God, War, and Interpretation: Why We Misread the Old Testament.
Ignorance can give rise to confident, sweeping claims. Such claims may come from amateurs trying to make sense of the world, just as they can come from great thinkers or specialists speaking beyond the limits of their own fields. I have made this mistake myself, and I suspect most of us have, if we are honest.
Recently, I observed this pattern in the work of one of the great minds of modern science. Without naming him, I want to focus on the claim itself. In an interview, this scientist asserted that the God of the Old Testament is a genocidal maniac. He based this critique specifically on the violent commands given to Israel as they claimed the Promised Land, recorded in the book of Joshua.
To understand the nature of his concern — and where the misunderstanding lies — let us first identify the passages in question:
Deuteronomy 20:10–18
“When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it… But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites…”
Joshua 6:21
“Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, putting them to the sword.”
I do not intend to pretend these verses do not describe violent and terrible realities. They are difficult texts, and they have been used to justify terrible things. Yet I believe the core issues here stem not merely from the text itself, but from a limited understanding of biblical language, ancient literary conventions, and a failure to interpret these narratives within their proper historical, cultural, and theological context.
What follows is one influential interpretive framework within Christian theology — a way of reading that seeks to respect the text while understanding its place within a larger narrative of redemption.
The Linguistic Reality: Tov (Function) vs. Ra (Dysfunction)
Every story in the Old Testament is framed by the opening chapters of Genesis. To understand the later narratives, we must first grasp how ancient Hebrew thinkers understood the world — a mindset quite different from modern Western moralism.
In the Hebrew worldview, language about “good” and “evil” is not primarily about abstract moral categories, but about function and purpose.
- טּוֹב (Tov / Good): This word does not simply mean “morally pure.” It means functional, orderly, purposeful, and working exactly as designed. When God pronounces creation tov, He is declaring that the cosmos is operating perfectly and optimally for life to flourish.
- רַע (Ra / Evil): The root meaning of ra is dysfunctional, broken, chaotic, or failing to achieve its intended purpose — much like a shattered jar that can no longer hold anything.
When humanity ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we seized cognitive autonomy: we decided we would define for ourselves what was functional and what was not, independent of God’s design. By doing so, we plunged creation into systemic brokenness. This distorted vision produced the violence, exploitation, and chaos that mark human history — a condition the biblical text confronts with unflinching honesty.
From this perspective, the biblical narrative is not simply a record of rules, but a record of God engaging with a broken world to restore tov — to bring things back to right order and function.
Divine Accommodation and Progressive Revelation: A Theological Framework
Because human comprehension was deeply impaired by our immersion in dysfunction, an important theological tradition holds that God did not simply drop a fully‑formed, modern moral manual into the ancient world. Instead, He worked through what theologians call Divine Accommodation: He stooped down to meet people where they were, speaking within the cultural and intellectual frameworks they could understand. Through Progressive Revelation, He gradually led them upward toward a fuller, higher truth over centuries.
It is important to note that this is a theological model for understanding the text, rather than a neutral historical observation. It is an interpretive choice, but one with deep roots in Christian history.
We can trace this proposed trajectory through three broad stages:
- The National King Stage (Bronze and Iron Ages):In this era, the universal cultural assumption was that a nation’s god functioned as its supreme military commander. God therefore revealed Himself in language and forms that fit this existing mindset: as the sovereign defender and commander of His people, demanding loyalty and protecting boundaries. He used the cultural language of the time to begin teaching them about holiness and justice, even while working within the limitations of that society.
- The Prophetic Stage: Centuries later, through figures such as Isaiah, Amos, and Jonah, we see a clear expansion and challenge to these early tribal assumptions. God reveals Himself as the Lord of all peoples, not just one nation. The focus shifts from national victory toward universal justice, mercy, and concern for the poor, the stranger, and even Israel’s enemies. This represents a deepening of ethical understanding within the biblical story itself.
- The New Testament Stage: In Jesus Christ, the framework of physical conquest is radically redefined. The command shifts from territorial warfare to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you.” The physical kingdom is replaced by a spiritual kingdom open to all nations, built on service, sacrifice, and grace. From this perspective, the earlier violent language is not the final word of God, but a temporary stage in a much larger story of redemption.
The Canaanite Context: History, Archaeology, and Interpretation
To understand the specific commands regarding the Canaanite peoples, we must look at the world in which these commands were given. The biblical text itself claims that these societies were characterised by practices so destructive that the land itself was described as “vomiting out” its inhabitants (Leviticus 18:24–25), specifically naming child sacrifice, sexual exploitation, and ritual abuse.
Archaeological Evidence: The Debate Over the Tophets
Critics often dismiss these descriptions as later propaganda, but archaeological discoveries offer complex, suggestive — though not definitive — evidence.
The most authoritative recent scholarly analysis of the Carthage Tophet, published in the journal Antiquity, represents one major position in an ongoing debate. Xella, Quinn, Melchiorri, and van Dommelen (2013: 1201) argue that the available evidence strongly supports the interpretation of ritual infant sacrifice:
“We argue here that the range of sources currently available to researchers beyond the disputed osteology strongly suggests that the tophet was first and foremost a ritual site or sanctuary and that the cremated depositions of infants and animals were sacrificial offerings.”
