I’ve given a possible (and highly plausible I think) reason for why God wanted the Israelites to do the “dirty work” – as you say – in comment 3 above.

Your right in that if God did not order the extinction of the Caananites it would not mean the death of God but the death of biblical innerancy. But if your sole reasons for rejecting Biblical innerancy is the seeming contradiction between the Old Testament conception of God as one who judges and the New Testament conception of God as one who loves, your reason is injustified.

Realise that if there is an inconsistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament conception of God’s nature, it works both ways; forward from the old to the new, and backward from the new to the old. For example, the same God of judgement in the Old Testament is the God of Love in the New, and the same God of love found in the New Testament is also the God of judgement in the old. Therefore, I locate your problem not in the innerancy of scripture regarding God’s commands, nor in the apparent inconsistency of God’s nature between the Old and the New Testament, but in your perception of God himself. He does not belong in your box. Why put him there?

There’s a lot of tribalistic Zionism in the Bible, which is natural, because it is the story and history of the Hebrew people. I’m no longer convinced God actually said and did all that the Bible claims He did. It seems pretty incongruous with the God of love found in the New Testament, unless of course God has mellowed over time!! Yet the Bible says God doesn’t change.

Besides if God really wanted these evil Canaanites taken out He needs only to slightly raise his little finger (metaphorically speaking), and they’re all toast. Why would He need the Israelites to do the dirty work?

Begging the question, as you probably know, is a specific and well-defined logical fallacy. You have not shown any circularity in the argument above, or the statement “God’s nature is good.”

Neither have you shown the circularity of the statement “His ways are above our own ways.” I agree that one must first present a case for something, which is why you should show exactly what is an affront to reason and provide the reasons why.

You ask, “why didn’t Yahweh have another means to take care of the Amalekites?”

It is possible God wanted to impress upon Israel, in a graphic and memorable way, the importance of remaining a nation set apart for his purposes – one of which was to bring forth a saviour so that he would be able to reconcile every nation and every individual to himself. This one great good plausibly outweighs every so-called atrocity perpetrated in the conquest of Canaan. If you are not impressed with this response that’s fine, because if there was no satisfactory answer available at the present moment, it still would not follow that God is not a moral being.