Did God actually command holy war — or did Israel's generals put words in His mouth to justify conquest?

• M

  Marco3w ago

  I was sexually abused by someone who used Bible passages to justify what he did to me. When I hear 'God commanded it, therefore it's right,' I can't separate that from my own experience of that logic being used to hurt people. I'm not saying the situations are equivalent. I'm saying the logic of 'God said so, therefore moral questions don't apply' is a logic that destroys people and I will never be okay with it, no matter how many theology degrees are in the room.

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• ZS

  Zara S.3w ago

  The person above is literally making the argument that the problem with genocide is that they didn't finish it. I need everyone to sit with that for a second.

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• TB

  Theo B.3w ago

  okay philosophy guys can you maybe have this fight somewhere else because the rest of us are just trying to figure out how to read Joshua to our kids at night

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• NR

  Noah R.3w ago

  Been studying this for 30 years. Old Testament scholar (retired seminary professor). The honest answer is that the text presents these as divine commands, and the text is not internally presenting them as propaganda or false prophecy. But we also know from comparative ancient literature that 'the god commanded us' is standard ancient war rhetoric. Holding both those truths in tension is not weakness — it's honest scholarship. Anyone who tells you this is simple is selling something.

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• R

  Ravi3w ago

  My grandfather was a pastor in Korea. He used to say the hardest sermons he ever preached were on the conquest narratives. Not because he doubted God — he didn't, not for a moment — but because he knew what real military slaughter looked like. He survived the Korean War. He said 'I have seen what men do when they believe God is on their side and I have also seen what God's real judgment looks like and they are not always the same thing.' I think about that a lot.

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• C

  Casey3w ago

  Here's what nobody wants to say: if a man today said 'God told me to go kill every man, woman, child, and animal in that city' we would lock him up immediately and rightfully so. We have exactly zero criteria by which we would know whether that command was genuinely divine or not. So why do we give Joshua a pass just because it's old?

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• M

  Maya3w ago

  To the person above: I'm so sorry. That happened to you and it was wrong and no amount of theology excuses it. I hope you know your voice here matters.

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• IL

  Iris L.3w ago

  This question drives me absolutely crazy because Christians act like it's shocking and new. Every empire in the ancient Near East claimed their god told them to conquer. Assyria. Babylon. Egypt. Every single one. Why would Israel be any different? That doesn't prove the commands were false, but it should at least make us pause before assuming the text is a direct transcript from the Almighty.

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• R_

  Ravi _x3w ago

  There's a difference between God taking sin seriously and commanding a soldier to run a sword through a two-year-old because of the sins of that child's grandparents. I don't know how anyone with children can read Deuteronomy 20:16-17 and not feel that distinction viscerally.

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• OR

  Omar R.3w ago

  If you're comfortable with your God commanding ethnic cleansing as long as it's in an old book, tell me: where exactly is the line? What would a text have to say before you admitted it wasn't from God? If there is no possible answer to that question, you don't have faith — you have an unfalsifiable belief system.

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• N

  Noah3w ago

  The archaeologist above is going to get a flood of 'well secular archaeology can't be trusted' responses. I'll just preemptively point out that we quote archaeology enthusiastically when it confirms the Bible and dismiss it when it doesn't. That's not a method, that's motivated reasoning.

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• Y

  Yuki3w ago

  I grew up being told 'the Canaanites were really evil, so it's okay.' And I accepted it until I realized every army in history uses that exact justification. The Canaanites were evil enough to slaughter. The Native Americans were savage enough to displace. It's the oldest trick in the book and we've been running it since Joshua.

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• K

  Kofi3w ago

  I've been a missionary in West Africa for 11 years. The people I work with don't have a problem with a God who judges whole communities. Their traditional worldview already includes that concept. What they struggle with is the idea that God would STOP judging at some point and let injustice go unpunished. The Western discomfort with divine judgment is not a universal Christian discomfort.

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• A

  Avery3w ago

  My issue is that American Christians who are most comfortable with the conquest narratives tend to also be the most comfortable with modern military action against majority-Muslim countries, and I don't think that's a coincidence. There's a straight line from 'God told Joshua to take the land' to 'God is on our side in this war.' That line has been walked by every Christian empire that ever existed.

