Meditations

Relevant scripture:

Genesis 15

¹³ And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; ¹⁴ And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. ¹⁵ And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. ¹⁶ But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.  -kjv

Question from moody radio listener on January 20, 2018:

When the Lord commands that the Israelites go and conquer a nation and go over there and kill every man, woman and child.  What does the children have to do with that? Why do they have to kill the children?

Answer from Dr Michael Rydelnik:

The terrible destruction that Joshua was called upon to carry out as he conquer the land. Honestly, it’s one of the real difficulties of the bible. The nations there have to be purged, even the children. There are some difficulties about this but one answer to that probably makes the most sense to me. First of all, this is a one time, it was not something to be carried out all the time. There are some commands that every generation we carry out. Some commands are limited to that time and place. The conquest and the destruction of the Canaanites was a one time command, not something to be carried out every time Israel was to judge and be God’s instrument of judgement. The reason for it as I understand it is that the society had become  so corrupt  that it had to be purged.  It was so corrupt, so pagan, so idolatrous, so horrific with child sacrifice and awful licentious behavior in the temples that  God says this has to be purged and that was God’s judgement and His instrument of judgement was going to be the children of Israel as they took the land. It talks about in Genesis 15 that Abraham  was going to go into Egypt and it says in Genesis 15 because he was going to spend 400 years there. It says in Genesis 15: 13 : O for certain your offspring will be strangers in land that does not belong to them and they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years and the reason that  God puts them in Egypt says  in the fourth generation, they will return here, for the iniquity of  the Amorites have not yet reached its full measure. The iniquity of the Amorites refers to the sins of the Canaanites and their sins have not reached their full measure. Basically God in his mercy says “Go ahead, he turned them over to their own desires and they became so wicked that God then was going to use the sons of Israel, the daughter of Israel to  come into the land and judge the Amorite or Canaanites for their sin, that’s why the great purging have to happen there.  That’s how I understand it. When you go to the archaeology museum in Jerusalem, at the Israel museum, it is amazing when you see the remnants of the Canaanite culture in the archaeology museum. They had become  so corrupted and so licentious, they have little idols, 3 inch idols that have enlarged genitalia because bigger than almost the whole idol because they were so consumed  with that kind of fertility rite and things like that and so they had become unbelievable and  they would offer their own children as sacrifices in order to satisfy their Gods, the Asherahs, the Ashtarte etc . Yeah, it was so corrupt that’s why the judgement happened but it’s not something that should be repeated because it was a one time judgement.