Probably the thorniest question of all when it comes to the Canaanite conquest is why couldn’t Israel adopt Canaanite children? In ancient wars where parents died, soldiers faced three alternatives for the children: (1) take their lives; (2) leave them to starve and be eaten by animals in the desert; or (3) adopt them. Obviously leaving them to starve or be eaten would be a worse fate than a quick death by the sword. So let’s look at why Israel couldn’t adopt Canaanite children.
The problem with adoption is that it would enable the very thing the Lord sought to avoid: it would corrupt Israelite society. After all the Lord warned in Deuteronomy 20:16-18:
In the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction…. as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God.
From this and similar passages it seems clear that in the Lord’s considered opinion, if the Israelites left any of the Canaanites alive then they would “teach you to do according to all their abominable practices.” Thus, they couldn’t be adopted.
The objection immediately arises that surely children, especially infants, wouldn’t be in a place to teach adults anything. But that’s naïve. As I’ve established previously, if there is an omniscient God then He would know who would or would not encourage Israel to sin in the future. There is no logical basis to argue that the children would not have grown up to encourage the Israelites to commit Canaanite sin. If the Lord says, every Canaanite must die to keep Israel from indulging in their sins, then we have no reason to think it would be otherwise.
Now a lot of people will intuit that that isn’t true. Many people will believe that “love will find a way.” They will think that proper parenting could train these children out of their corrupt upbringing. But, again, the Lord knows not only who is or is not righteous, He knows the future (this is basic theism!) and if He says don’t leave them alive because they will corrupt you, then He would know whether that would happen or not. But still, people will object that a loving, nurturing environment could fix that.
That’s what I used to believe, but then we took in foster kids—some of whom were physically and sexually abused.
We’ve had foster children living with us from as young as six months to as old as 18 years (we became the legal guardians of three of them), and for several years I trained foster parents for a foster parenting agency. Also, I’ve had close friends who took in foster children, and my brother and his wife, after having two children born to them, took in one-hundred-and-twenty-five foster children and adopted two of them. Finally, a relative who has been a county social worker for the last twenty years who told me that, with rare exception, “Regardless of the abuse, children want to reattach to their family and culture.” She went on to say that even those who have been sexually abused—with rare exception—would rather be with their birth families than anywhere else. Children bring their culture with them and even those removed from their birth families as infants become very curious to learn about their culture. And when puberty hits—whoa! During one season of foster parenting pre-teen and teenage girls we had the police at our house seven times in two-and-one-half years, and that didn’t include the times that we went to a police station or met the police at stores they’d stolen from. Although we started out believing that “love will find a way” to help them out of their destructive habits, we were mistaken. The hurts, anger, confusion, and violence usually remain into adulthood.
One of my students, Mary Doelman, shared her own experience with adopting children:
After having three children born to us, my husband and I adopted twenty children between the ages of three months and fourteen years. Although many of them have become close to us and are grateful for the opportunities they have, there are only a few that truly think of us as their parents. Most of them have a strong identity with their birth-parents and their original culture. Even though they had been abused or abandoned, their deep desire was that the situation would have been different so that they could have been with their “real” mom and dad. They want to know who they are, where they came from, and why they couldn’t stay. Of course their anger and resentment was aimed at us because we were in their parents’ place and we were a safe and stable place to vent. During the teen years at least 50% of them exhibited extreme anger, even violence, towards us. I cannot even say how many times we had the sheriff at our door or a phone call late at night from the police department. We were investigated twice by Child Protective Services. All this happened here in the U.S. where we were extending love to hurting children. I try to imagine what that would look like in ancient times where adoptive parents took in children from a depraved culture after having killed their birth-parents. I just don’t see how that would work.
Neither can I see how adopting Canaanite children after killing their parents would work.
In addition, many foster and adoptive parents endure a lot of sexual acting out and even attempted seduction, especially when they take in kids who have been sexually molested. Obviously kids who have been sexualized by adults at an early age don’t just turn that off when they move into a new family. The acting out is not just toward their new siblings, but often also toward a new parent. Israel couldn’t adopt many Canaanite children into their families without it ultimately Canaanizing them.
Now some will say that surely infants wouldn’t bring their culture into their new family. But bonding begins at birth and even infants, as they grew, would inquire about what happened to their birth parents. Most adopted or foster kids possess an almost insatiable desire to know the details of their birth parents’ lives. Can we imagine these Canaanite kids not wanting to know all about their parents and what practices they did that made them worthy of death? When they heard the Law read with its descriptions of Canaanite practices, how many would take those practices as their own identity?
