Remember Moses’s sweeping commands to “consume” and “utterly destroy” the Canaanites, not to “leave alive anything that breathes”? Joshua’s comprehensive language echoes that of Moses; Scripture clearly indicates that Joshua fulfilled Moses’s charge to him. So if Joshua did just as Moses commanded, and if Joshua’s described destruction was really hyperbole common in ancient Near Eastern warfare language and familiar to Moses, then clearly Moses himself didn’t intend a literal, comprehensive Canaanite destruction. He, like Joshua, was merely following the literary convention of the day.
Thumbs up herfra!
