The Religions of the Canaanites and Phoenicians
As you dig into the old Testament accounts
of the nation of Israel, a couple of things many Christians have a
hard time understanding are: (1) --why
the people of Israel keep on turning back to the old gods of Egypt and Canaan
even after witnessing major miracles of God (when you read the Old Testament,
you’ll see that this happens continually) (2) --why
did God, during this period of Israel’s history, often tell the people of Israel
to totally wipe out an enemy tribe. He told them to kill the men, women and
children. This seems amazingly cruel and heartless – not like the New Testament
God of love who died for the sins of the world. In order to understand the Bible and arrive at some plausible answers, you need a grasp of what these “other religions” were really like, the religions of the Canaanites and Phoeniciansones (and other peoples) with whom the Hebrews (Israel) were fighting. When you are a kid growing up in church, you are not given the full picture and you’ll see why. These are tough questions (especially number 2), but here are some answers that should at least help: First, why did the people keep
turning back to the old gods?
Sometimes a pastor or Bible teacher will just say that it was because
the Israelites were familiar with these gods (worship of the golden calf came
straight from Egypt) and those old habits are hard to break, and that was
certainly part of it. But there’s much more going on than that. After all, the
Lord had performed miracles in their midst. Why couldn’t these people stay
faithful to Him? Many of these other gods were fertility gods. The people thought that
these gods could help keep the land fertile so crops would grow and the people
wouldn’t go hungry. This is a very big deal when the amount you get to eat is
directly dependent on how good the crops were that year. All we ever experience
is higher prices. We gripe, but we don’t go hungry. The Israelites were afraid
of starving so praying to the correct gods or goddesses was important to these
people. Many people were afraid of leaving some god out and making him mad and
then having a crop failure. A lot of times they tried to worship Yahweh (the
Lord of Israel) and just sort of add other gods along side of Him. But, as you
know from the Ten Commandments, with our God that is just not an option. But, here’s the part about these other religions that you don’t often
hear (at least not until you are older). Many of the gods and goddesses were not
just in charge of making the land fertile, they were also in charge of making
the women fertile so the tribe could expand and grow more powerful. So
worshipping a fertility god often included having sex. Prostitution went on
inside the temples to these gods. It went on up at the “high places” where the
people built altars to these gods (the Bible mentions God’s desire to destroy
the “high places” in Isaiah and other books). When Moses and Joshua and all the
prophets that follow throughout Israel’s history tried to get everyone to quit
worshipping these fertility gods/goddesses, it was like trying to get a bunch of
wild, non-Christian college students to give up their beer parties and orgies to
become chaste church-goers. That’s a pretty good picture of what God was up
against with Israel. No wonder they kept going after other gods--- they liked
the wild “parties.” God knows that true fulfillment, creative & abundant living, joy,
peace, etc. are found in living for Him. He is not trying to restrict us at all.
He’s freeing us. But they had trouble understanding that, as people still do
today. So the Israelites kept turning away from Him even after witnessing some
major miracles because the seductive practices of these other religions were a
powerful lure. Second, why did God ask Israel not just to win the battles but to slaughter everyone? Why did God say to go in and kill all the men, women and children? Of all the questions scholars have
asked about the Bible, this is one of the toughest. These Old Testament commands
don’t seem to jive with our God of love in the New Testament. Believers often
don’t know what to think of these passages. Here are some possible ways of
approaching this problem. First of all, God loved these
people even though he wanted to eradicate them from the land so they could not
have an influence on His people Israel. And He knew that if they were not
destroyed or completely removed from the land, they would continue to draw
Israel into worshipping other gods and goddesses (which actually happened
because Israel never quite pushed them all out or destroyed them). So, in what
ways were these pagans so “evil” that God wanted Israel to get rid of them all? First of all, and the thing God held as being so abhorrent, was that they burned their babies alive on altars to some of their gods. The Bible refers to this as causing a child to “pass through the fire.” The Canaanite’s believed their house would not be blessed by the gods if they didn’t sacrifice their first born and bury him under the cornerstone of the house. Also, I’ve already mentioned the sex thing that was going on. Many historians think that STD’s were rampant, too, among these tribes – no surprise. People were dying early from syphilis and gonorrhea. They were a long time away from the invention of penicillin, and these sexually transmitted diseases were terrible scourges. It has been said that syphilis is one of the worst diseases from which to die. Last of all, God must have known beyond any doubt that they were not
candidates for a revival. When He sees a heart, or hearts, that He knows will
not be turned, he sometimes hardens it further for his own purposes, as with
Pharaoh in dealing with Moses (see Exodus 4:21). Our God is a God of mercy who
“desires all men to come to a knowledge of the truth.” God’s character was the
same then as now—of that we can be sure— and their quick deaths were, perhaps, a
“severe mercy,” to use a phrase from C.S. Lewis. The important thing to know is that these issues are tough ones and
have been discussed for centuries by theologians. Also, there may always remain
some pieces of scripture that cannot be totally answered to our satisfaction.
But we must always look at the full testimony of scripture and rest on the
premise that what we understand far out weighs what we do not understand. God
will one day explain all the mysteries and fully answer all our questions.
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