I was speaking in Chicago a few years ago on the Canaanites and at break a woman came up to me, rather sad, but intense. She said that she and her husband adopted a baby from Russia and she said that if she had been told that this baby wouldn’t accept them as his parents that she absolutely wouldn’t have believed it. She believed that love would, indeed, find a way. Well, everything went well as the child grew until he found out at about five or six years old that he was adopted from Russia. From then on, all he wanted to know about was Russia, Russia, Russia. He said that if the USA got into a war with Russia that he would fight with the Russians. From then on he no longer got along with his adoptive parents. She again emphasized that she wouldn’t have believed that this was possible when she first adopted him. Now, of course, I’m not saying that this will happen with all, or even most, adopted children but it does happen and we need to wrap our minds around that.
As William Lane Craig puts it, killing the Canaanites
was His way of preserving Israel’s spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel’s being set exclusively apart for God.1
Although I’ve relegated it to the footnotes, research is showing that prenatal memory and even genetics might have a large influence on a child’s behavior.2
Then there is the problem of inheritance! If Israelite families were to adopt Canaanite children, then the Canaanite children would inherit the land with Israel’s birth children. That would cause Israel’s birth children to resent the adoption of Canaanite children. Also, then Israel would actually be in the position of giving the land back to the Canaanites! Of course, someone might suggest that Canaanite children, although adopted, could be disqualified from inheriting the land, but then the adopted Canaanite children would bitterly resent their siblings who do inherit the land that they, the Canaanite children, believed was theirs in the first place!
Now the Lord’s actions concerning Canaanite children certainly runs contrary to His standard command that orphans must be cared for. After all, in James 1:27 Christians are told that “Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” We are commanded to care for the orphan and I’m certainly not saying that many foster and adopted children aren’t able to cast off many of the horrors they experienced with their birth families. But, apparently, in the Lord’s considered opinion, it wasn’t going to be possible for Israel to take in Canaanite children, en masse, without they themselves becoming corrupted. Many skeptics will howl over this but it’s important to note that many of the atheists and other skeptics who complain bitterly about the Lord’s ordering the taking of the Canaanite children’s lives are hypocritical when they support abortion for any reason. This stance since 1973 has resulted in the United States suctioning, scraping, or scalding to death over fifty-five million babies!
Of course, another major question looms. How could it be just to kill children who hadn’t personally committed any sins themselves? We’ll look at that in the next post.
- William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, http://www.reasonablefaith.org/slaughter-of-the-canaanites#ixzz3YclWgRDs, Accessed 4-28-2015. [↩]
- We don’t have much information on this yet, but studies are beginning to show that the fetus is affected by its surroundings. There appears to be an emotional memory that newborns bring with them. See PubMed, US National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health, “Persistence of fetal memory into neonatal life.” (2006) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17068673. Accessed 4-28-2015. See also http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/recall-in-utero/. Who knows what kind of influence affected the Canaanite children still in the womb? Also, many scientists now argue that inclinations towards molestation may be genetically determined. In a recent study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, Niklas Langstrom, et. al., “report strong evidence of familial clustering of sexual offending, primarily accounted for by genes rather than shared environmental influences.” Niklas Langstrom, Kelly M. Babchishin, Seena Fazel, Paul Lichtenstein, and Thomas Frisell, “Sexual offending runs in families: A 37-year nationwide study” International Journal of Epidemiology, (8 April 2015) http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/05/ije.dyv029.abstract. Accessed 1 May 2015. Again, I don’t know how true this is but we must remember that we don’t know what we don’t know, and if this study is correct, then the Canaanite children would bring those impulses into their new family. [↩]
“The problem with adoption is that it would enable the very thing the Lord sought to avoid: it would corrupt Israelite society.”
It is a shame that God was powerless to stop children from corrupting Israelite society. What a weak and fragile thing their society much have been that mere kids could corrupt it and a supposedly all-powerful God could not stop them.
All those poor children slaughtered because God was not so powerful afterall.
This is just the God shouldn’t give people free will argument, Andy. Sure, God could make the children be good but then that nullifies free will. God could stop all the abortionists from killing millions and millions of babies too. But He gives them free will.
