always had the option to simply pack up their bags and leave.

It was no secret what Israel was up to.

The Canaanites knew full well that the God of Israel had ordered the Hebrews to take the land they had inhabited for centuries.

I know that option sounds distasteful but the option existed nonetheless.

The citizens of Canaan had more than enough time to move out of designated Promised Land territory and start up a new life somewhere else minus losing their lives and all the heartache.

Some idiots like to compare what we’re reading here to the behavior of the Nazis.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hitler was hellbent on exterminating the Jews no matter where they lived.

In fact, he didn’t want them to leave his ruling territory.

He wanted to keep them rounded up so he could kill them off more efficiently.

And there wasn’t some option to convert to something in order to avoid being killed. 

Hitler was operating under a retarded “Jewish blood” or “Jewish race” theory, so it didn’t matter to him if a Jew had become a Christian or had converted to Catholicism etcetera.

If someone even had like 1/24th of Jewish blood in them (whatever the hell that means), he wanted them dead.

This was not the case with Israel where a foreigner was welcome to join the community of God.

But he had to surrender.

And the same goes with anyone who wishes to enter into the community of God today.

One must surrender.

That is the key operative word.

One must surrender one’s sinful lifestyle, all of his or her false gods, heck he must surrender his or her very identity.

Until one does that, one remains outside the community of God.

Understand that the Lord’s primary objective in waging His Holy War was to empty the land of Canaan of a people who He had judged as wicked and replace them with His Chosen People.

God never commanded the Israelite soldiers to hunt down those who chose to flee or to kill those who humbly surrendered. 

We’ll continue this discussion the next time we meet.