Joshua 6 and the Violence of the Old Testament
Short answer: Joshua 6:15-21 records Israel's march around Jericho, the collapse of its walls, and the devotion of the city to destruction. The passage presents this as Yahweh's action through Israel, not as a general warrant for human warfare. It does not teach that any nation may claim divine permission to kill its neighbours, nor does it explain away the severity of what is described. It sits inside a larger story in which God is said to judge nations, to spare some foreigners who trust him, and finally to bear that judgment himself in Christ. Faithful readers have read such texts differently, and honesty requires saying so.
What Joshua 6:15-21 actually narrates
The chapter tells of seven days of silent marching, with priests carrying horns and the ark. On the seventh day the people rose early at the dawning of the day and marched around the city seven times, and the priests blew the trumpets and the people shouted. The wall fell, and Israel went up into the city and devoted it to destruction. The narrative is spare, liturgical, and unapologetic. It does not linger over individual deaths or supply anything like a rationale for each one. What it does supply is the claim that this happened under Yahweh's command, mediated through Joshua, within a promise already given to Abraham in Genesis 15:13-16, where God says the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.
That Genesis frame matters. The text does not present the conquest as an arbitrary land grab by a stronger people, since Deuteronomy 7:1-5 explicitly calls the Canaanite nations greater and mightier than Israel. Israel is not described as militarily superior. The story repeatedly attributes the outcome to Yahweh rather than to Israelite strength, which is why the New Testament can appeal to the same event as an example of faith rather than of national prowess. Hebrews 11:30-31 says, "By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down, after they had been encircled for seven days." The point being made there is about trusting God's word, not about the ethics of siege warfare.
Joshua 6 also places a surprising restraint inside the severity. Rahab and her household are spared, and she is named in the New Testament as a woman of faith. The passage treats her as an outsider who acted on what she had heard about Yahweh and was delivered. So the chapter is not a simple account of Israel against everyone else. It distinguishes between a city under judgment and a foreigner who is rescued, which complicates any reading that turns the text into a template for ethnic hostility. The narrative is doing something more specific than modern readers often assume.
The language of devotion to destruction is the hardest element. It describes the total consecration of captured people and goods to God, removing them from ordinary human use. Whatever else this means, it is not presented as ordinary warfare with ordinary goals of plunder or territory. It is presented as a one-time, command-specific act within a particular historical moment in the story of redemption. The text itself does not generalise it into a standing rule, and readers who treat it as a standing rule are reading something the passage does not say.
The problem of reading ancient warfare from a modern desk
Modern readers bring assumptions the text does not share. We assume that the moral status of an act can be settled by its immediate visible violence, apart from the character of the one commanding it and the wider purpose in view. Ancient Near Eastern texts, by contrast, routinely describe kings acting on behalf of their gods in war, and Israel's Scriptures speak in that register while insisting that Yahweh is not one tribal deity among many. The claim is not that this makes the violence easy, but that the text is making a theological argument, not offering a military manual.
It also helps to notice what the text does not do. It does not command Israel to hate Canaanites as a race. It does not say the Canaanites were destroyed because of their ethnicity. Deuteronomy 7:1-5 grounds the command in separation from idolatrous practice, warning Israel not to intermarry or serve other gods. Whatever the historical outworking, the stated reason is religious and covenantal, not racial. That distinction is important, because the worst misuses of this passage in history have come from readers who turned it into a warrant for hatred of particular peoples, which the text does not authorise.
Another modern assumption is that a good God could never command anything that results in death. But Scripture consistently presents God as the giver and taker of life, and it presents death as a real consequence of sin from Genesis onward. That does not automatically resolve the difficulty of Jericho, but it does mean the passage cannot be dismissed by an argument that simply assumes the conclusion. The Bible's own framework is that human life belongs to God, and that he may call it back. Readers may find that framework hard, but they should recognise it is the framework the text assumes.