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• T

  Theo3w ago

  The archaeological evidence is genuinely interesting here. Several cities the Bible says were conquered and destroyed during Joshua's period show no evidence of destruction at that time. Jericho itself — the most famous conquest — shows virtually no occupation layer at all during the period most scholars date the conquest. This doesn't prove everything is invented, but the historical picture is way more complicated than Sunday school makes it.

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• T2

  Taylor 213w ago

  The framework that's helped me most is Christopher Wright's work in 'The God I Don't Understand.' He argues these texts must be read as divine judgment — the Canaanites had centuries of warning, the land was 'vomiting them out' as the text says, and Israel was the instrument of that judgment, not mere conquerors. It doesn't remove every difficulty but it's serious exegetical work, not hand-waving.

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• P

  Priya3w ago

  What gets me is Rahab. God commands the annihilation of Jericho but specifically saves the Canaanite prostitute and her household because she showed mercy to the spies. Then she ends up in the genealogy of Jesus. The story itself seems to subvert the conquest logic from the inside. I don't know what to do with that except stare at it.

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• KM

  Kofi M.3w ago

  The question at the top of this post asks if Israel's generals put words in God's mouth. But here's the harder question nobody's asking: what if they didn't? What if God really did say it — and we just don't like what that means about God? Because I think a lot of this debate is actually about whether we're willing to let God be God on His own terms, or whether we need Him to be the God we're comfortable with.

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• R2

  Reese 213w ago

  Or — and I know this is radical — some questions in theology don't have clean resolutions and intellectual honesty means admitting it. Living with unresolved tension is not the same as having no answer. It's being an adult about epistemological limits.

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• Z

  Zara3w ago

  ngl every time this comes up in bible study somebody says 'we have to trust God's sovereignty' and then changes the subject and it NEVER gets resolved. can we just be honest that this is a genuine unsolved problem instead of throwing sovereignty at it like a theological fire extinguisher

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• L

  Liam3w ago

  Unique and unrepeatable — that's actually a really important qualifier that almost never gets taught. Most Sunday school treatments of the conquest present it as a model (take the land God gives you!) rather than a singular divine act in redemptive history. The problem is often less the text and more the application we've attached to it.

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• R

  Reese3w ago

  Unsolved? It was solved in the first century. Jesus is the final Word of God (Hebrews 1:1-2). Read the Old Testament through Him. Through the cross. Any reading of God that doesn't culminate in a God who dies for His enemies rather than commanding their slaughter is an incomplete reading. That's not dodging the question, that's answering it properly.

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• O

  Omar3w ago

  Because it's in the Bible is literally the answer and we should just be honest that's the answer.

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• RK

  Riley K.3w ago

  The unfalsifiable challenge cuts both ways. By what standard are YOU determining that ethnic cleansing is wrong? If there's no God, there's no objective moral standard by which you can condemn anything. You're borrowing moral furniture from a worldview you're trying to dismantle.

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• L

  Leo3w ago

  Look I'm not going to pretend these passages aren't hard. They ARE hard. But the alternative — saying Israel just made it up — creates a different problem. Now the Bible is unreliable on what God actually said in a pretty fundamental way. If Moses was wrong about receiving divine commands for war, what else was he wrong about? You can't surgically remove the uncomfortable parts and keep a trustworthy text.

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• N

  Noah3w ago

  So the takeaway is God was fine with the slaughter as long as you believed in Him first? That's... not the comfort you think it is.

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• TR

  Theo R.3w ago

  ^ honestly the most relatable comment in this entire thread

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• T

  Taylor3w ago

  Greg Boyd's 'Crucifixion of the Warrior God' makes the case that God accommodated himself to Israel's violent culture and allowed them to put conquest language in his mouth — but that the cross reveals the TRUE character of God, which is self-giving love, not conquest. It's two volumes and it's dense but it changed how I read the whole Old Testament.

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• A

  Alex3w ago

  It teaches us about covenant. About the holiness of God. About the seriousness of sin and idolatry. About the typological pattern of judgment and deliverance that culminates in Christ. You don't have to be able to repeat something for it to be theologically instructive. The flood isn't repeatable either but it's not meaningless.

