God Behaving Badly: Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?

by David T. Lamb

While Joshua 10:40 and Joshua 11:12-15 speak of everyone being destroyed, elsewhere in Joshua and Judges a different perspective is given. These other texts repeatedly state that the Israelites did not kill all the Canaanites; they couldn’t even drive all of them out of the land (Josh 13:1-6; 15:63; 17:12; Judg 1:19-34).[12] The book of Joshua even refers to foreigners not just living among the Israelites but also participating in the covenant renewal ceremony (Josh 8:33, 35). To reconcile these two divergent perspectives on Israel’s conquest, a nonliteral reading of the texts that speak of “all” people being destroyed is required. Based on the textual evidence, we can conclude that the Israelite conquest was not as severe as the two short passages (Josh 10:40; 11:12-15) might suggest.