Readers also tend to read the account as if it were a newspaper report with modern standards of corroboration. It is a theological narrative, shaped to teach Israel who Yahweh is and what he has done. That does not make it fiction, but it does mean the author's purpose governs what is included and emphasised. The emphasis falls on Yahweh's initiative, Israel's obedience, and Rahab's faith. Modern historical and ethical questions are real, but they are not the questions the narrator is answering, and we should not pretend the text answers what it does not address.
Genesis 15 and the timing of judgment
Genesis 15:13-16 gives Abram a long-range preview: his offspring will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs and will be afflicted four hundred years, and then God will judge that nation and bring his people out. Within the same speech, God says the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. This is a striking detail. It means the conquest was not presented as immediate or arbitrary; it was delayed for centuries. The text implies a measure of moral patience, a long period during which the nations in question continued in practices the narrative treats as deserving judgment.
That patience matters for how we read Joshua. The Bible's own logic is not that God lost his temper and ordered a massacre. It is that a long account of rebellion reached a point of settled judgment. Whether that satisfies a modern moral conscience is a separate question, and honest readers will differ. But it is a misreading to treat Joshua 6 as a sudden divine outburst. The canon places a four-hundred-year gap and an explicit statement about incomplete iniquity before the walls of Jericho ever fall.
There is also a pattern here that runs through Scripture: God is said to judge nations outside Israel, not only Israel. The prophets later announce judgment on Assyria, Babylon, Edom, and others, including Israel and Judah themselves. So the destruction at Jericho is not the privilege of one favoured people over everyone else. It is one instance of a theme in which no nation is exempt. That theme cuts against any reading that turns the passage into a celebration of Israelite superiority, since the same Scriptures record Israel's own judgment for the same kinds of unfaithfulness.
The delay also suggests God's knowledge of what is coming is not the same as delight in it. Genesis 15 presents the delay as patience, and later Scripture says God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Readers must hold these texts together rather than picking one and ignoring the others. The tension is real, and the Bible does not tie it into a neat bow. What it does is insist that judgment belongs to God, that it is neither quick nor gleeful, and that human beings are not authorised to imitate it on their own initiative.
A command given to whom, and for how long?
One of the most important observations is that the command at Jericho is given to a specific people, at a specific time, through a specific mediator, for a specific land. Deuteronomy 7:1-5 addresses Israel as they are about to enter Canaan, naming the nations they will dispossess. It is not addressed to Christians, to the church, to governments, or to any later nation. The New Testament never instructs the church to take up arms against unbelievers; it instructs believers to love enemies and to overcome evil with good. That contrast is not an embarrassment to be hidden but a fact to be stated plainly.
This is why Christians have historically distinguished between the unique covenantal wars of the Old Testament and the ordinary conduct of nations, and why mission in the New Testament is by proclamation, not conquest. The Great Commission sends disciples to baptise, not to besiege. Whatever one concludes about the ethics of the conquest narratives, the church has no licence from them to coerce anyone into faith. When professing Christians have used Joshua to justify violence against Jews, Muslims, or any other group, they have directly contradicted the New Testament they claim to follow.
Even within the Old Testament, the command is bounded. Israel is not told to conquer the whole world, and later prophets envision nations streaming to Zion to learn Yahweh's ways, not to be destroyed by Israel's armies. The trajectory of Scripture moves away from the sword, not toward it. Isaiah and Micah picture swords beaten into plowshares. That trajectory does not erase Joshua, but it does mean Joshua cannot be made the controlling image for how God's people relate to outsiders. Reading it as the controlling image is the error, not reading it at all.
It is also worth noting that the narrative itself reports incomplete obedience and mixed outcomes. Judges and later books describe Canaanite presence continuing in the land, and Israel repeatedly adopting the very idolatry the conquest was meant to remove. So the story does not present a clean triumph. It presents a people who were supposed to be distinct and who largely failed to be. That failure is part of why the prophets later indict Israel so sharply, and it warns against reading the conquest as a success story to emulate.
