Canaanites, Egyptians, Incest, and Idolotry by S. Kurt Neumiller When Israel is being led towards the Holy Land by Moses and into it by Joshua we hear of some rather harsh commands by the Lord to utterly destroy the current inhabitants, the Canaanites. Everything they owned was to be proscribed and all people were to be anihilated without exception. This seems a rather harsh treatment of them given Israel is an invading force. Perhaps the scriptures dealing with the character or the Canaanites would shed some light on the matter. Deut 7 (RSV) 1 When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Gir'gashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Per'izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb'usites, seven nations greater and mightier than yourselves, 2 and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not make marriages with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. 4 For they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Ashe'rim, and burn their graven images with fire. 6 For you are a people holy to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; Here we are informed that the Canaanites are idolotrous, and that the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying as that would result in the Israelites being introduced to heathen idol worship. Deut 9 3 Know therefore this day that he who goes over before you as a devouring fire is the LORD your God; he will destroy them and subdue them before you; so you shall drive them out, and make them perish quickly, as the LORD has promised you. 4 Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, 'It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land'; whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you. 5 Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land; but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. We are informed that Israel got to inherit the land, not because of their righteousness, but because of the wickedness of the current inhabitants. We also are informed that the Lord will do most of the destroying as Israel advances. Deut 18 9"When you come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, 11 or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12 For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD; and because of these abominable practices the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. 14 For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, give heed to soothsayers and to diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you so to do. The Canaanites are characterized as human-sacrificers, sorcerers (i.e. people who employ hallucinogenic substances to induce `visions'), and necromancers. Deut 20 15Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17 but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per'izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb'usites, as the LORD your God has commanded; 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the LORD your God. The Canaanites, as well as other neighboring gentiles, are classified as idolatrous to the point that they are beyond redemption and would sooner convert Israel to their practices than repent and worship the Lord. They must be expunged so that Israel not be poluted. Lev 18 1 And the LORD said to Moses, 2 Say to the people of Israel, I am the LORD your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. 4 You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the LORD your God. 5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my ordinances, by doing which a man shall live: I am the LORD. 6 None of you shall approach any one near of kin to him to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD. [...] 18 And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is yet alive. 19 You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. 20 And you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor's wife, and defile yourself with her. 21 You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. 22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. 23 And you shall not lie with any beast and defile yourself with it, neither shall any woman give herself to a beast to lie with it: it is perversion. 24 Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am casting out before you defiled themselves; 25 and the land became defiled, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you shall keep my statutes and my ordinances and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you 27 (for all of these abominations the men of the land did, who were before you, so that the land became defiled); 28 lest the land vomit you out, when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you. 29 For whoever shall do any of these abominations, the persons that do them shall be cut off from among their people. 30 So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs which were practiced before you, and never to defile yourselves by them: I am the LORD your God. Egyptians and Canaanites are stated to engage in a littany of sexually immoral practices including incest (which receives lengthy treatement from v. 6-17, we may assume it was a particularly egregious problem from its emphatic treatment), adultery, homosexuality and bestiality. Curiously, human sacrificing keeps being associated with sexual immorality. I would assume that the rites associated with Molech were lascivious and involved human sacrifice. Lev 20 22 You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them; that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they did all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. A similar list of iniquities as contained in Lev 18 preceds the Lev 20:22-23 quote above and then again explicitly identifies them as the behavior of the Canaanites. Ps 78 51 He smote all the first-born in Egypt, the first issue of their strength in the tents of Ham. Ps 105 23 Then Israel came to Egypt; Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham. 24 And the LORD made his people very fruitful, and made them stronger than their foes. 25 He turned their hearts to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants. 26 He sent Moses his servant, and Aaron whom he had chosen. 27 They wrought his signs among them, and miracles in the land of Ham. Ps 106 21 They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, 22 wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. These three quotes from Psalms establish the Egypt and Canaanites connection as being a lineage based one as well as the cultural one implied in the Torah based references. 1 Ne 17 35 Behold, the Lord esteemeth all flesh in one; he that is righteous is favored of God. But behold, this people had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them; and the Lord did curse the land against them, and bless it unto our fathers; yea, he did curse it against them unto their destruction, and he did bless it unto our fathers unto their obtaining power over it. Nephi informs us that previous to the Lord's command to wipe out the Canaanites, they had rejected to teh word of God. We are not told how that word was delivered, but it is safe to assume it was by a prophet preaching repentance. Abr 1 21 Now this king of Egypt was a descendant from the loins of Ham, and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth. 22 From this descent sprang all the Egyptians, and thus the blood of the Canaanites was preserved in the land. 23 The land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham, and the daughter of Egyptus, which in the Chaldean signifies Egypt, which signifies that which is forbidden; 24 When this woman discovered the land it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it; and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land. 25 Now the first government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham, and it was after the manner of the government of Ham, which was patriarchal. This passage more fully establishes the Canaan-Egypt connection and implies that Ham was incestuous, a sin his children through were later attacked for as well. A number of other Genesis stories comment on the moral character of the Ham and his descendants as well: Ham's depravity (9:22) Pharoah's kidnap of Sarai (12:10-20) Abimilech's dealings with Sarai (20) and Rebekah in Canaan (26:7-11) Sodomites (19:5-8) Dinah in Shechem (38) Potiphar's wife attempt at adulterous seduction (39) In conclusion, we see that the Canaanites and Egyptians were of the same lineage and engaged in the same practices. Those practices were incest (which appears to be a particularly emphasized problem), adultery, homosexuality, beastiality, human sacrifice, necromancy and general idol worship. As a result of these sins and of rejecting the Lord's word, they were condemned to die because of their gross and unrepentant condition. This gives us some interesting background on just what it was that resulted in the gentiles being of such a condition that they were classified as being hopeless and therefore assigned to destruction. In D&C 45:25-31 it tells us that when the gentiles are in the fullness of their iniquity they will be smitten. But, what exactly is the "fulness"? I would say that the same behavior the Canaanites engaged in that made them ripe for destruction will make the latter-day gentile nations ripe for destruction at the hands of Israel as well.