When Torah Challenges Our Moral Intuitions

A student recently wrote to me about something she had learned in class. She was studying Yehoshua’s conquest of Eretz Yisrael and was troubled by the Torah’s command to destroy the Canaanite nations, including women and children. When she raised her concern, she was told that whatever God commands must be moral.

But that answer left her with a deeper question.

Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral?

If something is moral simply because God commands it, could a divine command make anything moral? And if other religions also claim that God has commanded their actions, how can we distinguish a genuine divine command from someone using God’s name to justify immoral behavior?

I appreciated the honesty of her question. She was not looking for a reason to reject Torah. She wanted to understand how she could remain committed to Torah while taking her moral concerns seriously.

Her question raises one of the oldest problems in religious philosophy. But for a believing Jew, it is also a personal question: What does it mean to say that God is good when a mitzvah is difficult for us to understand?

Is Something Good Because God Commands It?

Philosophers have long debated the Euthyphro dilemma: Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is already good?

If something is good simply because God commands it, morality can seem arbitrary. In theory, anything could become good if God commanded it. But if God commands something because it is already good, it can seem as though goodness exists independently of God and that even God must answer to an outside standard.

One proposed answer is that goodness is inseparable from God’s nature. God does not choose between good and evil arbitrarily. Goodness is neither an external standard imposed on God nor something God can redefine at will. Rather, goodness is inseparable from who God is.

This offers a way to understand how God can be the source of goodness without making morality arbitrary. But even if we accept this answer, a practical question remains: How should we respond when a command attributed to God seems morally troubling?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks addresses the relationship between faith and moral responsibility in To Heal a Fractured World. He describes religious life as a partnership with God in the work of creating a more just and compassionate world. Faith does not relieve us of responsibility for how we treat others; it calls us to exercise that responsibility.

The Torah itself offers a striking example. When God tells Avraham about the impending destruction of Sedom, Avraham asks, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” (Bereishit 18:25).

Avraham does not respond that whatever God does must be just, so there is nothing to discuss. He appeals to justice itself, and the Torah preserves his challenge as an important part of his relationship with God.

This does not mean that our judgment always takes priority over a divine command, nor does Avraham’s question solve every moral difficulty in the Torah. But it shows that questioning and religious commitment need not be opposites.

Professor Avi Sagi develops this issue in Morality and Religion: The Jewish Story. He argues that a central strand of Jewish tradition does not resolve conflicts between religious obligation and morality simply by appealing to divine authority. Rather, religious obligations must be interpreted in a way that takes moral reasoning seriously. In his account, God and human beings inhabit a shared moral world in which moral considerations remain relevant even when religious obligations are at stake.

Professor Sagi’s is a particular interpretation of Jewish tradition, not a position accepted by every Jewish thinker. Nevertheless, his argument raises an important possibility: moral reasoning need not be the enemy of religious commitment. It can be part of how we engage with Torah.

The philosophical question about the source of goodness and the practical question about interpreting difficult commands are related, but they are not identical. Even if we believe that God is the source of goodness, we still need to ask how we should understand a particular command that troubles us.

When We Still Do Not Understand

Our moral concerns deserve serious attention, but our own sense of right and wrong is not infallible. Our views are shaped by our upbringing, experiences, and society. Something that seems obviously wrong to us may require us to reconsider our assumptions.

At the same time, we should not assume that every troubling question will disappear once we have studied enough. Sometimes studying Torah helps us understand a mitzvah in a new way. Sometimes we discover that we misunderstood a passage or overlooked an important detail. And sometimes we learn a great deal without finding an answer that fully satisfies us.

We need to distinguish between trusting God and claiming to understand everything God does. We can have faith in God without pretending that we have solved every moral question.

But faith should not become an excuse to stop asking questions. Simply repeating that God is good does not explain why a particular command is good. We must make a serious effort to understand the Torah and the ways our Sages and commentators have interpreted it.

There is also a danger in the opposite direction. If we accept the Torah only when it agrees with our existing beliefs, we make ourselves the final authority on what the Torah is allowed to teach us.

The challenge is to remain open to what Torah can teach us without pretending that we have resolved every difficulty.

Returning to the Conquest of Canaan

Let us return to the student’s question: Why does the Torah command the destruction of the Canaanite nations, including women and children?

The Torah explains that Canaanite religious practices could lead Israel away from God (Devarim 7:1–5; 20:18). The conquest is thus presented as protecting the religious future of the Jewish people, not simply as acquiring land.

One might suggest that this concern extended to children because, as they grew up, they too could influence future generations to adopt Canaanite religious practices. But this raises a difficult moral question: Does the possibility of future influence justify killing children who have not personally committed wrongdoing?

Halacha provides important context. In Hilchot Melachim 6:1, Rambam establishes that an offer of peace must precede warfare, subject to the conditions he describes. In 6:4, he addresses the seven Canaanite nations, including the conditions under which peace may be accepted and the consequences of refusing it. In 6:5, he describes Yehoshua sending messages to the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael offering them the options of fleeing, making peace, or fighting.

These laws demonstrate that Rambam’s account of the conquest includes opportunities to avoid war and distinguishes among different responses to it. The halachic framework is therefore more complex than a simple picture of indiscriminate killing. Nevertheless, these provisions do not fully explain why the command was formulated as it was or resolve the question of what it meant for women and children.

We must distinguish between what the Torah commands, how halachic authorities understand and apply that command, and whether the explanations offered fully resolve its moral difficulty. Even if the command is understood as protecting the religious future of Bnei Yisrael, does that adequately justify its application to children who have not personally committed wrongdoing? We should not claim that a source answers this question unless it actually does.

The question also raises a broader concern: other religions make claims about what God commands, too. Appealing to divine authority is not, by itself, enough to establish that a claim is genuine or correctly understood. As Jews, we examine claims about Torah in light of the Torah as a whole, including its teachings about human dignity, justice, and care for the vulnerable. These principles provide an essential framework for interpretation, even if they do not resolve every difficulty.

We may not always find an answer that satisfies us. Our responsibility is to study carefully, distinguish what we know from what we infer, and remain honest about what is unresolved.

Let Torah Teach Us How to See

What should we do when a mitzvah troubles us?

First, identify exactly what is troubling us. What does the text say, and which part seems morally difficult?

Second, study the relevant pesukim, halachic sources, and commentaries. Distinguish carefully between what a source actually says and what we infer from it.

Third, ask whether the explanations we find genuinely answer our question or merely provide important background. An explanation can deepen our understanding without resolving every moral concern.

Finally, if the difficulty remains, acknowledge it honestly. We should neither invent an answer nor assume that we have exhausted the tradition.

This approach does not guarantee that every question will be resolved. It gives us a way to take both Torah and our moral responsibilities seriously.

We must be willing to let Torah challenge our assumptions while examining whether our explanations genuinely address the questions we raise. Neither our first reaction nor a simple appeal to divine authority should end the discussion.

Perhaps the goal is not to choose between moral seriousness and religious commitment, but to let each deepen the other. We bring our questions to Torah, and we allow Torah to challenge the way we think.

Torah is not merely something we evaluate. It is also a tradition through which we learn to evaluate ourselves.