Chuck Bomar #fundie preachingtoday.com
I think if you're at all human, there are tensions that come up. The idea of genocide, or of this powerful people massacring innocents, including women and children, is hard to dwell on. As we look at this story, I want to help us understand this tough passage of Scripture.
The Israelites come out of Egypt where God's people were oppressed and forced into slavery, they suffered great injustice. God moves them out of that land that was ruled by Canaan. God is going to promise them the land that is west of the Salt Sea or Dead Sea. God has led them across the Jordan River onto the west side of the Dead Sea, into what is known as the Promised Land. It is the land of Canaan. Jericho is one of the first cities that they come to. God is going to move them into the land and move these people—or in other words evict these people—out of the land.
Is this a genocide or a massacre? First off, the genocide. Genocide is the oppression or the removal of a certain ethnic group. This is clearly not that. In the area around Canaan they had all kinds of different ethnic groups and God is removing or evicting all of them.
Let's talk about the massacre issue. In our understanding of this, you have this militant group, this powerful group going in and rampaging innocent villages and towns and just overtaking it because they're more powerful. Israel was about as far away from a militant group as you could possibly get. This group of people have been literally homeless for over 40 years. So certainly they have some swords, certainly they have some type of weaponry, but they are going up against the most powerful militant group in the world at this point. So we can't call it a genocide because it's not ethnic, and we can't call it a massacre because this is not the powerful oppressing the weak. This is actually God using the weak to overcome the powerful and the abuse of power in the world.