Hard sayings and the honesty they require
Many sincere Christians find Joshua 6 morally troubling, and pretending otherwise is not faithfulness. The text describes the deaths of men and women, young and old, and the narrator does not apologise. A teacher who softens this into something it is not, or who claims the Canaanites were not really killed, or who insists the whole thing is a later invention we may simply discard, is not helping. The better path is to say clearly what the passage claims, acknowledge the difficulty, and show where the Bible's own answers and limits lie.
Some readers conclude that God did command this and that his justice is beyond our full comprehension. Others conclude that the accounts reflect ancient Israelite conviction about God more than a direct divine command, and that God accommodated himself to a violent era the way Jesus says he permitted divorce because of hard hearts. These are not the same position, and the difference matters. Where faithful Christians differ, the honest thing is to say so, to give reasons, and to avoid pretending the disagreement is only between the Bible and its enemies.
What unites serious readings is the conviction that God is not cruel and that the Bible is not a manual for ethnic cleansing. Whatever one makes of the command, no reading that turns Christians into avengers of Jericho is legitimate. The New Testament's ethic is unmistakable. Matthew 5:38-45 records Jesus rejecting retaliation and commanding love for enemies. That does not delete Joshua from the canon, but it does mean Joshua must be read in the light of Christ rather than Christ being read in the light of Joshua.
Finally, Christian readers return to these texts with humility because they describe a God whose ways are not ours. The Bible itself frequently expresses unease about violence and longs for the day when war ceases. It does not present the sword as God's final word. The final word in the Christian canon is a cross, where God absorbs human violence rather than inflicting it, and a resurrection that defeats death itself. Whatever we do with Jericho, we read it on the way to that.
How the New Testament handles the same event
Hebrews 11:30-31 lists the fall of Jericho among the examples of faith, and names Rahab alongside the great figures of Israel's story. The writer is not commenting on the ethics of the siege. He is arguing that God's people act on what God has said, and that faith is vindicated in the outcome. The same event that troubles modern readers is used by the New Testament to teach trust in God's word and to include a Canaanite woman in the family of faith. That inclusion is significant and often overlooked.
Rahab's presence in the genealogy of Jesus, noted in Matthew 1, underscores the point. The story of Jericho is not only about destruction; it is also about a foreigner who is rescued and folded into the line of the Messiah. The narrator of Joshua gives her a whole chapter of attention, and the New Testament honours her faith. A reader who only sees the violence has missed a major thread the biblical authors themselves chose to highlight. The passage is more complex than its worst uses suggest.
The New Testament also absorbs the theme of divine judgment into the person of Christ. Where the Old Testament looks for a day when God judges the nations, the New Testament announces that judgment has been entrusted to the Son, and that the Son came first to save rather than to condemn. That does not cancel the reality of judgment, but it relocates its execution away from human hands. Christians are told not to avenge themselves but to leave room for God's wrath, which means the impulse to enforce judgment ourselves is precisely what the gospel forbids.
So the New Testament neither ignores Joshua nor repeats it. It cites the faith of those involved, welcomes Rahab, and redirects the church's posture toward enemies entirely. Anyone who wants to use Joshua 6 to justify present-day violence has to explain why the New Testament they claim to follow says the opposite about how God's people should treat those who oppose them. That explanation is not available from the text.
Teaching this passage without flinching or fudging
A good class on Joshua 6 begins by reading the text aloud and letting its severity stand. Then it asks what the narrator is claiming about God, about Israel, and about Rahab, before turning to the ethical questions. Participants should be free to say the passage disturbs them, because it should. A teacher who rushes to defence or to dismissal short-circuits the very reflection the text provokes. Better to sit with the difficulty and then work through the canon's own counterweights.
