Biblical Logos Blog

Why did God tell his people to destroy entire cities? Men, women and children? Even the animals of some of the Old Testament cities were to be destroyed. How can the God of love in the New Testament be the same God as in the Old Testament?

Herem – Devoted Things

Let’s look at the general command to utterly destroy the people groups when the Israelites were about to come into the “Promised Land”:

Deu 7:1-5  “When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,  and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.  You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.  But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. 

As you can see from the passage above, Moses is warning the Israelites to “devote them to complete destruction” (herem) the seven people groups in the land the LORD was giving them. God is giving them a reason why as well, “..intermarry with them.. for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods”.

Herem can also have a religious context as well:

Exodus 22:20 “Whoever sacrifices to any god, other than the LORD alone, shall be devoted to destruction.”

Lev 27:28  “But no devoted thing that a man devotes to the LORD, of anything that he has, whether man or beast, or of his inherited field, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted thing is most holy to the LORD.

So God’s command to utterly destroy the seven people groups that were in the Promised Land was to prevent the Israelites from apostatizing. They would turn away from him to serve other gods. The Israelites were selected out of the 70 people groups in Genesis 10, to be God’s own possession. God was going to do something specific with His people. He wanted to display his nature to the world through them. He planned to bring forth the Messiah through their lineage.

Why destroy the children and animals then? 

A question still remains. Why destroy children and the animals? Presumably, the children would not be old enough to know the pagan practices of their people and the animals would not lead anyone into idolatry would they?

Let’s start with the Biblical account of creation and at the time of the Fall when Adam and Eve sinned, God gave a warning to Satan who had tempted Adam and Eve:

Gen 3:14  The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 
Gen 3:15  I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” 

This passage is called the protoevangelium. It is the first reference that God would provide a Savior that would crush Satan and his offspring. Notice what this passage says. The offspring of the “woman / Eve” will lead to the final destruction of Satan and his offspring. Many scholars now see this battle as the earliest reference to the Gospel message. Jesus, descendant of Eve, will defeat Satan and his offspring!

The Battle to Destroy Eve’s lineage

Satan knew that a descendant of Eve would destroy him. He understood that he had to prevent Eve’s children from being born. Alternatively, he could also corrupt the children that were to be born to prevent God’s prophecy from happening. Scholars and teachers have referred to this epic story-line as the “seed battle” in the Bible as some translations (KJV) say “seed” instead of offspring in Genesis 3:15. Let’s look at the very next reference to the corruption that followed:

Gen 6:1-9  When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.  Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.  The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 
So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.  These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. 

In Genesis 6 we see that the “sons of God” came into the daughters of men. Doing a Bible study in the OT, the sons of God are angelic beings (Job 1,3). They are obviously fallen angels in Genesis 6, as they are sinning by transgressing the angelic boundary God has between angels and humans (Jude 1:6-7). The product of this transgression were the Nephilim (fallen ones). We also get a hint of something about Noah. The ESV says he was “blameless in his generation”. The KJV says “perfect in his generations”. Was Noah’s lineage not corrupted by the work of Satan and the fallen angels who mated with the daughters of men? Let’s look at a couple of verses following Genesis 6:9:

Gen 6:11-13  The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.  And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.  And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 

All flesh was corrupt on Earth! Notice in the prior Genesis 6 passages that God vowed to destroy “..man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them”. Was Satan trying to corrupt all living creatures on Earth?

The Corruption Described in Jasher

The Bible references The Book of Jasher (Upright One) in a few places (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18). No original copy has been found for this book, and several obvious forgeries were produced over the last few centuries. Many scholars believe this book is a collection songs and poems. It also seems to be a restatement of the first 5 books of the Bible (Pentateuch). Because it is not in the cannon of the Bible, we can’t trust it as the Word of God. We can however, look at it as another ancient source of possible useful information. Let’s look at several verses relating to the Genesis 6 passages:

Jasher Chapter 4

17 And every man made unto himself a god, and they robbed and plundered every man his neighbor as well as his relative, and they corrupted the earth, and the earth was filled with violence.

18 And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.

19 And the Lord said, I will blot out man that I created from the face of the earth, yea from man to the birds of the air, together with cattle and beasts that are in the field for I repent that I made them.

The Book of Enoch

Because of the suspicious history of the Book of Jasher, it is great that we have another source for this same story line of Satan’s plan to corrupt the DNA of God’s people. The Book of Enoch is also quoted in the NT and fragments of Enoch have been found in the Dead Sea scrolls in their original language of Aramaic. Let’s again look at the parallel story to the Bible’s Genesis 6 account in Enoch Chapters 6-7:

Chapter 6

1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’ 3. And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: ‘I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.’ 4. And they all answered him and said: ‘Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.’ 5. Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. 6. And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. 7. And these are the names of their leaders: Sêmîazâz, their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl, Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. 8. These are their chiefs of tens.

Chapter 7

1. And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. 2. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: 3. Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, 4. the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. 5. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood. 6. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.

Satan seems to have had a plan to corrupt the children of Israel. He attempted this not only through pagan worship practices but also through corruption of their DNA. The genetic offspring of the fallen angels with human women produced giants. According to Jasher, these giants became the rulers and judges of all mankind. Genesis 6 seems to show Satan’s plan to rule the world. It also illustrates his attempt to prevent the Messiah from being born.

