Transcription
God has the right to slaughter the malachit down to the last man, woman, and child. Why complain that God doesn't stop evil, but then complain when he does?
The context for this question, of course, is the fact that God does sometimes, in scripture, ask people in the Bible to do things that, on their face, appear to be immoral. But track with this conversation to the end, because Frank's responses are worth memorizing.
Also, this video is going to be just a little bit different in that I'm going to offer an additional explanation that doesn't in any way contend with or contradict Dr. Turk's, but offers a different angle of understanding it by a Hebrew scholar who is unfortunately no longer with us, named Michael Heiser.
It is a fallacy. It's untrue to say that the conquest was only about taking life. It is not. And all you need to do is read the text. Now, there are verbs of killing. There are verbs of killing in specific episodes in the conquest accounts that are used, not coincidentally, in places where Anakim, the Amorite, Rephaim, giant clans are located. What else might have been going on in this ancient Near Eastern context? I personally find to be really interesting. Let's get into it.
God commanded you to murder your wife or children to prove your faith in God? Is your current devotion not enough to prove your faith? Must you murder your children as Abraham was instructed? I don't know what I would... this is a simple yes or no question, Doc. I... I don't know what I would do in Abraham's position. That's a good question. You know who really struggled with that? Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote a book called, um, "Is Your Faith Strong Enough to Murder Your Own Children?" Or I'm thinking, and since I'm from New Jersey, it's really hard for me to do so. Give me a minute. Uh, the word, the, the book is called "Fear and Trembling" by Søren Kierkegaard. So I don't know what I would do. Just like I'm never going to say, if somebody put a gun to my head or a gun to my wife's head, what would you do? Because Peter tried that. "I'll never deny you, Lord." And what did he do? He denied him three times. Yes, at the crucifix. I don't know what I would do.
Okay, but let me point out, if your friend is an atheist, there's nothing wrong with God doing anything, because by atheism, there's no standard of right and wrong anyway. So, in order for you to bring up the objection, you're actually stealing a standard from God in order to try and say God doesn't exist. Dr. Turk, I'm only asking if you would murder your wife or children to prove your devotion. It's a simple question. I don't know what would happen.
And by the way, when God decides that someone should die, it's not murder for him, because God kills all of us at some point, and he's the only one that can resurrect us. So we don't have the right to murder people, but God has the right to kill people anytime he wants. He can strike me down today, tomorrow, anytime he wants, and it's completely in his prerogative. God has the right to slaughter the malachit down to the last man, woman, and child. God has the right to take us out anytime he wants, because if Christianity is true, men don't really die, we just change location, and God can do that anytime he wants. So, thank you for your question.
It is, it, it is stunning to me that massacre and genocide gets applauded in this building. God demands slaughter, massacre, and genocide. All right, Cody. Um, there's nothing wrong with genocide if atheism is true. Are you serious? If atheism is true, there is nothing wrong with genocide. I am an atheist, and I oppose genocide in every possible, in every way. But that's just your personal opinion, because there's no standard beyond you which says it's wrong. The standard that says is correct that I will help my fellow human up to and including you, especially you, doctor, that I would never harm anyone in this room. Okay. I'm glad atheism. Are you suggesting that atheism allows or or or or purports or wants gen? I know you wouldn't say you would never. Yes, atheism does allow it. You can ask Mao, you can ask Stalin, you can ask Pol Pot, because if there is no authority beyond the government, they are God. I would... I cannot possibly agree. I could not possibly disagree that those people were atheists. But as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens would both argue, as you well know, none of those people slaughtered millions in the name of atheism. There are countless millions. Cody, this isn't a debate. Okay. I know. So, I, I thank you for being here, but let me, let me deal, cuz I, you know, I, I, Cody, I love talking about this stuff, but there's a line of people behind you, and, uh, so we can't keep going back and forth. But I do want to answer your, your question about the Canaanites. Is God immoral for massacre, slaughter, and racism and slavery? Uh, Cody, look, we don't have time to deal with all those. Trust me, I have slides for every one of them. Okay. Let me just deal with the Canaanite one, if you'll be gracious as to sit down, and I'll deal with that. Thank you so much. Thank you.
All right, thank you. So, as I just mentioned, uh, with the Canaanite issue, if there's no God, why would any Old Testament atrocity be wrong? But Cody is correct about this. He has a fair point to ask me. Um, despite the fact that he, being an atheist, has no objective standard by which to judge anything right or wrong, he, he is correct to ask me. You're saying your God is a God of love, so why does he do such things? So that's a fair question. Okay.
All right, secondly, though, is God arbitrary, or does he give reasons in the Old Testament for judging people? Because that's what it is in the Old Testament. It's judgment. God is not a cosmic mafia boss. He doesn't wake up one day and say, "Canaanites, I want them dead." No, there's a reason that he has decided to push the Canaanites out of the land, and it's because they've had 400 years of iniquity, including murdering their children, sacrificing their children on the molten hot metal god Molech. And it wasn't just the New or the Old Testament that talks about this. The Greek writer Plutarch says that when the Canaanites would do this, the drummers in the town would pound their drums louder so the children, or the parents, couldn't hear the screams of their own children being sacrificed.
Also, I hear this quite a bit: "Why complain that God doesn't stop evil, but then complain when he does?" In other words, sometimes atheists will say, "Why didn't God stop such and such a tragedy?" Yet here, God sees that this culture is so, is so degraded that he finally says, "These people must be stopped," and he sends the Israelites in to stop them. And now atheists are complaining about it. Uh, and the question I always ask people is, is God committing murder by ending lives on Earth? And the answer is no. God doesn't murder anyone. He can't murder anyone. He is the creator of life. He can resurrect it. Only people who are other creations can commit murder. When God ends somebody's life, it's not murder. And as I mentioned a minute ago, God has the right to usher people into the next life whenever he wants, whether we're 82 or two years old, that's up to him. People never die, they just change location.