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• NK

  Noah K.3w ago

  God commanded it. Full stop. Joshua 6 is not ambiguous. If you're uncomfortable with God commanding the destruction of Jericho, your problem is with God, not with the text.

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• R

  Reese3w ago

  I mean... the prophets constantly called out Israel's leaders for claiming God said things He didn't say. That's literally what false prophecy IS. Why is it suddenly impossible that some of these texts reflect the same dynamic? Even Scripture itself warns us that leaders put words in God's mouth.

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• J

  Jamie3w ago

  I read Joshua to my kids and I don't sanitize it. We talk about how sin has consequences, how nations that oppress people and sacrifice children can't go on forever, and how sometimes the Bible shows us hard things so we understand that God takes sin seriously. My 10-year-old asked hard questions. Good. I want her to ask hard questions.

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• AR

  Avery R.3w ago

  The Rahab point is actually the key to the whole thing if you think about it. The text isn't actually endorsing ethnic cleansing — it's showing that faith and covenant loyalty trump ethnic identity. The Gibeonites also get spared through a treaty. The categories aren't racial, they're covenantal. That matters.

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• S

  Sam3w ago

  If it's truly unique and unrepeatable then WHY is it in the canon? What is it teaching us? If the answer is 'nothing applicable to our lives' that seems like a lot of real estate in the Bible for a purely historical artifact.

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• T

  Theo3w ago

  That's a beautiful theological move but it doesn't actually answer the historical question of whether the commands were real divine commands or not. It just reframes them. I appreciate it but let's be clear about what it is and isn't doing.

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• R

  Reese3w ago

  The divine command theory of ethics has been a disaster for Christian theology. The moment you say 'it's good because God commanded it' instead of 'God commands it because it's good,' you've made morality arbitrary. Euthyphro's dilemma has been sitting there since Plato waiting for a better answer than we've given it.

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• D

  Diego3w ago

  ok but hear me out. if God ACTUALLY told Saul to wipe out every man woman child and animal of Amalek (1 Samuel 15) and then God gets MAD that Saul kept the good sheep alive... like that's the part that breaks me every time. the sheep. God was angrier about livestock than mercy.

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• A

  Alex3w ago

  The above comment is trying to use theological consistency as a lever and I respect the move even though it's making me profoundly uncomfortable.

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• A_

  Avery _x3w ago

  That's a political talking point dressed up as theology. You can believe God commanded the conquest of Canaan as a unique, unrepeatable historical judgment without endorsing any modern military action. These aren't the same argument.

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• R

  Riley3w ago

  That's a genuinely interesting cultural point and I don't want to dismiss it. But 'my audience is comfortable with it' can't be the test for whether a theological claim is true or not. That way lies preaching whatever your culture wants to hear.

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• TT

  Theo T.3w ago

  Boyd's argument is interesting but it basically means God lied or at least allowed lies to circulate in Scripture and called it inspired. I don't know how you maintain any coherent doctrine of inspiration after that.

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• DR

  Drew R.3w ago

  I've never understood why Christians who believe in original sin and infant damnation (yes some traditions teach this) get uncomfortable about infant death in conquest narratives. At least in the conquest narrative, God is the one taking them. Isn't that just... death? If they're innocent they go to God. If they're not innocent then original sin already condemns them. Which is it?

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• O

  Omar3w ago

  Okay if you've been studying this for 30 years and the best you can do is 'hold it in tension' then maybe the problem is the framework and not the scholars. At some point tension-holding is just a polite word for not having an answer.

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• H

  Hana3w ago

  Divine command theory is actually the correct position and Euthyphro's dilemma has a well-known third horn: God's nature IS the good, so His commands flow necessarily from what He is, not arbitrarily. This has been answered in philosophy of religion for decades. It's not a knockout punch.

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• M

  Maya3w ago

  Confidently wrong take incoming: Actually the Israelites never fully carried out these commands and that's why they kept getting into trouble. If they had just obeyed and wiped everyone out like God said, there would have been peace. The disobedience was the problem, not the command. This is the argument and I've heard it in Sunday school a hundred times and every time it horrifies me more.

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• R

  Riley3w ago

  Nobody's dismissing archaeology wholesale. The point is that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and ancient site dating is notoriously tricky. Kitchen and others have argued for different chronologies that align better. This is a live scholarly debate, not settled science.

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