When King Sihon refused passage to Israel, and when he came out with his entire army and attacked Israel, it was the tipping point. The king's sins reached their full measure at the same time the sins of the Amorites as a whole reached their full measure. Judgment fell on the king and his people. For centuries the Lord tried to draw their hearts away from idolatry and back to Himself. For centuries they refused His overtures, His love, His forgiveness, and His mercy. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Countless times the Amorites refused to repent, preferring instead to remain in their sins, so at the proper time the Lord paid them the wages they had earned.
Moses retells the story of the Amorite king's defeat. "When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army." (Deuteronomy 2:32-33) No one with any clear claim to the throne survived the battle. The king was killed, along with his sons and all the men of his territory who were of army age and fighting condition. This effectively destroyed his dynasty. No son, nephew, brother, or cousin of an age to rule was left.
But there were still wages of sin to be paid. "At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them---men, women and children. We left no survivors." (Deuteronomy 2:34) The Lord had said He was going to uproot the tribes inhabiting the promised land and plant the tribes of Israel in their place. This is what the uprooting looked like. When you uproot something from your flower bed or your vegetable garden, what happens to it? It perishes. This is what the Lord meant when He said He would uproot the heathen idolaters from the land, and difficult as it may be for us to contemplate, the uprooting included not only the royal family and the soldiers but the women, children, and elderly citizens too.
This type of thing could only be done upon command of the Lord. I believe this situation was something unique for the peoples and for the time period involved. We will see later on that Israel does not always completely uproot tribes and clans from the promised land, and when she does not, it always turns out to be to her detriment. Those whom they spare end up being either a military threat or a spiritual threat to them.
What would have happened if the Israelites had not killed all of the people who were formerly under the rule of King Sihon? It's difficult to imagine how the women, children, and elderly people would have survived without all their able-bodied men who were killed in battle. Who would provide for them? Most of them would likely have starved to death. And if the Israelites had taken the women, children, and elderly people captive and had incorporated them into their own society, doubtless idolatry would have come into Israel along with these Amorite people. That's something that will be proven later on in the Old Testament when some Israelite men take foreign wives who have not and do not convert to the God of Israel. And what if the Israelites had simply driven all the women, children, and elderly people away from the region? These surviving Amorites would have been forced into the territories of other tribes and nations where they would not have been welcomed and would almost certainly have been put to the sword, although some might have been seized and sold into lives of slavery and abuse instead. Either way, the outlook was not promising for them.
There was no solution to the problem of the Amorites that would have both spared the Amorites and would also have protected Israel from them at that time and in the future. We may not understand why the Lord allowed the Israelites to kill all these people but we must trust that the Lord did the only thing that could be done. We don't know what He knows. We don't think the way He thinks. But we might be able to use an analogy that will help us understand it, at least a little bit. The Israelites are His children; the Amorites are not. The Amorites represent a threat to Israel, both at the time King Sihon came out against Israel and also in the future. If you knew someone was a deadly threat to your child, would you not rather see that person lose their life instead of your child? If that person physically attacked your child, wouldn't you do everything possible to protect your child, even if that meant taking the life of his attacker? If a person was a spiritual threat to your child, drawing his heart away from the Lord and pulling him into occult practices that will ruin his life and endanger his eternal soul, wouldn't you want that person out of your child's life somehow? Wouldn't you want the wicked influence removed? That's what the Lord was doing when He uprooted the tribes of Canaan. He was removing the physical threat of their presence and He was removing the spiritual threat of their presence. His children must be protected at all costs, and that cost means paying out the wages of sin upon the Amorites.
The Israelites took the spoils of war following their military victory. "But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. From Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, and from the town in the gorge, even as far as Gilead, not one town was too strong for us. The Lord our God gave us all of them. But in accordance with the command of the Lord our God, you did not encroach on any of the land of the Ammonites, neither the land along the course of the Jabbok nor that around the towns in the hills." (Deuteronomy 2:35-37) What did ten of the twelve men who spied out the land of Canaan say about the people in the region? They said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." (Numbers 13:31) They were wrong, because with the Lord on Israel's side, no one is too strong for them to conquer. The other two spies, Joshua and Caleb, spoke words of faith regarding taking over the promised land, saying, "Do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them." (Numbers 14:9)
The Lord protected the Amorites until their sins reached the tipping point. Until their bucket of judgment was full, the Lord didn't allow it to be poured out upon them. But as He promised Abraham, at the proper time Abraham's descendants came to take the land away from them. At the proper time He removed His protective hand from the Amorites who rejected Him century after century and He gave all they had into the hands of Abraham's descendants. Joshua and Caleb were right when they declared in faith, "The Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them." Moses reminds the members of the new generation, who are about to fight more battles, that not one town has been too strong for them to take. The Lord has been with them and will continue to be with them. They must encourage themselves for the days ahead by remembering the victories the Lord has already given them.
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