Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 20:16
But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee [for] an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
16. But ] Heb. rak, introducing an opposite case, see Deu 10:15.
thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth ] Heb. any breath, i.e. human life (Gen 2:7, 1Ki 17:17, Isa 42:5), cp. the deuteronomic Jos 10:40; Jos 11:11; Jos 11:14. Only in Gen 7:22 does the phrase cover animals.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Deu 20:16-18
Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth.
Extermination of Canaanites
Is not this fierce irruption in Canaan with fire and sword precisely similar to the wave of Mahomedan conquest? Is it any way different from the most pitiless of heathen invasions? How can we justify such an acquisition of territory as this, whilst we are, at least in theory, so scrupulous about adding one acre of unjustly acquired land to our dominions, and cannot let one drop of blood be shed, even in a conquered race, without inquiry? The key to this difficulty was given in the very first confirmation of the grant made to Abraham. When the land of Canaan was made over to him and his descendants, he was told that they could not at once enter on possession, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not full. The transference of territory was thus from the first viewed and treated as a judicial transaction. God reserves to Himself the right which all sovereigns must and do reserve–the right of removing offenders from the earth, and of confiscating their goods. In other respects this invasion finds a parallel in almost every century of history, and in every part of the world. It is, in point of fact, by conquest that civilisation has spread and is spreading upon earth, and in the career of progress the nations whose iniquities are full–that is to say, which have fallen too low for national redemption–have been swept away by the purer and stronger races. In this, therefore, there is no difference between the conduct of Israel and the conduct of other great nations. The difference consists in this–that while other nations have pushed their conquests for love of gain or glory, or through pride in their leader or mere lust of adventure, Israel entered Canaan as Gods servant, again and again warned that they were merely Gods sword of justice, and that if they forgot this, and began to think it was their own might that had emptied the land for them, they should themselves suffer the like extermination. Between this and many other outwardly similar conquests there was, in short, all the difference which there is between a righteous execution which rejoices the hearts of all good men, and a murder which makes us ashamed of our nature. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Unselfish conquest
The difference between the Jews and other people is precisely this:–All the great nations that we read of have effected extensive and, on the whole, salutary conquests. Their triumphs have been the means of spreading law, government, civilisation, where they would otherwise not have reached. They have swept away feeble, corrupt, sensualised people, who had become animal worshippers or devil worshippers, and had lost all sense of their human dignity. But we feel that the nations who have done these works have done them in great part for their own glory, for the increase of their territory, at the instigation and for the gratification of particular leaders. All higher and more blessed results of their success, which it is impossible not to recognise, have been stained and corrupted by the ignoble and selfish tendencies which have mixed with them, and been the motives to them; so that we are continually perplexed with the question, what judgment we shall form of them, or what different causes we can find for such opposite effects. There is one nation which is taught from the very first that it is not to go out to win any prizes for itself, to bring home the silver or gold, the sheep or the oxen, the men servants or the women servants; that it is to be simply the instrument of the righteous Lord against those who were polluting His earth, and making it unfit for human habitation. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
The command to extirpate the Canaanites
This command to extirpate the Canaanites is regarded by many as one of the chief difficulties in the Old Testament. The difficulty lies not so much in the thing itself, as in our defective views of God, or of mails relation to Him, or of the supernatural character of the revelation made to Moses. The objection, it will be observed, is grounded (or it has no force) upon the supposed inconsistency of this command with the Divine righteousness and equity. Yet there are other acts of God, equally terrible and equally indiscriminate in their effects, which we never presume to call in question. When, for example, the Almighty sends an earthquake or a pestilence, there is no complaint of injustice; and yet earthquake and pestilence spare neither age nor sex nor rank, but involve all in the same ruin. Do fire or famine or cholera discriminate between the sexes, or spare the aged or the young? If the sword of Israel was commissioned to destroy all that breathed of the Canaanites, it certainly was not more indiscriminate than these other judgments of God. If we dare not assert or even insinuate injustice in the case of the one, neither can we rationally do so in the case of the other; nor can we deny to the Almighty the right to choose this or that method of chastising a guilty people, whether earthquake or famine, pestilence or war. We may further remember that the annihilation of a people is so far from being a new or an unexampled occurrence, that similar events in the overruling wisdom of God have been continually taking place ever since the dawn of history. For an example of it we need not travel beyond our own shores. Where are the original inhabitants of England? The Briton was subdued by the Saxon, the Saxon was driven out by the Norman and the Dane, each race leaving, however, some trace of itself in the stock and blood of the country. Yet the original race has been more completely extirpated than ever the Canaanitish races were during the Hebrew occupancy of Palestine. Still more complete has been the disappearance of the North American Indians. The red man has been driven farther and farther towards the setting sun, till the race seems threatened with absolute extermination, and is actually extinct over an area twenty times as great as that of Palestine. It appears to be an unvarying law, that the savage recedes before the civilised man. We cannot justify all the means by which this result is accomplished, or palliate the dark and monstrous crimes which have been perpetrated in the name of civilisation; yet it is an evident fact that the Ruler of nations is pleased to ordain, or to permit, that nations should be driven from their ancestral inheritance, and their places filled by others. Thus we see that what happened to the Canaanites is happening continually in the history of nations. In this view the phenomenon of the destruction of the Canaanite nations does not stand alone. It can be referred to a class. And there is no more ground for disputing the Divine justice in regard to the destruction of those people than in regard to the disappearance of scores and perhaps hundreds of other ancient races from the face of the earth; for it cannot be contended that there is any difference, as it regards justice and equity, whether a nation be extirpated by war, destroyed by famine or pestilence, or left to perish, like the aborigines of Australia, by hopeless and helpless exhaustion. (L. H. Wiseman M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Heb. no seed, i.e. no man, as that word is oft used. Compare Jos 10:40, with Deu 11:14. For the beasts, some few excepted as being under a special curse, were given them for a prey.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
But of the cities of those people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance,…. The cities of the seven nations, six of which are mentioned by name in the next verse:
thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; the reason of this severity was because of their wickedness, the capital crimes and gross abominations they were guilty of, and for which they deserved to die; and on account whereof they were reserved to this destruction, when the measure of their iniquities was full, such as idolatry, incest, witchcraft, soothsaying, necromancy, &c. see
Le 18:3.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(4) TREATMENT OF CANAANITE CITIES (Deu. 20:16-18)
16 But of the cities of these peoples, that Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; 17 but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee; 18 that they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so would ye sin against Jehovah your God.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 20:1618
340.
