God intended for the Jews to live in the land he promised them. The problem is: this land was already occupied by other people. In telling the Jews to “take” the land, did God command genocide or ethnic cleansing? This is a difficult and often misunderstood part of the Old Testament history. How can a God of love be responsible for wiping out “innocent” people, for the sake of his own…or were they innocent?

1. Did God Command Ethnic Cleansing

2. Deuteronomy 20:10 When you march up to attack a city, make
its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their
gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and
shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they
engage you in battle, lay siege to that city.

3. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to
the sword all the men in it.14 As for the women, the children,
the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take
these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder
the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.

4. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a
distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is
giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that
breathes.

5. Deuteronomy 18:9 When you enter the land the Lord your God
is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the
nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who
sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices
divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft,

6. 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who
consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is
detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable
practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before
you. 13 You must be blameless before the Lord your God.

7. Leviticus 18:20 "'Do not have sexual relations with your
neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her. 21 "'Do not give
any of your children to be sacrificed to Molek, for you must
not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. 22 "'Do not
have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman;
that is detestable.

8. 23 "'Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile
yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an
animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.
24 "'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this
is how the nations that I am going to drive out before
you became defiled.

9. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and
the land vomited out its inhabitants.

10. Deuteronomy 4:25 After you have had children and
grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time - if you
then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in
the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger,

11. 26 I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this
day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are
crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but
will certainly be destroyed.

12. 27 The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few
of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will
drive you. 28 There you will worship man-made gods of wood
and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. 29 But if
from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if
you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.

13. 30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened
to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God
and obey him. 31 For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he
will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with
your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath.

14. Deuteronomy 4:5 See, I have taught you decrees and laws as
the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow
them in the land you are entering to take possession of it.

15. 6 Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and
understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these
decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and
understanding people."

16. 7 What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them
the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to
him? 8 And what other nation is so great as to have such
righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting
before you today?

17. 9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do
not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from
your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and
to their children after them.

18. Deuteronomy 18:18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you
from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in
his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I
myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my
words that the prophet speaks in my name.

19. Philippians 2:12 Paul tells us that as we obey God and grow in
Him, pursuing the passions He places within us,… 14 that we
will "shine like stars" as we "hold out the word of life".