But you have already given up the free will argument by saying that these children are programmed to do bad things:
“Children bring their culture with them and even those removed from their birth families as infants become very curious to learn about their culture. And when puberty hits—whoa! During one season of foster parenting pre-teen and teenage girls we had the police at our house seven times in two-and-one-half years, and that didn’t include the times that we went to a police station or met the police at stores they’d stolen from.”
Did those children have free will? Or did they bring their culture with them? Were those girls acting like that because they freely chose to or was it behaviour they had learnt from their previous lives? Or perhaps it is not as clear cut as that?
I have children myself, and I have tried to raise them to be well behaved. I not think I have robbed them of their free will in doing so. Do you have free will? Do you behave properly? I am sure you will say yes to both – they are not mutually exclusive.
And yet you saying that it is beyond God’s power to get children to behave properly and still have free will. Is he really so impotent?
“Sure, God could make the children be good but then that nullifies free will.”
How much free will did they have after they were murdered by the Israelites?
There are many historical texts outside of Holy Scripture that indicate that ancient warfare was often brutal beyond belief, with torture and terror the norm. Vanquished Canaanites would likely not call the efficient dispatch of their children murder. Compared to what they would do to Israelite children they would term it mercy or a missed opportunity to immolate them as a sacrifice to Molech.
It is not beyond God’s power to do anything that is consistent with his character. Example, an evil act is not consistent with his character. Depriving a person of the ability to willfully opt to seek or reject Him is not consistent with His character . When we see something in scripture that is hard to understand, it helps to see the entire picture of the lesson that He is trying to impart. In this case, the illustration is that God’s sovereign judgement is a terrible thing to behold. There is a time for mercy, which was available to them for over 400 years, and a time when judgement is imposed and then there is no mercy. This lesson is valid for us today as we do not know the day when we take our last breath and that will be the day when mercy is no longer available to those who have not made provision through Christ.
“ Vanquished Canaanites would likely not call the efficient dispatch of their children murder.”
Are you arguing for moral relativism – that morality is defined by the culture of the people, rather than an absolute system of right and wrong? Personally, I reject moral relativism. I think the culture of the time does explain why the children were killed, but I do not think it makes it morally right.
“ Depriving a person of the ability to willfully opt to seek or reject Him is not consistent with His character .”
And yet that is exactly what supposedly he did. He deprived all those children of the ability to willfully opt to seek or reject Him when he ordered their slaughter.
“There is a time for mercy, which was available to them for over 400 years…”
Actually the children were alive only a small percentage of that time. This supposed mercy was available to them for only a few years, and it is difficult to imagine how they were even aware of any way to accept that mercy. Exactly what do you imagine a three year old girl could do to avoid being murdered at the hands of the Israelites?
Oh and by the way Andy, though I don’t agree with the free will defense as presented by Dr. Jones (though I respect Him), at least I wouldn’t misrepresent his argument. He’s not saying the infants were programmed-anyone with basic comprehension skills would know that (except atheists like you I guess). He’s saying that your early nurturing period can give you certain proclivities towards certain evils. You’re not necessarily a slave to them, but these influence you, and without repentance, may dominate you. God would know which children would choose to give into those proclivities on Dr. Jones’ view, and would allow the ones that would overcome it to escape with their infants (since the command was actually, in effect, to drive them out of the land, see Paul Copan’s lectures on the subject)
There is also the issue of genetics. God was in the process of taking slaves who would lived an incestuous cultures and telling them not to commit incest. He had to wrangle over a million people, change the habits they have been living with and thought were coming for many generations, and was taking them to a new country that had many of those same attitudes.
When an alcoholic goes to AA, they’re told to not hang around other people who drink a lot. It is hard to change if you’re surrounded by people who think the changes what is weird.
So I could see the issues with these kids being adopted, continuing their abuse by molesting siblings or whatever, but then they also grow up. And when they grow up they would get married and they would have children. When they already carried the genetics with them then of generations and centuries of incest. Causing mental and physical deformities.
Many of those physical or mental deformities would make their life incredibly difficult. Just living would be difficult, and I say this as somebody in the wheelchair with a genetic disability.
God was setting up through the Israelite people a good bloodline to bring Jesus into the world. With many laws to keep his genetics free of those deformities and mental issues. As it was, he came into the world during the Roman empire. So even 1500 years after Moses, much of the world still behaved this way with so many abuses running rampant.
In these cases, sending children straight to God’s side would be mercy instead of making them live in this world where more abuse could happen to them.
