We must believe that the extent of God’s judgment on Canaan was both deserved and necessary.
Reading Joshua 12, we come to the pivot point of the book. Behind us are the stories of defeating the inhabitants; ahead, we see the disbursing of the inheritance. The first half of the book focuses on God’s power and provision; the second half will emphasize His promises and plan. We need to underline again the rightness of this mission. First, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps 24:1). To paraphrase, This whole world, and everything in it, is the Lord’s to do with as He chooses. Second, human life is His—to give or take. I hope we believe that. Third, God was on a massive rescue mission to save a morally crumbling world. The devil started it, but God is going to finish it. Fourth, the Canaanites, who originally knew the truth since Canaan was Noah’s grandson, had set themselves on their own mission, motivated by hell, to dethrone God. Thus we read: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them…so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God…they…exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (see Rom 1:18-25ff). God must remove the last vestiges of this cancer, or it would doom the world. Chapter 12 shows the extent of this malignancy’s spread city by city, 31 kings in all, and the radical surgery performed until it was removed. This was the only hope: that God’s people, in a cleansed environment, directed by His laws, could prepare the way for a coming Savior.