Did killing the Canaanites traumatize the Israelites? Some authors write that it certainly would have done so. As two authors put it, the Lord killing the Canaanites “using human agents …incurs the psychological trauma foisted on Israelite warriors of taking human lives.”[1] Others, whom I’m not going to name, have written that the Israelites would be subject to PTSD and thus it would be morally unfair for God to order such a thing. I have four things to say about this.
Beware Cultural Arrogance
As usual, I’m writing this to a Christian audience because I want Christians to comprehend what the Lord was doing when He ordered the Israelites to kill the Canaanites.[2] And one of the biggest problems apologists face is that many people are culturally arrogant when they unthinkingly consider their culture enlightened without reflecting on how another culture might reasonably see things differently. What we need to do instead is come to Scripture with humility and strive to understand that what we consider to be cultural righteousness might not be that at all. Years ago, a fellow apologist told me that when he encounters something in the Old Testament that bothers him, he asks “What’s wrong with me and my culture that this bothers me?” That’s the right attitude. We need to come to the Old Testament with humility and not in cultural self-righteous arrogance.
Killing Stuff
Consider that many Americans today are horrified at killing an insect. I’ve known people who won’t kill a spider in their house. Instead, they capture the spiders and release them outside. As for me, I discipline them by slapping all their “hands” at the same time—or suck them up with my Dyson vacuum. But many others are too squeamish to do that.
But consider that there probably wasn’t one Israelite who hadn’t seen large animals slaughtered. Not one! In fact, the overwhelming majority of men would have personally participated in killing large animals. Everyone would see men and women slash the throats of bulls, sheep, oxen, and so on, to bleed them out before skinning them and serving them for dinner.
But today we have processing plants that kill animals and cut them into parts to send to our local butchers.
Sisera’s Crushed Skull
In Judges 4 we read that when Sisera and his 900 chariots attacked Israel, Israel routed them and Sisera fled to the tent of a woman named Jael. Jael invited Sisera into the tent where she covered him with a blanket and gave him some milk to drink. Once Sisera fell asleep, Jael “took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died” (v. 21).
How did Israel respond? They turned it into a song! “Most blessed of women be Jael…. She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet; she struck Sisera; she crushed his head; she shattered and pierced his temple” (Judges 5:24-26). Okay, now everyone: sing along!
Goliath’s Head
Everyone loves the David and Goliath story. But think about it. After David killed Goliath, he did what we’d all do (kidding): he cut off Goliath’s head and carried it around for much of the day showing it to everyone (see Niccolo Renieri [1591–1667] “David and Goliath” above—yes, I realize that Goliath was a Philistine and not a Canaanite). Do you think that these men got PTSD?
A Bag of Penises
Then in 1 Samuel 18 where Saul asked David for 100 Philistine foreskins to marry his daughter, David brought him 200 Philistine foreskins. Consider that David and his men didn’t ask individual Philistines, “Hey, can you stand very, very still for a few minutes while I cut the foreskin off of your penis?” No, David and his men killed 200 Philistines, and, obviously, David’s men surely wouldn’t have spent the time to trim the foreskins off, so that means they lopped off their penises. So, David brought Saul a bag of 200 penises! That must have been quite a sight! “Does someone want to count them?”
Jean’s Dad Was a Hunter
Although I have a relative who won’t eat lamb (she can’t get past “Mary’s little lamb”), my wife Jean E.’s dad was a hunter and she regularly witnessed deer and other large animals being killed and skinned in front of her. We occasionally have rabbits in our backyard, but she’s told me that I can’t kill one of them unless I’m going to let her skin it and cook it for dinner—she would do it!
Headless Chickens
One of my earliest memories—I’m guessing I was about three years old—was that we had a chicken coop in our side yard and one day my family stood around the coop and watched my father chop a chicken’s head off with an axe. The headless chicken then ran around for a short time. I was not traumatized. Very young, you’re just sort of an observer of what the adults are doing. I’ve never spoken to a therapist about it—nor do I need to.
The ER
I have a friend who is an emergency room doctor at a renowned hospital. He told me that a young woman was hired to be an emergency room scribe (someone who documents what’s happening in the ER). One day she saw this fellow whose hand was lacerated (there’s an MD word for you, I would have said “cut to shreds”), and the scribe immediately fainted and fell on the floor. My MD friend privately kidded a colleague that she should probably be in another line of work. But she persisted and although she almost fainted on another occasion, she went on to get her MD degree and now works as an ER doctor in another hospital. In other words, you can get used to seeing blood and gore (my friend often entertains us with gruesome stories).
Denounce Western Hypocrisy
The Israelites would have considered us massive hypocrites. In the United States, over 60,000,000 babies have been suctioned, scrapped, or scalded to death, so apparently millions of American women don’t have that big a problem with having their own babies pulled apart—piece by piece—while their feet are in stirrups (worldwide there are about 45 to 50 million babies ripped apart every year). Yet, some of these women, and the others that cheer on this practice, complain that the Israelites would be traumatized for killing children that weren’t even theirs?
Consider in the ancient Roman empire that people watched gladiators kill each other as entertainment. Also, they watched Christians be tortured to death for entertainment!
