Devoted-to-destruction
Short answer: In Joshua 6:15-21 the walls of Jericho fall, and Israel carries out what the text calls devoting the city to destruction. The Hebrew idea behind this is herem, a setting apart of something wholly to Yahweh. In a holy war, that meant the city's population and goods were given over to God rather than kept as plunder. Joshua 6:17 says the city, with all that is in it, was devoted to Yahweh. The text presents this as obedience to a command given earlier, not as soldiers improvising cruelty. The passage is genuinely difficult, and it should be read in its covenant setting and alongside other passages such as Deuteronomy 7:1-6 and Deuteronomy 20:16-18. It is not a model for religious violence today, and faithful readers have never been entirely agreed on how to weigh it.
What the word devoted actually means in Joshua 6
The English word devoted carries warm connotations for most readers today. In the Hebrew of Joshua, the underlying term is herem, and its force is closer to placing something beyond ordinary use by handing it over completely to God. When applied to a city under the ban, this meant the population was not spared, the wealth was not taken as spoil, and the whole place was treated as set apart to Yahweh.
Joshua 6:17 states the principle plainly, telling the reader that the city, with all that is in it, was devoted to Yahweh. Joshua 6:19 excludes the silver, gold, bronze, and iron, which went into the treasury of Yahweh. So even within the ban there is a distinction. Some things were destroyed; some things were consecrated. Both were taken out of human hands.
This is important because it shows the ban was not simply a license to plunder. The normal ancient practice after a siege was to take spoil. Israel is explicitly forbidden that here. The goods that could be burned were burned, and the metals were not distributed but brought into the house of God. The point being made is that the first city in the land was entirely God's, with nothing held back by the army.
Why Jericho came first and why that mattered for Israel
Jericho was the firstfruits of the conquest. In Israel's law, firstfruits belonged to God before anything else could be claimed. The first city taken in the land functions that way. Nothing from it enriched Israel, because God was asserting prior ownership of the whole land before any tribe received an inheritance.
The march itself took seven days, with the ark carried before the people and the priests blowing trumpets. The collapse of the walls is presented in the text as an act of God, not a military achievement. The army does not breach the wall; it walks, shouts, and the wall falls. The battle is framed as Yahweh's victory from beginning to end.
That framing matters for how the destruction is presented. It is not the celebration of superior force. The narrative goes out of its way to make Israel look passive and dependent. The judgment that follows is attributed to God's decision, not to the soldiers' initiative. Readers may still find the outcome troubling, but the text's own emphasis is on divine action, and any honest reading has to reckon with that.
The earlier command behind the destruction of Jericho
Joshua 6 does not introduce the ban for the first time. Deuteronomy 20:16-18 gives the command for the cities of the peoples within the inheritance, stating that nothing that breathes is to be saved alive. The stated reason is not ethnic hatred but religious contamination: the nations are to be prevented from teaching Israel to follow their abominations.
Deuteronomy 7:1-6 lists seven nations greater and mightier than Israel and describes them as devoted to destruction. The same passage immediately explains why Israel was chosen, and the reason is not their size or virtue. They were the smallest of peoples and were chosen out of love and oath-keeping, not merit. The command is set inside a covenant framework with a stated purpose.
So Joshua 6 is the execution of an instruction already given through Moses. It is presented as delayed judgment on a population whose iniquity had reached its limit, not as an impulsive act by a general. Christians differ on how fully that explanation satisfies them, and it is fair to say so plainly.
Rahab and the exception inside the destruction
Inside the same passage, there is an exception. Joshua 6:17 names Rahab and her household as spared, along with those who were with her in the house, because she hid the messengers. Verses 22-25 describe her rescue in detail, with the two spies sent back to bring out her family.
This detail is easy to skim past, but it does real work in the passage. It shows the ban was not a blanket rule that swallowed everyone by ethnicity. Rahab was a Canaanite. Her household was Canaanite. They were spared because of her allegiance to Yahweh and her kindness to Israel's messengers. She is later found in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1.
The presence of this exception should make any reader cautious about flattening the episode into simple ethnic slaughter. The text itself keeps a Canaanite woman and her family alive inside the city that was devoted. Whatever else is happening in Joshua 6, the categories are not as crude as later polemics often make them.
What the ban does not authorize today
The commands in Deuteronomy and Joshua are addressed to Israel at a specific point in redemptive history, for a specific land, under a covenant that was administered through a nation-state. There is no command anywhere in the New Testament telling the church to do anything comparable. Christians are not given a land to conquer or a city to devote to destruction.
Jesus explicitly rebuked a Samaritan village's wish for fire from heaven, and Paul describes the church's weapons as not being of the flesh. The New Testament's warfare language is directed at spiritual forces, not at human populations. Anyone who claims Joshua 6 as a mandate for violence against a people group is reading a passage against its own covenant context and against the plain teaching of the New Testament.
This does not erase the difficulty of the Old Testament text. Many faithful Christians have wrestled with it honestly, and some have held different conclusions about how to fit it into the character of God revealed in Christ. It is legitimate to say that the passage is hard and that the church has not resolved every question about it.