This conclusion rests particularly upon the thousands of votive inscriptions found at these sites, which speak of vows made to gods in exchange for favour.
However, it is important to acknowledge that this is not settled consensus. Other respected scholars argue that these sites were primarily cemeteries for infants who died naturally, with ritual practices attached to mourning. The evidence is ambiguous and contested.
Nevertheless, even if we treat the biblical description as a theological or literary portrayal of extreme moral corruption rather than a strictly historical report, the logic of the narrative remains clear: the text presents these commands as a response to a culture understood as fundamentally and lethally dysfunctional.
Literary Convention: Ancient Near Eastern Hyperbole
Here, we move onto firmer scholarly ground. It is widely agreed among historians of the Ancient Near East (ANE) that military accounts frequently employed rhetorical totality formulas. Phrases such as “devote to complete destruction” or “save alive nothing that breathes” were standard idioms used to describe a decisive victory or total defeat — literary exaggerations, not always literal body counts.
This explains a well‑known tension in the text: Joshua describes the “total destruction” of cities, yet later books clearly show these same groups living alongside Israelites. The language describes dominance, not necessarily biological eradication.
Targeting the System vs. the People
This leads to the most debated interpretive claim: that the mandate was directed against a system, not simply an ethnic group.
The text does speak of destroying peoples, but within the theological framework outlined earlier, many readers interpret this as a judgment against the way of life and the corrupting influence of those societies, rather than a command to exterminate every individual based on bloodline.
This reading is supported by exceptions within the text itself: Rahab of Jericho and the Gibeonites were spared, integrated, and protected under biblical law precisely because they rejected the dominant culture and aligned themselves with Israel’s God. This suggests the judgment was conditional and ethical, not racial or genetic.
This is a theological interpretation; it is not the only possible reading, but it is a coherent one that respects the literary and historical clues within the text.
Modern Equivalents: Analogies and Their Limits
To help us grasp this logic, we can draw cautious parallels to modern history — though we must be careful not to flatten the vast differences between ancient theocratic law and modern nation‑states.
Consider the Allied response in World War II: the demand for unconditional surrender and the policy of denazification were aimed at the absolute dismantling of a toxic political and philosophical system that threatened the world. The goal was to remove the structure of evil, not to destroy the German people as a biological group. Once the system was neutralised, reconstruction and integration began.
This is analogous to the biblical logic in this sense: in a broken world, governing authority “does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13). As Thomas Hobbes famously described the natural state of humanity left entirely to its own devices — “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” — we see why the restraint of evil is sometimes a tragic necessity.
We must not equate ancient warfare with modern warfare directly, but the underlying principle remains: when a collective system becomes so corrupted that it destroys life itself, the removal of that system is presented in Scripture as an act of protection and judgment.
The Fatal Flaw of Popular Polemics: Misreading the Lens
The scientist whose critique we began with creates his argument by imposing a flat, hyper‑literal reading onto these ancient texts. In doing so, he commits the very same category error he likely criticises in religious fundamentalists: he reads ancient, culturally‑specific, poetic literature as if it were a modern legal document written in his own time and language.
By ignoring linguistic nuance, ancient literary conventions, and the trajectory of the biblical story, he builds his case to satisfy popular sentiment and groupthink.
But this is not how the text was read by its most thoughtful interpreters. Nearly 1,800 years ago, early Church Fathers such as Origen of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo — while representing different strands of thought — both warned against strictly literal readings that produce hatred or absurdity.
Augustine established the “Rule of Love”, a guiding principle that remains influential: if a literal interpretation of a passage commands a wicked deed or produces hatred, the reader has entirely misunderstood the text.
These ancient thinkers understood that the physical warfare of Israel was a temporary, historical shadow, tracking the messy, progressive liberation of the human soul from darkness. They did not treat these passages as timeless moral commands, but as descriptions of how God worked with people who were still learning what it means to be good.
Summary: My Verdict
We recoil at the sight of the sword when Scripture attributes it to God, and we raise our fists in protest against what we perceive as injustice or intolerance. That reaction is itself a sign that we have learned something from the trajectory of Scripture — we have moved toward a higher ethic.
Yet we often remain blind to the monstrous evils, systemic violence, and dehumanising practices that made such judgment a tragic necessity in the ancient narrative.
The biblical narrative does not gloss over human brokenness; it confronts it honestly. It records where we started, how God met us there, and the long, slow journey toward redemption. It moves from the sword to the cross, from conquest to service, and from fear to love.
The critique of the scientist fails because it judges an ancient text by modern standards without understanding the language, history, or theological story it belongs to. It takes a snapshot out of a movie and condemns the whole film.In a world still capable of systemic evil and collective madness, the biblical call remains as urgent today as it was three thousand years ago: to discern and choose tov — what is good, functional, and life‑giving — over ra — what is broken, chaotic, and destructive.
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