It also helps to keep the passage in its canonical setting. Genesis 15 gives the timing, Deuteronomy 7 gives the stated reason, Joshua 6 gives the event, Hebrews 11 gives the faith reading, and Matthew 5 gives the ethic of the kingdom. Treated as one strand among these, the passage becomes intelligible as part of a story rather than a standalone proof text. Treated in isolation, it becomes a weapon, and history shows how often it has been used as one.
Teachers should be explicit that the conquest commands are not transferable. No Christian is authorised to identify a modern nation or people as Canaanites, and no government should be told by a Bible teacher that God has commanded it to exterminate a population. That is not a controversial application; it is what the New Testament's teaching about enemies plainly requires. Where the church has failed here, it should repent rather than defend, and it should be clear that the failure was a misreading, not an unavoidable implication of Scripture.
Finally, teaching this passage well means pointing beyond it. The Bible's own story moves from a land promised to Abraham, through a people who failed to be faithful in it, to a Messiah who defeats death without killing anyone, and to a final vision of nations healed rather than destroyed. Joshua 6 is a real part of that story, but it is not its centre. Christ is the centre, and reading Joshua in his light is not evasion; it is the way the New Testament itself teaches us to read.
Biblical fidelity check
The passage establishes that Israel, under Joshua's leadership, marched around Jericho, that the walls fell, and that the city was devoted to destruction. It establishes that this was understood as Yahweh's doing, in fulfilment of promises made earlier. It does not establish a general rule that God's people may wage war on unbelievers, does not identify any modern nation with the Canaanites, and does not tell us how to adjudicate every historical or ethical question the account raises. It also does not tell us whether every detail came about exactly as later readers might imagine; the narrator's concerns are theological, not forensic.
A common misreading treats Joshua 6 as a template for Christian violence, as though believers today could identify enemies of God and destroy them. That is wrong because the command was given to a specific people for a specific land at a specific time, because the New Testament explicitly forbids retaliation and commands love of enemies, and because the church's mission is proclamation, not conquest. Another misreading claims the passage is simply an embarrassing relic to be ignored, which fails to take inspiration seriously. Neither flinching nor fudging is faithful; the text should be read as what it is, in the canon, on the way to Christ.
Other passages that speak to Joshua 6:15-21
Readers who want to pursue this further should start with a broad treatment of the theme in Why Is There So Much Violence in the Old Testament? which sets Joshua alongside the wider biblical material. The story of Saul, who was commanded to destroy Amalek and failed, is treated in 1 Samuel 10: Samuel Anoints Saul and Signs Confirm and in 1 Samuel 11: Saul Rescues Jabesh Gilead and Renews Kingdom, both of which show how quickly the theme of holy war becomes entangled with ordinary politics. For the wider context of Israel's story and its longing for deliverance, see 1 Samuel 1: Hannah's Prayer and Samuel's Birth.
Frequently asked questions
Did God really command the destruction of Jericho?
The text presents the command as coming through Joshua, and Hebrews 11:30 treats the fall of the walls as an act of faith. So within the Bible's own witness, the event is attributed to God's initiative rather than to Israelite ambition. How to reconcile that with God's goodness is a question the text does not answer directly, and Christians have answered it in different ways. What the passage does not do is give anyone today permission to imitate it.
Does Joshua 6 justify religious violence today?
No. The command was given to a specific people for a specific land at a specific time. Deuteronomy 7:1-5 names the nations and the context, and the New Testament commands the church to love enemies and to overcome evil with good rather than retaliate. Anyone using Joshua to justify violence against a modern group has to explain why the New Testament they claim says the opposite, and that explanation is not available from the text.
Why does Hebrews 11 praise the fall of Jericho?
Hebrews 11 is arguing that God's people act on what he has said, and it cites Jericho as an example of that trust. The writer is not evaluating siege ethics; he is showing that faith responds to divine promise. He also names Rahab, a Canaanite woman, as a fellow example of faith, which is a striking inclusion. The New Testament thus reads the event through the lens of trust and rescue, not conquest.
