Promises - Deuteronomy 7

7:1-8 - Today we get to have an important in depth conversation that has been touched on previously but that is overdue. In chapter 7, Moses prepares the Israelites with the knowledge that in order to take the land of Canaan, they will have to displace the current inhabitants. The descriptive header says that “Israel is to destroy the sever nations of Canaan,” but the actual word phrase used in the text is that God, not Israel, will “cast out many nations before thee.” There’s two distinctions there, God will do the work, not Israel, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the inhabitants must be slaughtered, but instead removed. This is in line with what TB mentioned, that is the people just leave the place and give it up to the Hebrews, then they don’t have to be killed, only those who stand in opposition. In reality, however, I don’t think that very many civilizations will just walk away from their homes, especially if they think they have a chance at defeating the invading Israelites. Now that I say that, verse 2 says that after God has delivered the people to the Israelites, they are to “smite them, and utterly destroy them. Though shalt make no covenants with them, now shew mercy unto them.” Maybe the first part is what God will do, but once the armies of Israel enter the cities, they are to kill everyone and everything.

The part of this story that has always bothered me was the implication that because Israel was God’s chosen people, they would just be given land and resources that were taken from others by force and that wasn’t fair. I interpreted that to mean that if someone was more chosen than me, then they could be permitted to do violence to me and take my stuff because “God gave it to them.” It gives a sense of injustice and uncertainty and surely that narrative has been used to justify violence in God’s name before. That’s why these distinctions between random people in general and the people of the land of Canaan are important, to give a sense of order and a trust in who God is and what He condones. Because if righteousness gives us God’s protection, but God’s command for other people to commit violence in his name is random, then those two concepts don’t fit together, and even though that’s how it feels not knowing the whole context, that’s not how it works, and the understanding of why and how that command does actually work is necessary to hold confidence in God’s promises.

The IM has an excellent section explaining why the Canaanites were commanded to be destroyed in a unique situation that isn’t common in most others. I’ve always been struck by Nephi’s explanation that the Israel would not have been able to take the land of the Canaanites if they weren’t wicked. There’s a really good Reddit comment that has an excellent explanation saying, “The Bible does not portray the conquest as random or impulsive. In Genesis 15:16, God tells Abraham that his descendants will not inherit the land immediately because ‘the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.’ That suggests God was patient, giving them hundreds of years to turn from their ways. Si, in this view, the destruction wasn’t arbitrary but a along-delayed judgment after persistent evil. This aligns with the idea that God is patient but also just, and when people persist in deep injustice, like child sacrifice and systemic cruelty, judgment eventually comes. In Romans 2:14-15, Paul explains that even those who don’t have the written law still have a conscience and an awareness of right and wrong. So, Canaaites wouldn’t have needed Moses’ commandments to know that things like infanticide, exploitation, or extreme violence were wrong. God holds people accountable based on what they do know, not what they don’t. God, as the give of life, has the right to take it… The conquest of Canaan is not a pattern Christians are called to repeat. It was a one-time, theologically significant act tied to the formation of Israel and the unfolding of salvation history.” Excellent commentary that is pretty inline with what the IM says.

This is similar to the destruction of other people and civilizations that God has accepted responsibility for destroying because they were so wicked that their continued existence on earth was a detriment to them and all those they came into contact with such as Sodom and Gomorrah as well as Laban and the people of Ammonihah, as a couple of examples I can think of off hand. From what I’ve seen, the point where God deems that people are “ripe for destruction” is when they start to kill the prophets. Maybe God had sent prophets to the people in Canaan and they were killed, maybe it was other stuff that they were doing, but it’s clear that there was a definitive point in time when they were it was no longer beneficial to God to keep them on the earth. That this was a unique and controlled circumstance if comforting in making order out of perceived chaos.

The IM also points out that there were other enemies where Israel was not commanded to destroy them, such as the Egyptians, they were only destroyed by the hand of God, not the hand of God and Israel. In addition to destroying the people, the Israelites were to to destroy all their religious idols, and not marry into their other societies.

