Why Is It Fair that God Ordered the Killing of Canaanite Children?
The Canaanites were a thoroughly wicked and debased people. They practiced divination, witchcraft and male and female temple sex. Mimicking their fertility gods, the idolatrous Canaanites engaged in adultery, homosexuality, transvestitism, pederasty, bestiality and incest. Worst of all, they practiced child sacrifice by fire. Their moral consciences had become seared beyond the point of repair. Their influence on other cultures had to be put to an end, especially given that Israel had to remain unadulterated in order to bring the Messiah to the world.
Even still, God is patient and merciful. Genesis 15:13,16 tells us that God stayed the Canaanites’ judgment for 400 years, demonstrating why He is called long-suffering. During these 400 years His chosen people remained in slavery in Egypt, such was His desire that the Canaanites would turn from their ways. In Ezekiel 33:11, the Lord says, “As I live, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” He sent a prophet to Nineveh to give them an opportunity to repent, and they did, thus saving themselves from His righteous judgment. And he kept lowering the purchase price for Sodom and Gomorrah when Abraham asked, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked… Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18:25) When ten righteous people could not be found, God indeed unleashed His judgment upon them. But the point is He spares those who
repent and puts off his judgment as long as possible out of His great mercy.
God would know who would repent. He had given the Canaanites ample time to turn from their ways. He certainly would have known that the children were beyond saving. As a matter of fact, Scripture supports the idea that those who die before the age of accountability enter heaven. Their death was actually their salvation.
Cancer must be completely removed or the risk of re-growth is extremely high. God knew on a practical level that He could not leave Canaanite children alive that would develop a bloodlust for revenge. If another generation had been allowed to live, they would have continued their immoral practices. In Deuteronomy 7 He said to ‘Totally destroy’ the Canaanites and six other nations and ‘show them no mercy;’ He ordered the execution of every Egyptian firstborn; He flooded the world; He told the Israelites: "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” (1 Sam 15:3)
This demonstrates that God’s character is absolutely holy and that He has to punish sin and rebellion. Like the Canaanites, the Amalekites were a thoroughly wicked and debased people. For example, they had been following the Israelites and had been cowardly slaughtering the most vulnerable - the weak, elderly and disabled who had been lagging behind.
Unlike us, God knows the future. God knew what the results would be if Israel did not completely eradicate the Amalekites. If Israel did not carry out God’s orders, the Amalekites would come back to trouble the Israelites in the future.
Several hundred years later, Haman, a descendant of Agag, tried to have the entire Jewish people exterminated (see Esther). So, Saul’s incomplete obedience almost resulted in Israel’s destruction. God knew this would occur, so He ordered the extermination of the Amalekites ahead of time.
Saul claimed to have killed everyone but the Amalekite king Agag (1 Samuel 15:20). Obviously, Saul was lying—just a couple of decades later, there were enough Amalekites to take David and his men’s families captive (1 Samuel 30:1-2). After David and his men attacked the Amalekites and rescued their families, 400 Amalekites escaped. If Saul had fulfilled what God had commanded him, this never would have occurred.
In regard to the Canaanites, God commanded, “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” (Deuteronomy 20:16-18). The Israelites failed in this mission as well, and exactly what God said would happen did (Judges 2:1-3; 1 Kings 11:5; 14:24; 2 Kings 16:3-4). God did not order the extermination of these people to be cruel, but to prevent even greater evil from occurring in the future.
But what about the children? Remember, they could not be left behind to develop a bloodlust for revenge. Their death (before the age of accountability) was actually their salvation. No one is innocent (Psalms 51:5; 58:3). Socially and physically the fate of children throughout history has always been with their parents, for good or ill.
God is sovereign over all life and has the right to take it. In fact, He takes the life of every human being. The only question is when and how, which we have to leave up to him.
Surely the ones who wanted to be saved from destruction fled and were spared in the hundreds of years leading up to their destruction.
And we have the example of the righteous among evil people being saved (Rahab in Joshua 6, the people of Ninevah). God’s purpose in these instances was to destroy the corrupt nation because the national structure was inherently evil, not to destroy people if they are willing to repent.
Consider: Israel’s enemies were always given plenty of warning. Under the rules of conduct given to the Israelites by God, whenever they went into an enemy city they were to first make the people an offer of peace. The fighters who remained would have been the most hardened, the ones who stubbornly refused to leave, the carriers of the corrupt culture.
Most of the women and children would have fled in advance before the actual fighting began, leaving behind the warriors to face the Israelites. So it’s really questionable how many women and children might have actually been involved anyway.
Many people tend to think of the Canaanite women and children as non-combatants in a military campaign, and that is a mistake. This was no military action. It was capital punishment, a sentence of judgment, and Israel’s army was the tool God used to carry it out. Neither was it genocide nor ethnic cleansing. It was a decree limited in scope to that particular operation and specifically against just the Canaanites in the Promised Land. Canaanite societies throughout the rest of Mesopotamia were unaffected.
Often, God dealt with nations as a whole. Canaanite sin was deeply ingrained and systemic; thus God judged them as one. When a community sins, its consequences are suffered by everyone, adult and child alike.
More than anything, however, we fail to see just how egregiously we violate God’s standard for us. Every sin listed against the Canaanites is still in full bloom today. While we may not lay our children on bronze altars and burn them alive, we slaughter the unborn in the name of convenience and choice. We have become so comfortable in our own sin, we have forgotten just what it means to be holy. God cannot abide sin, and He will not. He is undeniably just, and His nature demands that he deal with sinful people who persist in their wicked ways.