What reason is offered in the book of Joshua for the command to practice what we might call “genocide”?37 The book contains a large number of references to Moses, almost as many, in fact, as we find in the whole of the rest of the Old Testament outside the Pentateuch. Joshua is meant to execute what God has promised and commanded through and to Moses. In the first chapter of Joshua, we hit a note sustained throughout the book: Joshua commands not just as Moses commanded, but he also