7:9-26 - Another important point brought up by chapter 7 comes in verse 9-10 which says, “Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.” The concept of God destroying those that hate him is in line with what was discussed earlier, that God defeated Israel’s enemies that they just kind of came in and cleaned up and took over. This is a concept that I want to include in my Book of Mormon as battle doctrine book, that of the different ways in which God can give victory to His people that isn’t just defeat in battle. Having been in combat myself and talked to a lot of combat veterans, and just living life in general, there are so many times when something happened and it’s a miracle they survived. Like the bullet just grazed their neck instead of going an inch to the side and killing them, or they just happened to hit an IED at a certain angle, or they ducked at the right time, or they were switched out as a driver at the last second and that truck blew up, etc. This happens so much more often than I think people are aware of, but there are other ways, and it reminded me of a book that I read several years ago.

I don’t remember what it was called but it basically was by a guy who had multiple near death experiences and “saw” visions of the future, and all that, and I don’t buy into it very much, if it turns out he was right then ok but I’m not going to hold it as doctrine or anything but some of the things that he said were interesting as examples of miraculous ways that God can preserve his people. For instance, one of the things he talked about was seeing a future in which the US was invaded by an enemy and a pandemic came about and both locals and invaders were infected and died at similar rates. However, the righteous among the locals were given priesthood blessings and brought back to life, and the enemies were demoralized because they thought to themselves, “we’re fighting an enemy that can be brought back from the dead. They can’t be killed.” Again, this is all pretty outrageous as far as being predictive but the concept remains valid because that is a power that God possess and theoretically can be utilized to the benefit of his people. In fact this has happened several times historically. Joseph Smith and other early church leaders brought sick and injured people back from the dead. Early saints were matryed then brought back from the dead, in fact, there is a single line in 3 Nephi 7:19 which tells of the miracles Nephi performed in God’s name and one of them is “even his brother did he raise from the dead after he had been stoned and suffered death by the people.”. Less dramatically than bringing the righteous back from the dead is not allowing them to be killed in the first place. Not only in the miraculous situations that I discussed previously, but in the case of the stripling warriors, and the battles that we’ve covered by Israel thus far, they suffered no casualties at all.

In addition to God fighting and winning the battles for his people, he also promises, “he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of ty land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep… there shall not be male or female barren among your, or among your cattle.” This reminds me of the situation of Jacob when he was with Laban and Laban always tried to take advantage of the situation by changing the terms of Jacob’s wages, like saying he could only have the increase of the spotted sheep, so that year the spotted sheep gave birth to so many more lambs and Jacob had a massive increase, and then Laban would change the terms so he would get the increase of the spotted sheep and Jacob would get the increase of something else so that year the spotted sheep would have a lot less lambs and whatever he gave to Jacob would increase drastically. There’s no way that either Jacob or Laban could have controlled for that outcome regardless of how hard either of them tried. And then for it to happen over and over again regardless of what terms Laban gave to Jacob, whatever Jacob’s wages were, increased far beyond anything reasonable. There’s only one way that that can happen and that is through the hand of God.

It's an interesting concept and we have to wonder if that still happens for us today. I think most of us don’t have flocks of sheep that can experience major increases depending on our favor with God, but we do have jobs and opportunities. And there are major ways that everyone can see as being miracles or blessings from God, but I think those happen less than we would expect. I think the hand of God plays out in the subtle things, like that we would miss it if we weren’t looking for it. Like for instance, my garage door broke open twice this week, where the door was open and I couldn’t close it at all. The first time, it broke right when I got home from work so the repair company came out and fixed it. Then the second time was a couple of days later and it was right as I was leaving for the gym and at first I was irritated because why did my garage door have to break, it was expensive to fix. But they more I thought about it, I realized that both times it broke was when I was home and was able to wait there for the repair company and the repair company was able to come out right away to fix it both times. So not only were they available rapidly for repairs, but the door could have broken right when I had to leave for work and I couldn’t have left my house. It was tender mercies like that that were subtle blessings of God working in my life, but I was grateful for them, eventually.

With this thing that happened in my family last year that has still been a kick in my face, I’ve been able to look back and see God’s hand in it. If God can control battle so intricately to the level of individual bullet trajectory, then it’s not reasonable to think that he would allow something so heinous to happen to my family when I’ve tried my best to be righteous without reason. God makes so many promises to us in the scriptures, we are promised that all things will work together for out good, even earlier in this chapter in verse 9 we are promised mercy and love from God “to a thousand generations.” We are promised that any suffering we experience is only to the absolute necessary depth to accomplish His will “because there is no other way.” We are promised comfort and healing and protection and blessings, and any deviation from that is controlled, we are promised those things. And that’s what I have to keep holding on to when I just scream into the void, the promises.