“As for the towns of these peoples, which Adonai your God is giving you as your inheritance, you are not to allow anything that breathes to live. Rather you must destroy them completely — the Hitti, the Emori, the Kena‘ani, the P’rizi, the Hivi and the Y’vusi — as Adonai your God has ordered you; so that they won’t teach you to follow their abominable practices, which they do for their gods, thus causing you to sin against Adonai your God.”-Deuteronomy 20:16-18
In my last post, we studied the set of merciful instructions (verses 10-15) that were to be applied to those Canaanite towns who accepted the reality that a new sheriff was in town and non-violently surrendered to Israel.
However, afterwards we are given a radically different set of instructions.
We are given a list of seven nations the Lord has decreed are SO WICKED that God doesn’t want them just pushed out of the land.
He wants them DEAD with a capital “D”.
The Scripture goes so far as to say “you are not to allow anything that breathes to live” in these towns.
We’re talking about men, women, children, young babies and even the animals.
Everything is to be utterly and irrevocably destroyed.
Now this is where things get sticky.
It is precisely these parts of Scripture that cause people to lose their faith in God and either accuse the Bible of being a barbaric book that has no relevance to our day and age OR…
…if they decide to keep their religious faith, they opt out for a twisted and aberrant theology that says the God of the OT is different than the God of the NT.
Both of these notions are just a bunch of boooooool sheeeeeeet.
The problem is they don’t understand Torah and the non-negotiable rules that govern the Lord’s holiness.
We’ll get deeper into this later but for now, let’s take a look at the seven nations the Lord marked for destruction.
They are the…
Hittites,
Emorites,
Canaanites,
Perrizites,
Jebusites,
Girgashites,
and Amorites.
One point to keep in mind.
Understand that the land of Canaan is a continent that had many nations in it just like Europe is a continent that has many nations inside of its borders.
Just as “European” is a general term for anyone originating from Europe, so was the name “Canaan” a general name for anyone living in the Land of Canaan.
Remember, technically speaking, a “Canaanite” was a tribe or nation directly descended from Noah’s grandson Canaan.
Hence, in terms of genealogy or tribal affiliation, the majority body of Canaanites were NOT necessarily related to the seven nations the Lord ordered Israel to destroy.
Incidentally, recall that Canaan was cursed by Noah after the flood.
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”
-Genesis 9:25
Now what exactly was the problem with those seven nations that was so bad that God could no longer allow them to live.
The three main reasons are as follows:
–The worshipped false gods.
–Their worship practices were abominable
–They were firmly against the God of Israel
In a nutshell, their very existence posed a severe spiritual danger to God’s people.
If Israel was to adopt even an inkling of the wicked worship practices of these nations, they would risk being cut off (KARET) from HASHEM.
They represented such a potentially bad influence that God had no choice but to annihilate these people from the face of the earth forever showing no mercy.
One interesting point to keep in mind here is that it wasn’t so much the religious belief system of the Canaanites that was the issue.
Instead, it was their abominable worship practices that God hated so much.
So you can see it was their ACTIONS more than their belief system residing inside their heads that was the problem.
It wasn’t such a big deal that these seven nations worshipped the objects in the sky as their gods and goddesses.
In Deuteronomy chapter 4 and 32, God actually said he assigned the worship of the stars, moon, and sun to the heathen.
Rather the biggest problem the Lord had with these seven sick nations were the following disgusting practices.
-The worship of their gods and goddesses via perverse sexual practices (anal penetration)
-The sacrifice of young children
-Drinking blood (another forbidden abomination)
-A variety of other infectious behaviors etc.
There is no way in hell God could allow such unclean nations anywhere near His people.
They had to be destroyed.
No questions asked and NO EXCEPTIONS!
Sadly the United States, as a nation, has been in the process of being engulfed by these abominations. Please pray that Almighty God will intervene in the USA in a mighty mighty way that the Abortion Industry, LGBQ, the Islamist and the Humanistic Nieztchen/Maxist worldview will be eradicated replaced by a great awakening and turning to Yeshua for forgiveness and rebirth through Ruach Hagodesh.
Eventually the whole world will bow down to God’s Torah. It cannot be otherwise.
I thought the reason the Canaanites were slated for destruction was similar to Daniel’s prophesy about the Antichrist…”standing in a holy place.” Is there not a parallel with what the Anrichrist will do with what the Canaanites did? They were God’s enemies dwelling in a holy land that was promised to a holy people. Am I wrong to believe that just by being there while committing abominations, they literally trespassed on holy ground thus defiling God’s holiness? Your thoughts?
Hi Karl, I think your observations are correct. The Canaanites were not authorized to occupy God-ordained holy land and thus had to be expelled out of the land.