When God Goes to War: Wrestling with a Violent Bible and a Peace-Making Savior

The Bible is not a safe book.

It’s not a collection of moral fables wrapped in soft light and polite wisdom. It’s not the kind of book you hand to someone with a disclaimer that says, “Everything in here will make you feel comfortable.” It’s a blood-stained library filled with murder, war, betrayal, judgment, tears, and hope. And yes—there are parts that will make your stomach knot.

Because the Bible tells the truth. Not just about God, but about us.

You don’t have to read very far before you feel it. Cain murders his brother in Genesis 4. By Genesis 6, the world is so saturated with violence that God sends a flood. Pharaoh drowns babies. David sends a man to his death to cover up his own scandal. The prophets weep over nations drunk on injustice. And from beginning to end, the Bible echoes with one long, unanswered question:

How long, O Lord?

So what do we do with all this blood? What do we do with a Bible that feels at times more like a battlefield than a sanctuary?

Let’s start with a truth we often overlook:

“The Bible shows violence—it doesn’t sanitize it.”

It doesn’t hide the brokenness of the world. It exposes it. It drags it into the light. And it insists that something be done about it. That’s why the Bible doesn’t just offer sentimentality—it offers surgery. It tells us the truth about what’s wrong, so we can finally grasp what it will take to make things right.

But things get more complicated when God Himself seems to be the one giving the orders.

We read about the conquest of Canaan. Cities leveled. Commands like “Leave alive nothing that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16). “Completely destroy them” (Joshua 6:17). “Devote them to destruction”—the Hebrew word ḥērem, which meant setting something apart for God, often through judgment. And suddenly the God who said, “Love your enemies,” sounds more like a general leading a holy war.

It’s not just skeptics who struggle here. Christians do too.

And that’s where we need to slow down, take a deep breath, and do something radical: read the Bible the way it was meant to be read.

Was It Genocide?

Let’s be clear: the conquest of Canaan wasn’t about race or land grabs. It was about judgment—delayed judgment, in fact. In Genesis 15:16, God tells Abraham that He’s holding back judgment on the Amorites “because their sin has not yet reached its full measure.” That’s four centuries of patience. Four hundred years of warnings.

The Canaanites weren’t innocent bystanders. Their society was marked by child sacrifice (Deut. 12:31), ritual prostitution, systemic oppression, and the kind of spiritual rot that infected everything it touched. God didn’t strike in haste—He waited. He sent witnesses. He made room for repentance.

And He made room for mercy.

Remember Rahab? (Joshua 2). A Canaanite prostitute, living inside the walls of Jericho. She hears what God has done—and believes. She hides the spies. And God saves her. Not only saves her—welcomes her. Not only welcomes her—places her in the lineage of Jesus.

Even at the epicenter of judgment, the heart of God was open to mercy.

“This wasn’t genocide. It was justice. And even then, God’s door was still open.”

What About the Language?

But what about the phrases like “left no survivor” or “destroyed everything that breathed”? If the Israelites really wiped out everyone… why are those same people groups back in the story just a few chapters later?

This is where understanding the ancient world matters. The Bible was written in a culture that used battle rhetoric—a dramatic style of victory language that kings and nations used to declare triumph, even when the destruction wasn’t total. “We utterly destroyed them” was the ancient version of “We crushed them!” It meant, “We won decisively,” not, “We eliminated every last person.”

“If you read one verse that says, ‘Leave no survivors,’ and skip the next where survivors clearly remain—you’re not reading in context.”

That’s not a loophole. That’s good interpretation. That’s treating the Bible with the respect of context, not just quoting verses in isolation like grenades.

What About the Pain?

But even with all that said—there’s still pain. Even if the judgment was just, and the language was rhetorical, people still died. And that’s where we hit the wall. Because behind the conquest narratives are real mothers, real children, real blood on the ground.

So what do we do with that?

We don’t minimize it. We don’t explain it away. And we don’t pretend it’s easy.

We lament.

And then—we look to the cross.

The Cross: Where Judgment Falls and Mercy Stands

Because this is where the whole story turns.

“The Judge stepped down from the bench… and stood in the place of the guilty.”

The cross isn’t just an answer to sin. It’s an answer to the violence of sin.

At the cross, Jesus became the One devoted to destruction—ḥērem—so we could be spared. He didn’t call down fire—He absorbed it. He didn’t destroy His enemies—He died for them.

“He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on Him.” (Isaiah 53:5)

This is why the gospel is so shocking.

Not because it ignores judgment.

But because God took it.

And the story doesn’t end in bloodshed—it ends in resurrection.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more…” (Revelation 21:4)

No more war.

No more conquest.

No more sorrow.

Just peace.

True peace.

For the Skeptic and the Believer

If you’ve walked away from faith because of these stories, I get it. But I hope you’ll look again. Not at isolated verses—but at the whole arc of the story. Because what looks like cruelty at first may turn out to be deeper than you imagined—more just, more merciful, and more personal.

And if you’re a believer who’s wrestled with this—good. Keep wrestling. God isn’t afraid of your questions. Don’t skip the hard parts. Keep reading until you see Jesus.

Because that’s where the light breaks through.

That’s where peace begins.