For it was of the Lord to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, that [Israel] might destroy them utterly, and that without favor and mercy, as the Lord commanded Moses. – Joshua 11:20, Amplified Bible (AMP)

Let’s face it. It is hard to read about Israel’s total annihilation of the Canaanite peoples without cringing a little bit. How could God, who is full of mercy and grace, command Israel to utterly destroy everything that breathes in the heathen cities of the Promised Land?

John Cumming, cited by James C. Gray and George M. Adams in their book Bible Commentary, addresses this question:

Infidels [unbelievers] say that it seems wholly inconsistent with what we should suppose to be the merciful character of God that He should thus command whole nations to be destroyed by the sword… [But] when we see juries in our own country bringing in a verdict of guilty, the judge pronouncing the sentence of death, and that sentence executed, we do not complain that there is anything unjust in the act. These Canaanites are proved to have polluted and stained the land with [intolerable] crimes; it was merely the holy Judge [the Lord] pronouncing the sentence on flagrant criminals and [Joshua] the righteous governor executing that sentence to the letter. It was not an act of arbitrary or private revenge, but the execution of the sentence of retributive justice, and as such had perhaps as great mercy to the innocent as justice to the guilty.

With respect to Mr. Cumming’s statement, “such had perhaps as great mercy to the innocent as justice to the guilty,” consider this. Imagine you are walking down the street in a big city with the person you love the most. You turn into an alley and quickly discover that the alley is a dead-end. You turn to go back the way you came, and when you do, you see a man with an ill-favored look standing between you and the exit to the alley. With a raised crowbar in his hands, the man gives a great shout and starts running full speed towards you. You start shouting at him to stop, but with each shout you realize that he only has one thing on his mind; he’s going to beat you to death and then steal what he can. After multiple pleas to stop, you have no choice; you pull a gun and kill him before he can kill you and your loved one. You did your best to be merciful – to preserve the offender’s life – but finally you made a judgment that if the offender would not stop offending, you’d have to destroy him in order to protect the innocent from destruction.

God punishes the unrepentant guilty in hopes of turning them to Him. When the unrepentant guilty refuse to heed His multiple please for repentance, however, God has no choice but to destroy them – not only because He is holy and cannot excuse sin, but also to protect the innocent from being hurt by their sinful influences. Knowing this truth may not make us cringe any less when we read the things we read in books like Joshua, but, at least, we can understand the “Why?” behind the destruction.

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