"Genocide" and the Bible Part 11 The Canaanities

We have an interesting piece of data to support this approach, in the account of the "destruction" of the Amorite country of Og (Num 21.31ff): After Moses had sent spies to Jazer, the Israelites captured its surrounding settlements and drove out the Amorites who were there.
Notice that the Amorites in the villages (i.e. surrounding settlements in v.32 were 'driven out'; but the royal bloodline and national army were destroyed in v.35).

oThat this punishment was more 'national' shows up in the frequent mention of the word "nation(s)" in the passages, and the displacement image in Ps 44.2 is explicit: With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers...

oMigration was a fact and a way of life, and not that big of a deal in that time period--scholars classify the peoples into the "mobile" terminological groups: pastoral nomadism, semi-nomadism, transhumance nomadism,

oWe can size the problem a little here as well. The average city size for walled cities in Palestine at the time was 1,000-3,000 folks, with many being less than 700 (ISBE: s.v. "City"). In Joshua 12, the victory list is given as 31 kings (generally petty kings of city-states) this would be around 70,000 people (assuming they all stayed around--a very dubious assumption in light of the international fear of Israel at the time).

But this 70,000 is against a base of close to 2 million people! (Israel was approximately 1.6 million at the time, and these nations are said to be 'more numerous' than Israel in a number of places--e.g. Deut 7.1,7.) This amounts to approximately 3.5% of the 'target population'. The Israelites were specifically told to execute those who remained in the cities (Deut 20.16) and those who hid in the Land--and therefore did NOT migrate out--Deut 7.20. Granted the Israelites were less than thorough in their warfare, but this small percentage is a bit ridiculous!

Let's put a few facts together:
1.Israel was told to 'drive' the Canaanites out of the Land.
2.Those Canaanites who refused to leave were to be executed.
3.The Israelites were NEVER told to hunt the Canaanites down 'throughout the uttermost reaches of the earth' and kill them.
4.If the Canaanites had migrated to a city in a foreign land, the Israelites could have made a treaty with them.
5.The main point was to keep the Canaanites from influencing Israel's religious culture, by removing them from the Land (e.g. Deut 20.18).

Credits and Sources:

Glen Miller: http://www.christian-thinktank.com/
James Patrick Holding: http://www.tektonics.org/

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