Because of these laws, we can comfortably sit here in our modern society and pass judgment in the past without acknowledging that our current morals are gifts given to us when God separated out a small portion of the world’s population and gave them these laws.
“Sure, God could make the children be good but then that nullifies free will.”
The free will argument is made even more absurd by this verse:
Joshua 11:20 For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the Lord commanded Moses.
The Bible itself shows that God has no problem nullifying free will – at least, not when wholesale slaughter is his objective.
Cute. Except for the fact that you (typically-atheists don’t care to actually think about what the Jewish authors were saying by this) miss exactly how God does this. Romans 2 says that God restrains people’s depraved will by grace (unmerited, undeserved favor-He’s under no obligation because on Christianity, His commands ground moral obligation. In other words, He owes us nothing). So He hardens people by giving them over to their own hardness-to ourselves. And He’s not unjust to do so since He’s restraining mankind by grace anyway. He makes people’s hearts change by grace as well (unmerited, undeserved favor-so you can’t whine about it because God doesn’t owe you it in the first place anyway)
So let’s consider the infants. If God’s the one who created life, He has total rights over it. He’s the One who assigns the value of life forms He himself creates. He also knows how each of His actions will ripple through time. So God could, at this moment, bring about the change of everyone’s heart-but that’s not the goal of creation. The goal of creation is to fully manifest all the attributes of God. Hence God created a world where His wrath against evil-like a people totally given to their own depravoty-would be fully displayed so as to demonstrate His justice. He created a world where His mercy would also be manifest in Him saving the world through Israel, and therefore through the Jewish messiah. Against the background knowledge, I further explain here: http://jesusmythbusting.blogspot.com/2015/02/my-god-is-in-heavens-and-he-does-all.html?m=0
Hence God does no infant any wrong in taking their life, and does no wrong in not changing people because He doesn’t owe us anything (but judgment) anyway. Tough. You hate it, I know-but not on rational grounds. So deal with it and get over yourself. And if you still want to whine about God being an egotist, see here: https://youtu.be/6SA9hokDLPo
Thank you Professor Jones for this very informative article! I really enjoy reading your posts! I found your article, “We Don’t Hate Sin So We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites” extremely helpful.
Your final point about the hypocrisy of the atheists who criticize the destruction of the Canaanites, but who support abortion for any reason, reminded me of a comment an atheist had posted at the bottom of another article I was reading online. The atheist was boasting that she herself had almost ten abortions. She even wrote that if she were to ever get pregnant again she would not hesitate to have more abortions. I find it disturbing that most of the people who are trying to vilify God for commanding the destruction of the Canaanites are so quick to justify the slaughtering of their own precious babies by having abortions. Perhaps these atheists should examine whether they themselves truly possess the ability to discern right from wrong.
I myself was an atheist until 2012. I had graduated university with two degrees and wholeheartedly believed what my atheist professors had told me in university about the Bible, which was basically that in their opinion God was a moral monster (sadly at this time I had never read the Bible for myself). Even in university classes that had absolutely nothing to do with religion, the majority of the professors would make a point of somehow bringing up the conversation of the Bible in order to vilify God.
Thankfully, in 2012 something amazing happened, instead of taking the word of all the atheists in my life, I started reading the Bible for myself. What I found when I read through the Bible myself was the complete opposite of what the atheists had led me to believe! It became clear to me that God is a good God who defends the poor, the foreigners the widows and orphans. I couldn’t believe it when I read that the sins of Sodom included the fact that they had neglected to help the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49). Why had no atheist ever told me that? I will forever be grateful that I took the initiative of opening the Bible and reading it for myself, and in doing so I found a merciful, compassionate God who loves the world more than we could ever know!
Our actions can and do impact others. When a drunk driver runs into a pedestrian and kills that pedestrian, those who remain go through all sorts of horrific emotions, and question why this occurred. So why did God allow this to happen? There are no easy answers, but seems to me that when we stand before our Maker, we will give an account of our own actions.
We may be dysfunctional due to our up-bringing and environment, and also due to our own choices, but there is a remedy. Rahab the harlot in Jericho found it, and others sought refuge in the God of Israel.
Whatever your situation, there is probably a person alive that can testify to the power of God to rise above horrific occurrences. I know former gang-members, druggies, prostitutes, who have had the course of their life changed, and were unable to find it any where else. We live in the ghetto of this world, and I thank God for Jesus Christ and the reality of His resurrection.
Thank you Clay for thoughtful articles.
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