The hard question of divine judgment
The deeper issue in Joshua 6 is not Israel's conduct but God's command. If God is good, how can such judgment be commanded? Romans 9:22-23 speaks of God enduring with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, while making known the riches of his glory toward vessels of mercy. The text does not explain every instance of judgment, but it does place judgment inside God's patience rather than outside it.
The narrative of Genesis already presents the peoples of Canaan as long-standing in serious moral corruption, and God tells Abraham the judgment would wait until their iniquity was full. So the picture is not an impatient God striking quickly. It is a God who delays judgment for generations before it comes. That is part of the Bible's own framing, whether or not it fully satisfies the modern reader.
Christians have held different positions here. Some read the ban as genuine divine judgment fitting the covenant era. Others read it as accommodated to the ancient world while still being Scripture. What no careful reader should do is pretend the passage is easy or that the difficulty can be waved away with a slogan.
Partial obedience in 1 Samuel 15 as a mirror
1 Samuel 15 gives a later episode with the same vocabulary. Saul is commanded to devote Amalek to destruction. He defeats the Amalekites but keeps Agag the king and the best of the livestock. Samuel's rebuke frames this as rebellion and rejection of Yahweh's word.
Saul insists, in 1 Samuel 15:20, that he has obeyed Yahweh's voice. The narrative contradicts him. The point is not that God takes pleasure in destruction, but that partial obedience to a clear command is still disobedience. Saul's motive, at least as the text presents it, is that the people wanted the spoil. The ban had already declared the spoil off-limits.
Read together, Joshua 6 and 1 Samuel 15 make a consistent theological point. Devotion to God is total. Anything held back for personal advantage undermines the whole. That is the theological weight the ban is carrying, and it is why the New Testament can speak of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice without endorsing violence against anyone.
What devotion means for the Christian reader
The New Testament does not translate the ban into a command to harm people. It does translate the language of total devotion into the Christian life. Paul urges believers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice, which he calls their reasonable service. The pattern is the same: nothing held back, nothing claimed for self.
That is the point of the firstfruits structure in Joshua 6. The city was God's before Israel received anything. The first part of the conquest belonged to him. For the Christian, the first part of life, time, money, and strength belongs to God. The ban's logic, stripped of its warfare setting, is about ownership.
This is not a way of softening the historical difficulty. But it is a way of reading the passage as Scripture rather than as an embarrassment or a weapon. The God who claims the first city for himself claims the whole person. The men who marched around Jericho did not get to keep a single coin. Neither does the disciple get to keep a private corner of life undisclosed to God.
Biblical fidelity check
What the passage establishes: Jericho was devoted wholly to Yahweh, the silver and gold went into the treasury of Yahweh, Rahab and her household were spared, and the entire event is presented as God's action rather than Israel's military achievement. What the passage does not establish is that God commands Christians to destroy any people, that the church has a land mandate, or that ethnic identity is the basis of judgment. The stated basis in Deuteronomy is religious contamination, not race.
A common misreading treats Joshua 6 as a template for religious violence. That is wrong because the command is tied to a covenant, a land, and a specific historical moment, and because the New Testament never repeats it and explicitly redirects the church's warfare to spiritual realms. A second misreading treats the passage as pure allegory with no historical content. That is also wrong, because the text is presented as history, names real places, and is referenced later in Scripture as an event. The honest reading holds both the historical reality and the covenant particularity of the passage.
Other passages that speak to the destruction of Jericho
Several related passages help place Joshua 6 in its wider biblical setting. For Saul's own confrontation with the ban, see 1 Samuel 10: Samuel Anoints Saul and Signs Confirm, and then 1 Samuel 11: Saul Rescues Jabesh Gilead and Renews Kingdom. The confrontation with Samuel that follows Saul's partial obedience is treated in 1 Samuel 12: Samuel's Farewell and Israel's Demand for a King. To trace the theme of devotion and calling back to Israel's beginnings, see 1 Samuel 1: Hannah's Prayer and Samuel's Birth.
Frequently asked questions
What does devoted to destruction mean in Joshua 6?
It renders the Hebrew idea of herem, meaning something set apart wholly to God and removed from ordinary human use. Applied to Jericho, it meant the city's population was not spared and its goods were not taken as spoil. Joshua 6:19 makes an exception for the silver, gold, bronze, and iron, which went into the treasury of Yahweh. The point is total dedication to God in a holy war setting under Israel's covenant.
Is the destruction of Jericho a model for Christians today?
No. The command was given to Israel at a specific point in redemptive history, for a specific land, under a specific covenant. The New Testament never repeats it and redirects the church's warfare to spiritual rather than human enemies. Using Joshua 6 to justify violence against a people group reads the passage against its covenant context and against the teaching of Christ and the apostles.
Why were Rahab and her household spared?
Joshua 6:17 names Rahab and those with her as spared because she hid the messengers. She was a Canaanite, not an Israelite, which shows the ban was not applied on ethnic grounds alone. Her household joined Israel, and she appears in the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. The exception is a deliberate feature of the narrative, not an inconsistency tucked away in the margins.