Dr. Ken Johnson just posted a new teaching which also points to the genetic corruption which was going on in the time of the Old Testament. The summary of what he found is as follows. In Genesis 36:24, a genealogy is being listed and the list is paused to give this comment:

²⁴ These are the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah; he is the Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as he pastured the donkeys of Zibeon his father.

In the passage above, the word translated “hot springs” is Yem or Yamim (plural). It is unknown meaning and is translated hot springs or mule. In the Septuagint it is not translated, but is left as Jamim. Let again look at this passage in the Book of Jasher, chapter 36:

28 And the sons of Shobal were Alvan, Manahath, Ebal, Shepho, and Onam, and the sons of Zibeon were Ajah, and Anah, this was that Anah who found the Yemim in the wilderness when he fed the asses of Zibeon his father.

29 And whilst he was feeding his father’s asses he led them to the wilderness at different times to feed them.

30 And there was a day that he brought them to one of the deserts on the sea shore, opposite the wilderness of the people, and whilst he was feeding them, behold a very heavy storm came from the other side of the sea and rested upon the asses that were feeding there, and they all stood still.

31 And afterward about one hundred and twenty great and terrible animals came out from the wilderness at the other side of the sea, and they all came to the place where the asses were, and they placed themselves there.

32 And those animals, from their middle downward, were in the shape of the children of men, and from their middle upward, some had the likeness of bears, and some the likeness of the keephas, with tails behind them from between their shoulders reaching down to the earth, like the tails of the ducheephath, and these animals came and mounted and rode upon these asses, and led them away, and they went away unto this day.

33 And one of these animals approached Anah and smote him with his tail, and then fled from that place.

34 And when he saw this work he was exceedingly afraid of his life, and he fled and escaped to the city.

So it seems that Yemim were a hybrid of human and some other animal species. This story is never told, but this event is recorded during the time Israel was in Egypt.

The Promised Land

When Abram (Abraham) met with the LORD in Genesis 15, the LORD promised him numerous offspring. He also promised a land for his people. This promise became known as the Abrahamic Covenant. As part of telling Abraham when the promise of land would come to pass, God said:

Gen 15:13-16  Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” 

The term Amorites would have been familiar to Abraham. They were a powerful people group. They emanated from the area where Abraham grew up, Mesopotamia. In this passage, it seems that God used the term Amorites in a broader sense. They were just one of the seven people groups the Israelites would encounter when entering the Promised Land (Duet 7:1-2). What may have been the sin of the Amorites God warned Abram about? Let’s look at another reference to Amorites which may be our clue:

Amo 2:9-10  “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.  Also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. 

Here in Amos two, God is reminding the people of Israel that they encountered “Amorites” when they came into the land. It was God who destroyed the the Amorite before them after their 40 years wandering in the wilderness. See the description God gives to the “Amorite”: “height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks.” Let’s also look at Israel’s first attempt to enter the Promise Land:

Num 13:27-33  And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.  However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there.  The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.”  But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.”  Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.”  So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height.  And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” 

So I believe it is becoming clear that the sin of Genesis 6, fallen angels interbreeding with human woman carried on to the time of Joshua conquering the Promised Land. This corruption of human DNA was obviously a strategy Satan used to try to prevent the Messiah from being born to Israel. The sin of the Amorites which God told Abram would happen before his descendants came to the Promised Land must have included cross species breeding of not only angels mating with humans, but human and animal cross breeding.

Finally, lets look at the end of Joshua’s quest to take the Promised Land to see how it concluded:

Jos 11:15-23  Just as the LORD had commanded Moses his servant, so Moses commanded Joshua, and so Joshua did. He left nothing undone of all that the LORD had commanded Moses. So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses. And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua devoted them to destruction with their cities. There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain. So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD had spoken to Moses. And Joshua gave it for an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. And the land had rest from war. 

We see that the Israelites under Joshua conquered all the Land that the Lord had given them. They fought with all the cities. The Lord hardened the hearts of many of the cities’ kings. This was so that they would not make peace, but be destroyed. We learned earlier, from the Book of Jasher, that the giants were the kings and judges of the people in this land. We also learned, that those kings continued to intermarry with human women. So these cities ruled by giants would of had a mixture of human and hybrid inhabitants. Joshua did not accomplish killing off all of the giants. You can see that “Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain..”. If we move forward about 400 years to the time of King David, who did David fight? Goliath from Gath, a remnant of the giants that were originally in the Land.

Conclusion

Because the topic of giants seems extraordinary in today’s culture, preachers don’t preach what happened during Joshua’s conquest. Preachers and teachers do not explain the truths that we examined above. As a result, it seems like God was cruel to have whole cities destroyed. God was instead, keeping Israel from being enticed into pagan practices. He was also, preventing his people’s DNA from becoming corrupt. Jesus came to redeem mankind, not a genetic hybrid. Just like before the flood, if God had not commanded the destruction of the cities ruled by the giants in the Promised Land, all flesh would have become corrupt again. The redeemer could not have been born as Son of Man.