Isnt there some admission of weakness in the need to utterly destroy these nations so that they teach you not to do after all their abominations . . .?
341.
Why not teach the other nations rather than learning from their teaching?
AMPLIFIED TRANSLATION 20:1618
16 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord your God gives you for inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes.
17 But you shall utterly exterminate them, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord your God has commanded you;
18 So they may not teach you all the abominable practices they have carried on for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the Lord your God.
COMMENT 20:1618
With these cities there was to be no arbitration, no peace conferences, no long negotiations for peaceful coexistence. They were to be totally and finally destroyed. And God well knew what would happen if they were not (Deu. 20:18). See also Deu. 7:1-5 and notes.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
16. Of these people The Canaanites and kindred nations.
Thou shalt save alive nothing Not a human being was to be left alive. The abominations of these idolatrous nations were such that only by obliterating them wholly could the Israelites be exempt from their corruptions. The punishment of the Canaanites seems severe, but shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 16-18. But of the cities of these peoplethou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth i.e. Neither man, woman, nor child: but this slaughter of all the people is to be understood only, as we observed above, in case they did not surrender when summoned, but rejected the conditions of peace offered to them; in which case, their condition was worse than that of any other people, whose males only were to be slain; ver. 14. The reason given for this severe execution of the Canaanites is, lest they should teach the Israelites their abominations, their filthy idolatries, their horrid and debasing superstitions. Leviticus 18. On account of which, God thought them not fit to live any longer upon the face of the earth: for, had they been spared after obstinately rejecting terms of peace, they would undoubtedly have sought to infect the Israelites with their idolatry; and it was mercy to the human race in general, not to suffer such a wicked and contagious generation to subsist; as it is mercy to destroy a person infected with the plague, to preserve a whole community from the distemper. We should just observe, that the Girgashites, who are mentioned in chap. 7: ver. 1 are omitted here, though they are mentioned both by the Samaritan and LXX. Bishop Patrick thinks that they were a people mixed among the rest, and did not live in a separate part of the country by themselves: they are thought, however, to have dwelt on the east of the sea of Tiberias.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
The nations here excepted from mercy, are evidently types of the open and determined foes of the church of JESUS. There can be no coalition, no agreement between CHRIST and Belial. The seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent have an everlasting war. LORD! grant that under the supposed idea of mercy, I may never fancy myself more charitable than my GOD, and thus be found cherishing in my bosom the sworn foes to GOD and his CHRIST. Reader! is there not another instruction of a spiritual nature to be gathered from this passage? Instead of looking wholly without to the enemies of JESUS for the destruction of the Canaanites, may not you and I look within, and behold in the lusts of our nature both the foes of GOD and of our own souls also? And shall you and I give quarter to these deadly enemies of our peace, and which have nailed JESUS to the cross? Shall we wish to save any alive of this kind that breatheth? Oh my GOD! root them out and utterly destroy them, and do then reign alone in my heart, the LORD of every passion.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
breatheth. Hebrew. neshamah = that hath breath. See App-16.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Deu 7:1-4, Deu 7:16, Num 21:2, Num 21:3, Num 21:35, Num 33:52, Jos 6:17-21, Jos 9:24, Jos 9:27, Jos 10:28, Jos 10:40, Jos 11:11, Jos 11:12, Jos 11:14
Reciprocal: Lev 27:28 – no devoted Num 31:15 – General Deu 2:33 – the Lord Deu 2:34 – utterly destroyed Deu 3:6 – we utterly Deu 7:2 – utterly Deu 31:5 – according Jos 6:21 – utterly Jos 9:7 – how shall Jos 11:20 – as the Lord Jdg 2:2 – And ye shall 1Sa 15:3 – utterly destroy Psa 106:34 – concerning Eze 20:11 – which
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Deu 20:16. Thou shalt save alive nothing No human creature; for the beasts, some few excepted, were given for a prey. This slaughter of all the people is to be understood only in case they did not surrender when summoned, but rejected the conditions of peace when offered them. In which case their condition was worse than that of any other people, whose males only were to be slain, Deu 20:14.