Deuteronomy 20:16

"But of the cities of these peoples, that Jehovah thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth; 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; 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."

This is the TOTAL BAN in its severest form which God here pronounced against the Canaanite nations listed in Deuteronomy 20:17. We have already noted that this total ban is found only here in the O.T. The critical scholars have never assigned it to J, or P, or E, or to D, or to any other of their alleged sources of the Pentatech. How, then, did it happen to be in Deuteronomy? As pointed out above, it has to be considered CERTAIN that Moses is the author of this. McGarvey writing on this subject pointed out that, "The Jews never obeyed this commandment, and yet all of those Canaanite nations perished from the earth as God intended, and long before the days of the Monarchy, they had all vanished from the face of the earth."[19] Now what could possibly have motivated some later writer to invent a Divine commandment in order to expose the sins of his ancestors who never obeyed it? As McGarvey said, "No critic ever affirmed such a thing."[20] The inescapable conclusion is that Moses is our author of Deuteronomy.

Concerning the total ban executed upon the Canaanites, Oberst raised these questions: "Is there not some admission of weakness in the need to utterly destroy those nations, in order to prevent their teaching Israel to sin? Why not teach the other nations rather than learning from their teaching?"[21] In reply, it must be said, "Indeed there is evidence of a terrible weakness here." Israel simply was not strong enough to teach abstract truth about God against the opposition of a rearing tornado of paganism, reveling in the lusts of the flesh, and carrying the stamp of approval from the practical totality of the human race at that time. Further, Israel at that time had no gospel, such as we have. The great Charter of Salvation had not yet been written, the Christ would not appear for ages to come, and, in the meanwhile, only the grace and perseverance of God Himself could ever have prevailed to find a way for human deliverance. Blessed be that Holy Name.