Further, consider that millions of Americans watch media where people are stabbed, tortured, raped, dismembered, and killed for their own entertainment! They justify it by saying, “Yeah, but it’s not really happening.” What self-deception! The point is that they are watching rapes, tortures, and murders solely for fun! If you need to see examples of what many people entertain themselves with, then Google “splatter film.”
We may dismiss splatter films as enjoyed only by a small subset of Americans, but much of this is mainstream. Consider the hugely popular 1991 film Silence of the Lambs, about a serial killer and cannibal who enjoys human liver with “a nice Chianti”; the FBI enlists his help to find another serial killer who likes to skin women alive. One of the few film critics to pan it wrote, “Yes, the picture is tactfully made, but the question remains, why make it at all? The skilled craftsmanship and the directorial restraint can’t change what the film is—a thoroughly morbid and meaningless depiction of the modus operandi of a couple of sadists…We know these kinds of madmen exist, but the film offers no insight into what makes them tick…”[3] How did Hollywood respond? Silence of the Lambs won the top five Academy Awards and was followed by three sequels and a TV series.
I’ve once asked a class of about 70 MA in apologetics students about how many had seen The Silence of the Lambs and all but maybe four or five of them had seen it (I only watched about half—that was enough).
Comprehend the Horror of Sin
Now, all this being said, I’m not saying that this killing didn’t disturb the Israelites—but it was supposed to disturb them! This is the most important point of all: the Lord wanted the Israelites—and us!—to realize the horror of sin and the Canaanite conquest does that!
When it comes to learning to hate sin, it’s important to note that the entire sacrificial system was about the Israelites personally learning the consequences of sin. Leviticus 1:3-5 says that the Israelite “shall offer a male [bull or sheep, etc.] without blemish…. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.”
In his commentary on Leviticus, Jay Sklar explains that
Having brought the animal, the offeror would lay—or perhaps better ‘lean’—a hand on the animal’s head. This part of the ritual has come to be known as the ‘hand-leaning rite’ and was a regular part of sacrifices (Exod. 29: 10; Lev. 3: 2; 4: 4, etc.). A basic purpose of this rite was to establish some sort of relationship between the offeror and the animal, so that the animal would be accepted on the offeror’s behalf. This relationship would result in the benefits of the sacrifice – such as atonement – being credited to the offeror (cf. Lev. 7: 18).[4]
So, the offeror took one of his very best animals and was commanded to make a physical/emotional connection with the animal just prior to slitting its throat! This gesture of affection would be exactly what the offeror would want to avoid. There needs to be a deeply felt sense of loss—“You were a good lamb, you were a lamb without defect, and I care for you, but now I’m going to kill you to pay the penalty for my sin.”
The Lord is intent on teaching humankind the horror and penalty of sin. For example, Canaanite primary source documents say that Baal raped his sister while she was in the form of a calf, “77 even 88 times.” In other words, Baal did it a lot—and that was their god. If you want to understand the immense depravity of Canaanite sin from their own primary source documents, read my article in Philosophia Christi, “We Don’t Hate Sin so We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites.”
There’s no more dramatic way of instilling in the Israelites (and in us) the horror and penalty for Canaanite sin than having them personally kill those who committed it.
We hate the suffering and death of this life but as soon as we connect that all suffering and death is in one way or another related to sin, the universe will make a lot more sense.
Proclaim the Coming Judgment
The Canaanite conquest, about which we should be horrified—not that God commanded it but that He had to command it—is one of the many things that God uses to reveal to us all the horror of sin and the seriousness of His judgment. Let’s see the universe as God does.
But there’s one last thing that we need to run to, that we need to embrace, and that we need to proclaim, and it is something that scares skeptics the most—what happened to the Canaanites is a preview of the coming Judgment.[5] The Lord’s justice, as revealed in killing the Canaanites, is a precursor—a warning—of coming Judgment. Of course, skeptics will howl because the coming Judgment is much more fearful than what happened the Canaanites.
Revelation 20:11-12, 15, 22:3-5:
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done…. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire…. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Romans 6:23: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
[2] In my article, “We Don’t Hate Sin so We Don’t Understand What Happened to the Canaanites,” I use Canaanite primary source documents (thank you to my wife Jean E. who read a stack of them cover to cover! www.JeanEJones.net), to illustrate the depths of Canaanite sinfulness. I’ve also written a post on “The Horror of Canaanite Children’s ‘Family’ Life.”
[1] William J. Webb and Gordon K. Oeste, Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric?: Wrestling with War Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2019), Kindle edition.
[3] Stephen Farber, “Why Do Critics Love These Repellent Movies?,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1991, sec. E, 5, as quoted in Medved, Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Tradition (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 162.
[4] Jay Sklar, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary, TOTC (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014), 90.
[5] I’m indebted to Tremper Longman for writing that the battles against the Canaanites “are a preview and a warning of the final judgment.” Tremper Longman, Confronting Old Testament Controversies: Pressing Questions About Evolution, Sexuality, History, and Violence (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2019), 199, Kindle Edition.