And we also need to remember that the Old Testament theocracy was unique and temporary. It was not the ideal for all time, but the means to a promised New Covenant. And the best book on this topic is by Paul Copan, "Is God a Moral Monster?" And, and Cody's actually bringing up good questions that Christians need to deal with. And Copan goes through all of those issues. One is the Canaanites, another slavery, these kinds of issues. And you can get that book if you want to go further. But this is not genocide, it's actually judgment. Why? How do I know? Because God did the same thing to Israel sometimes.
When you hear these commands from God in the Old Testament, like "drive out the Canaanites," it raises the obvious question: why? Why? And we've already addressed several good reasons that are an answer to that question. But here's one other potential reason why this might be yet another clue as to God's reason for driving out the Canaanites. Let's do it. I'll tell you how they wouldn't have thought about it. They wouldn't have thought about it the way it's presented on YouTube, okay? They wouldn't have thought about it the way it's presented on Facebook. There's a context here. It is live or be killed. But there are verbs associated not with killing in the commands to take the land. It's not all killing. In other words, God would have been happy for a number of people to just be driven out or to be dispossessed. You don't have to kill them. And you get the references there. You get Sumon, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, again, Numbers, Joshua 3, I mean, Yash. It is a fallacy. It's untrue to say that the conquest was only about taking life. It is not. And all you need to do is read the text.
Now, there are verbs of killing. There are verbs of killing in specific episodes in the conquest accounts that are used, not coincidentally, in places where Anakim, the Amorite, Rephaim, giant clans are located. I'm going to go through them. There aren't that many, but we'll just go through them. Numbers 13, again, look at where we started back in Numbers 13. The Hill Country. Then you have the Canaanites who dwell by the sea. Who are they? Well, they'd be the Philistines, okay? You know what is the Hill Country? The report again tells us about the inhabitants of the Hill Country: Hittites, Jebusites, Amorites, again, so on and so forth. What is it? The Hill Country is basically, I mean, you can see in this map where it's hilly or mountainous all the way up through here from the south, the Negeb, the Hill Country, all the way up through the side through the land here, past Galilee, and up into upper Galilee. This is the Hill Country. All right. And then on the sea, again, you're going to have, you know, some Philistine settlements, you're going to have the five cities of the Philistines and whatnot. But again, there's a logic to it. And the Hill Country is a consistent focus, including the Hill Country in the Negeb.
If we look at the places where the terms Anakim and Sons of Anak occur, we get several more specific geographical references. You get Hebron, Kiriath-arba, Debir, Anab, situated in the Hill Country. General descriptions: all the Hill Country of Judah. The Anakim are not said to be found in other areas, just throughout the Hill Country, again, including the Hill Country, the Negeb. You get some of that. Cities of Jericho, Jerusalem, Libnah are in the Hill Country, as was Hazor. And I'm mentioning these because these are the places where the Khem commands are issued. It's not Khem everything. It's when you're in the Hill Country, okay? There's going to be Khem going on, and it's going to be in the places where these people live. Again, the Anakim, the sons of Anak, not surprisingly, towns, cities that the king of Hazor sent aid to versus the Israelites are also in the Hill Country. So they, they, you know, that's a very poor decision on his part. So he's going to loop himself into this. You know, though the precise locations of some of the sites are unknown, the biblical narrative associates them all with the Hill Country.
Okay, and here we go. We have one kind of map over here, then you got the topographic over here, and you can see, you, you just look at the place names, they're all the Hill Country. Again, there's a reason for this because of who lives in the Hill Country, because of where the, the sons of Anak, the Anakim, and the Rephaim, and all, you know, this is where they're spotted in the Hill Country. Again, this is not a coincidence. It's not coincidental. It's not random.
If you look at the killing verbs, Khem, in the conquest accounts, Numbers, Deuteronomy, you get it with Sihon and Og. Their descendants, they're the Amorite kings. And we know Og for sure is a giant. Sihon is, is probably as well, because of the association with Og. They're under Khem. Joshua 2, Jericho in the Hill Country. Josh, you know, in the Hill Country. Joshua 10, all these places. Joshua left none remaining. They're all in the Hill Country. They're all places where the Anakim were spotted. And Joshua 11, Hazor, Hill Country again. This is why this is my position. This is why I think the whole point of the way Joshua wraps up the conquest, how he defines victory, is there are no more Anakim in the land. He doesn't say there are no more humans in the land. He says, "No, there are no more Anakim in the land." He doesn't even say there's no more Canaanites. He says there's no more Anakim in the land.
All right, so with all of this on the table, I hope that this video was at least to some extent helpful for you guys as we're thinking through these difficult questions in scripture. And like I said, this video is in no way exhaustive. If you want to read a book that tackles this at a much deeper level, I would recommend Paul Copan's "Is God a Vindictive Bully?" Which, by the way, we will also be reading in the Wisdom Society. If you're interested in the Wisdom Society, you can click the link in the description to find out more about it. And what's really cool is at the end of the month, we're actually going to have Paul Copan joining us in that book club to ask him the questions, "What did you mean on page 17 when you said this?" or "How does your explanation of that explain this?" etc., etc. We're going to kind of open up that dialogue so that we can fully unpack these difficult Bible questions and do it in a way where we can get past our doubts and into richer faith, so that we can live a life that glorifies God. Because otherwise, what are we really all doing on this planet? With that being said, see you guys in the next video.
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