Reflect on Deuteronomy 20:16–18: “However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.” How do these words reflect a loving and holy God?
It reflects a loving and holy God who wills to protect His people from sin and death at great cost. Nevertheless the extremity of such a command seems to me to be inexplicable apart from how God in Christ himself paid the ultimate price for sin—death on the cross—and thus showed that the grounds for His hatred of sin was always His relentless love.
These words reflect because in scripture you can see how fed up God is with the fa t that evil people were trying to corrupt his people. In passages of the Bibld we see in many scriptures the eliminating of the evil because it was not good in God’s sight. He wanted a world were it wasn’t evil.
I see God acting in a loving and holy way through the Israelites, to the oppressed Canaanites. Got used the Israelites to rid them of the armies in the “cities” which were forcing their religion on the people, rather than allowing them to choose God. As it said at the end of the reading. It is an act of “herem,” devoting back to God which was already His. It is not as cruel as it seems without context, when you realize that God is not giving the Israelites permission to kill innocent people, but rather to remove evil oppressors and freeing what was His.
God loved Israel and had to protect them by eliminating the people that would spread corruption. Israel would also learn an object lesson as to what could happen to them if they adopted the practices of the Canaanites. One only has to look ahead in the Old Testament to see that eventually, Israel did adopt some of the gods and worship practices that were part of Canaan and other nations. One of the most detestable was Molech or Chemosh and involved child sacrifice as a worship practice. In that context, it is understandable why God gave such commands to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaanite cities.
God was protecting His people from the danger that these cities would pose to them. God wanted His people to live in a safe and secure land where they would worship only Him.
God loved the Hebrew people so much that He wanted to protect them from self-destruction which would eventually result from worshiping the false gods and goddesses of these other tribes. And they would eventually mix in with the pagan population which would lead to eventual elimination of them as a nation and God’s chosen people. He had greater plans for them than this. He wanted them to be established as their own nation and as His chosen people. He chose to be their Father. Our God is also a jealous God, I mean as a parent we love, protect, guide, teach, and provide for our children so they will have the things they need and will be without want. And grow to be able to care for themselves with God’s blessings. This is exactly what God has done for the Hebrew people (Israelites) beginning with Noah at the time of the flood and then the time of Moses and their captivity in Israel.
Even before that He provided for them through Joseph during the famine. As a parent we would not want our children to love, praise , thank, and be obedient to a stranger or a neighbor for doing all this for us when they did not. Likewise, God inhabits the praises of His people which means He wants us to follow His guidance, to love, to praise, and to worship Him for these things. He wants us to be thankful to Him. All this brings joy to God, just as it does when our children show us their appreciation. To not do so, would be disrespectful and dishonoring to God, thus rendering very little respect to Him as His children and causing Him to grieve. Just as we would feel grief if our children failed to respect, honor and appreciate what we do for them and have done.
Its reflection of a loving and holy God is in God’s objective in keeping the Israelites from being corrupted and depraved through idolatry. It is/was a case of either God or the heathen idols; and God it has to be (we can think of it as divine-self-defenses), in Jesus’s name. Amen!!!
God’s holiness means that anyone with unholy practices in their worship or lifestyle cannot come before Him. God’s love desires communion/community with the Israelites so His Holiness requires the destruction of anyone or anything which would lead them astray and prevent them from being in His presence.
