Does God Command Genocide in the Bible?

Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Planets (1512), detail by Michelangelo

DOES GOD COMMAND GENOCIDE IN THE BIBLE?

In the Old Testament we find instances wherein God commands the Israelites to exterminate their tribal enemies, for example, speaking through Moses:

“When the Lord, your God, brings you into the land which you are about to enter to possess, and removes many nations before you—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you—and when the Lord, your God, gives them over to you and you defeat them, you shall put them under the ban.” [boldface mine]  (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

In this context, the expression “put them under the ban” means to “destroy” or “exterminate.”

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The Hebrew verb charam…is a technical term in Hebrew. That is, it has a very narrow and specialized meaning, and does not easily translate into English. It has usually been translated as something like “put under the ban” or “devote to destruction.” In some places it can simply mean “exterminate,” and rarely has the much milder meaning of “ostracize” or “excommunicate.”

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http://www.crivoice.org/terms/t-herem.html

—Dennis Bratcher, “Devoted to Destruction,” The Voice: Biblical and Theological Resources for Growing Christians, November 8, 2011

When under the leadership of Joshua the Israelites conquer Jericho, God speaking through Joshua places the entire city under the ban, with the exception of Rahab’s household:

“The seventh time around, the priests blew the horns and Joshua said to the people, ‘Now shout, for the Lord has given you the city. The city and everything in it is under the ban. [boldface mine] Only Rahab the prostitute and all who are in the house with her are to live, because she hid the messengers we sent.’” (Joshua 6:16-17)

In 1 Samuel 15:2-3, God speaking through Samuel commands Saul to exterminate the Amalekites, including all their livestock:

“‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: I will punish what Amalek did to the Israelites when he barred their way as they came up from Egypt. Go, now, attack Amalek, and put under the ban everything he has. Do not spare him; kill men and women, children and infants, [boldface mine] oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

Saul does not obey the command of the Lord:

“He took Agag, king of Amalek, alive, but the rest of the people he destroyed by the sword, putting them under the ban. He and his troops spared Agag and the best of the fat sheep and oxen, and the lambs. They refused to put under the ban anything that was worthwhile, destroying only what was worthless and of no account.” (1 Samuel 15:8-9)

Because of Saul’s disobedience, Samuel prophesies to Saul that he will lose his kingship:

“Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord in turn has rejected you as king.” (1 Samuel 15:23)

Notably, Samuel’s words of condemnation resonate throughout the millennia:

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to the Lord’s command? Obedience is better than sacrifice, [boldface mine] to listen, better than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)

To this day, his words are invoked to underscore the primacy of obedience to the command of God, taking precedence over any other religious or spiritual obligation.

In the context of Roman Catholic spirituality, Samuel’s words are also cited to indicate the paramount obligation of obedience to religious or spiritual authority in clerical and religious life.

Samuel’s command to obey God in this celebrated verse enjoins genocide at the same time. Am I the only one who sees the moral conundrum?

Concerning placing entire tribes under the ban, we might ask how God can be considered moral if he commands genocide, and in particular, the extermination of children and infants?

While there are multiple ways to answer this question, I will advance two that I particularly support.

First, God did not order the killing of children and infants. It is an artifact of the writers of the inspired books. It reflects their mentality at the time, not the literal command of God.

Second, revelation is gradual. God does not reveal everything all at once. The same applies to the moral law. We can cite as a classic example Jesus’ teaching on divorce:

“[Jesus] said in reply, ‘Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator “made them male and female” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh”?

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, no human being must separate.’

“They said to him, ‘Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss [her]?’

“He said to them, ‘Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery.’” (Matthew 19:4-9)

God revises, if you will, his specification of the moral law, over long time, indeed, centuries.

So at the time of the inspired writers in the Pentateuch, Joshua, or the historical books of the Bible, God permits this interpretation of his Word: kill the entire population, including the livestock.

On the other hand, if someone were to tell you today that God commands genocide, I would say that it is the devil speaking, not God.

Misattributing the command to inflict genocide to God while citing the Bible in support has historically occurred, for example:

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In 1637 the English colonial leadership in Connecticut sought to launch a war of aggression against the Pequot tribe for the sole purpose of acquiring their cultivated land. A war party of ninety settlers was raised and placed under the command of John Mason. When some of the colonists expressed moral qualms about launching an unprovoked attack on their peaceful neighbors, the matter was referred to their chaplain, the Reverend John Stone. After spending the night in prayer, Reverend Stone “was ‘fully satisfied’ with Mason’s proposal.” At dawn on May 26, 1637, the armed colonists attacked “the main Pequot village at Mystic Lake on the central Connecticut River, killing an estimated 400 to 700 Indians. Most of the dead were women and children — often historically the victims of ethnic cleansing — burned to death in their wigwams as the English slaughtered those who ran.” (James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep, p. 90) Captain Mason describes the slaughter in these words:

“Thus was God seen in the Mount, Crushing his proud Enemies and the Enemies of his People…burning them up in the Fire of his Wrath, and dunging the Ground with their Flesh: It was the LORD’s Doings, and it is marvellous in our Eyes!” (Ibid. p. 91)

Notice how John Mason attributes the massacre of Pequot Indians to the actions of God. What followed over the next few months was the virtual extinction of the Pequot tribe. But apparently not all the colonists were comfortable with a Christian-led genocide. In his critically acclaimed history of Native America, The Earth Shall Weep, James Wilson writes,

“There also seem to have been colonists with misgivings about what had happened. Captain Underhill was clearly replying to criticism when he wrote: ‘It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious? (as some have said). Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion?’ He echoes Mason by taking his defence from the Old Testament, presenting the English—typically—as the put-upon underdog in a crusade against Evil. Underhill writes: ‘I would refer you to David’s war. When a people is grown to such a height of blood and sin against God and man… Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents… We had sufficient light from the Word of God for our proceedings.’” (Ibid. pages 92-93)

There you have it. The Bible used to bless barbarism. Genocide justified in the name of God. [boldface mine]

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https://brianzahnd.com/2021/01/of-god-and-genocide/  

—Brian Zahnd, “Of God and Genocide,” Brian Zahnd, January 23, 2021

Bishop Robert Barron devotes at least two YouTube videos to the subject of Biblical violence.

In one he says that the Biblical passages on genocide should be interpreted in a primarily allegorical sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A65Wfr2is0

—Bishop Robert Barron, “Bishop Barron on Violence in the Bible,” YouTube video, 11:12 minutes, October 18, 2013

I don’t disagree with Barron, but I believe the principal explanation is the twofold account I have given above.

In another video Barron gives three principal explanations in the Roman Catholic tradition for the condoning or even the endorsement of violence in the Bible. They are represented, respectively, by Saint Irenaeus; Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas; and Origen and Saint John Cassian, among others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odKNfjPr6hQ

—Bishop Robert Barron, “Understanding Violence in the Old Testament,” YouTube video, 48:43 minutes, March 15, 2021

The explanation of Saint Irenaeus (19:52), which is that the pedagogy of God is to reveal God’s truth gradually to Israel, corresponds to the second point that I developed above.

The explanation of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas (27:31) invokes God’s supreme prerogative to enact justice through the instrumentality of human agents. Barron does not find this approach fully persuasive.

The approach of Origen, Saint John Cassian et al. (31:53) is allegorical interpretation.

An explanation popularly advanced to justify the alleged command of God to the Israelites to commit genocide is that because God is sovereign over the moral law—inasmuch as he is sovereign over all creation—he can abrogate the moral law if he so pleases.

While it is true that God is sovereign over all creation and can do as he pleases, at the same time God does not act contrary to his nature.

Because the moral law subsists in God, God would never contradict the moral law.

He might permit the transgression of the moral law, that is obvious, but he would not declare it as an immutable part of the Divine order.

Catholic Encyclopedia offers the following explanation about why the moral law—or natural law, another term—is immutable:

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The natural law is immutable in itself and also extrinsically. Since it is founded in the very nature of man and his destination to his end—two bases which rest upon the immutable ground of the eternal law—it follows that, assuming the continued existence of human nature, it cannot cease to exist. The natural law commands and forbids in the same tenor everywhere and always. We must, however, remember that this immutability pertains not to those abstract imperfect [formulas] in which the law is commonly expressed, but to the moral standard as it applies to action in the concrete, surrounded with all its determinate conditions. We enunciate, for instance, one of the leading precepts in the words: “Thou [shall] not kill”; yet the taking of human life is sometimes a lawful, and even an obligatory act. Herein exists no variation in the law; what the law forbids is not all taking of life, but all unjust taking of life.

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https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm

—“Natural Law,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910)

It has been argued that because God defines our morality and God himself is not subject to any moral rules, everything that God does is good by definition. Consequently, assuming that God commands genocide, we who are his creatures do not have the capacity or any standing to say that it is immoral.

While it is true that human beings don’t arbitrate morality, morality, we believe, is revealed by God. Our understanding of revelation is interpretative, but we don’t claim that in interpreting it that we are its arbiters. That in effect may be the result, but our claim is that morality is revealed by God and that the correct interpretation of revelation is guided by the Holy Spirit, that is, by God himself. According to our understanding of the moral law as it has been revealed by God, genocide is immoral, so that God would not command it.

Therefore, God does not command genocide in the Bible.