Parts of scripture are hard for us to get our minds around. We think they are too harsh. We should always take care not to start with an assumption that we or our current culture have things right and YHWH has things wrong. If we read something difficult, we should start with the assumption that YHWH is right and we don’t understand why or how to apply it today. Then we can pray and study and seek His guidance.
When YHWH was giving His people the promised land, He was also punishing other nations for their wickedness. These were not righteous God honoring peoples that were displaced. In some cases, they were doing such detestable things for their false gods that YHWH wanted to ensure that His people would not learn these behaviors.
While it may seem harsh to “utterly destroy” someone, we should consider how passionately that shows us that YHWH wants us to remain holy and set apart for Him and not blend with the detestable practices of others who worship false gods. He does not want us to accept detestable practices and make them part of our lives as it will lead generations into sin and away from Him.
10“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. 11“If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. 12“However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13“When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword.14“Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. 15“Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations nearby. 16“Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17“But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORDyour God has commanded you, 18so that they may not teach you to do according to all their detestable things which they have done for their gods, so that you would sin against the LORD your God.
We can see this even today. If we accept detestable practices it becomes normalized into a culture and separates many generations of people from YHWH as they embrace more and more sin. Divorce and premarital sex used to be reasons for shame. Now they are plentiful. Abortion and homosexuality used to be properly identified as wrong behaviors in need of help. Now they are defended as righteous. Generations continue to push appropriate dress codes further and further from a model of humility to showing as much nakedness as they can get away with. Now instead of being shamed for such bad choices, people decry “do not shame me” as if that is a wrong thing to do. Many would do well to feel shamed for their behaviors and choices, and let that shame drive them to YHWH and repentance. Instead we see more and more people who identify as Christian accepting more and more of the detestable practices of the ungodly and without rebuke in many churches.
Let us humble ourselves and pray for our nation to return to YHWH and reject the wickedness we have embraced and normalized. Pray for righteous people to rise up and vote and vote with a clear focus and understanding of who will bring us back as a nation closer to you. Rise up pastors and elders who will lead churches in your word with authority. Reject the wicked and the false teachers who only teach part of your gospel or teach false gospel all together. Let people see through the deception and seek righteousness.
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