[MENTION=4423]Sriracha[/MENTION] There’s a book titled “Paradoxology” by Krish Kandiah that looks at some of the apparent contradictions in the bible. The link below gives an intro to the book (if it’s of any interest).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbmH4XfxCUc
Also below is an extract taken from chapter 3 (it’s only a sample text as it’s too long to reproduce) - hope it goes some way in helping you figure out some of the questions you may have.
“The Joshua Paradox - The God who is TERRIBLY COMPASSIONATE.”
How do you reconcile the paradox of a God who has compassion on the Jewish nation through all their families, but then commands them to show no compassion towards other nations? How can a God of love order the annihilation of a whole people-group, the mass slaughter of men and women, old and young, and even animals too? How can we take seriously the command of God to love our enemies, when he appears to ignore those injunctions himself? How can we trust a God who looks so partisan, who gives his own people the ultimate weapon of mass destruction; namely, his own presence and power? How can we praise a God who seems to leave the poor pagan nations of the Old Testament without a fighting chance? Equally, why would he defend and protect the Jews of Bible times, yet then keep himself completely aloof during the extermination of 16 million Jews in Europe during the lifetime of our own grandparents?
Firstly, there is a “prequel” if you like. There is history, not just between God and Israel but also with the people living in the Promised Land. God did not lose his temper with the Canaanites suddenly and on a whim because he needed somewhere to give to his people. Nor was it a divinely mandated smash-and-(land)-grab mission for Israel. Centuries before, God had asked Abraham to leave his home in Ur and go to a country that God would show him. That country was the land of Canaan. Abraham did spend time in the Promised Land, but God did not allow him to settle there. Instead he gave him a glimpse of the future:
“Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and ill-treated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the SIN OF THE AMORITES HAS NOT YET REACHED ITS FULL MEASURE.” Genesis 15:13-16
Abraham and his descendants would be homeless nomads for four centuries. Abraham was not given a reason for the hardships his descendants would face — although, ironically, it was during this time in captivity that one might argue they found their identity as a nation — but it appears that God was giving the indigenous inhabitants time: time to show their true character, either to get worse or to change their sinful practices.
God’ patience in giving the Canaanites extra time stands in stark contrast to the first impression we get, if we just jump in at Joshua, of God randomly wiping out the Canaanites on a whim. God is not a bad-tempered bully who annihilates nations without cause. He is more like a compassionate gardener, who wants to see good come, but will take action eventually if it doesn’t. God’s patience is very long, but in the end he has to act. This is a consistent message in the Bible. God is patient in the extreme, continuing his faithfulness to us despite our unfaithfulness to him, sacrificing what is precious to him for the sake of whoever may turn to him. But eventually the time will come when he must take action.
The second clue has to do with the place of judgement within any moral framework. If we actually stop and think about our reaction when we hear stories of injustice where nothing seems to have done, it is very hard for us to not feel disgust and anger against the perpetrators. Whether it is a local troublemaker smashing shop windows, or a gunman halfway round the world firing indiscriminately into a classroom of children, there is something within all of us that cries out for justice. We want the perpetrators to be held to account and punishment to be meted out. Without judgement and accountability for how individuals or nations act, then, there is no moral framework — the universe would be in anarchy.
Our sense of outrage and desire for justice go hand in hand with our expectation of a God who should hold the world to account. If there is a God, then we do want him to be righteous judge. Sometimes when we read the account of the genocide stories in the Old Testament, we see God as the perpetrator, the people-group as the victims, and we set ourselves up as the judge. If we recalibrate our minds to see God as the judge, and the people-group being wiped out as the perpetrators of crimes against victims unknown to us, we may react very differently.
So what was it that the Canaanites could possibly have done so very wrong over such a long period? What crime had they, including their children, committed? We are given some insight in these verses in the book of Deuteronomy:
“The Lord your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by enquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshipping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.” Deuteronomy 12:29-31
God is not just clearing the land for his people; he is holding the Canaanites accountable for atrocities committed. It is hard to imagine anything worse than the slaughter of children — the taking of innocent lives. They have sunk as low as it is possible to go. We should be relieved that people will not get away with murder — God will hold the world to account. Far from indicating the lack of a moral framework for us to count on, these passages show clearly that there is just such a framework, and God is in charge.
But even so, it appears that God is being hypocritical. God brings judgement against the Canaanites for killing children — but then commands the Israelites to conduct a total extermination of all life. To kill children as a punishment because children were being killed does not seem just or fair. The concept of God punishing wickedness may be comprehensible to us, even welcomed, but the idea of God commanding his people to slaughter innocents is not so easy to swallow. We will need to take account of this issue too.
God did not send the Israelites out on a campaign of global domination, with a carte blanche mandate to wipe out all the nations or to obliterate every city on earth. In Deuteronomy 20:10-16 God makes a specific distinction between how to treat hostile peoples outside the Promised Land as against how to treat those inside in situations of war.
The command to kill all the inhabitants of a city is limited to the Canaanite invasion. In other warfare contexts “terms of peace” are always to be offered. The total destruction clause is reserved specifically to the judgement on the Canaanites, and God specifically tells the Israelites not to use the Canaanite conquest as a model for how they should relate to other nations. And later, when Israel as a nation reflects back on receiving the Promised Land, they show they have understood the special nature of the circumstances: they do not celebrate their great military prowess or tactical superiority, but rather attribute their victory to God. The Canaanite conquest was uniquely God’s judgement on Canaan and God’s gift to Israel of a homeland. It is not appropriate for any nation to take these texts and use them as a model or a mandate for military conquest, and when these events have been used this way to justify war, it is an abuse of Scripture.
God continually argues with Israel that they must not become like the nations that surround them, but must show themselves as his unique people — a holy, just and compassionate people. Nonetheless, it could still be argued that God should not be accommodating the methods of war of the surrounding nations in the way the Canaanites are dealt with. Is he just racist against the Canaanite people? The following passage suggests otherwise:
“Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants….And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” Leviticus 18:24-25, 27
God warns the Israelites that the land itself was defiled by sin — this accentuates the need for judgement, and indeed this passage says that the land itself rose up against its inhabitants. The same fate will await the Israelites if they commit the same sins as the Canaanites. Just because God used Israel as an instrument of his judgement does not give them immunity from facing judgement of God themselves. Indeed, sadly, little by little the Israelites do become immoral and ignore God, and are captured and taken off into exile in Babylon and Assyria. God stands against wickedness and has to punish it wherever he finds it.
The Joshua Paradox shows us a terribly compassionate God who displays incredible patience and mercy before bringing down judgement. For 400 years he waited to see if the Canaanites would repent. God gave them, and indeed gives all people, one chance after another to do the right thing and turn back to him, to turn away from evil and to seek him. Some take God’s patience and his reserve in punishing evil as evidence that God doesn’t care about sin. Nothing could be further from the case. The withholding of punishment is not forever. The apostle Peter tested Jesus’ patience regularly, but later wrote in a letter to a young church:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” 2 Peter 3:9-10
God’s patience does have a limit to its elasticity. He will also ultimately show himself as a God who is just. When bad things happen, we want to know where God is and why he won’t intervene. When he does intervene we question his right to execute judgement. We want judgement and justice, yet at the same time we don’t want them. God is “damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.” Such is the contrariness of human nature. The Joshua Paradox can help us to learn to worship God aright. His patience is meaningless without his eventual judgement; his judgement is merciless without his extreme patience.
