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I understand ... and under the new covenant this is wrong ... I will only present what the Bible says and will not try to sanitize it in any way, nor do I make excuses or apologies for it. One thing is clear from ancient history is that the surrounding nations were far more bestial in their conduct than what God required of Israel for a specific time and in specific circumstances. God asked His people to separate from the heathen ways. The heathen nations were given opportunity to repent, opportunity to leave Canaan, and opportunity for peace, and they chose to fight and die. Israel only had the right to take life in this way at God's specific order. In the end God used these events to bring about change to the whole world. It is easy to make sweeping judgments about primitive times, but if you lived in those times and in those conditions you would view things much differently.

Times have changed --through the influence of the teachings of Christ barbarism has diminished. Through the influence of the teachings of Christ the medieval "Christian" justification of religious persecution was ended. Through the influence of the teachings of Christ full liberty of conscience, a concept previously unheard of, was introduced to some of the American colonies such as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, and then accepted by our nation and then by large portions of the world. Where before their might be a degree of toleration for religious dissent, the American experience, through the influence of the teachings and example of Christ corrected a lot of religious wrongs. You can read the writings of Roger Williams to understand the arguments being made for religious freedom on the basis of the NT teachings. If we lose our sense that liberties are a God given right, then they will become government privileges. We can be sure that a government who sees no need to answer to God for anything, will one decide that we no longer need all our rights and we certainly do not need the right to dissent.

The question really is whether God has a right to judge and take human life. He does--sometimes by deliberate act and sometimes by allowing nature to take it's course. The teachings of Christ demonstrated how we are to live as humans with one another under a new covenant of grace. His teachings separate between what God alone has a right to do, what He authorized for a time and purpose in the past, and what is proper conduct for humanity under current covenant of grace.

Again I point out that condemnation of God for His conduct in the OT assumes a few things:
1. That God does not have a right to take human life--He only has a right to create life
2. That we can judge God's dealings in the past, in a completely different time, by our standards of what we believe to be right in the present
3. That we can overlook the fact that God used these events to help change the whole world for the better
4. That we overlook the fact that the other heathen nations of the time were acting largely in their self-interest while God was working with Israel to ultimately benefit the whole world
5. That we recognize the logical inconsistency of saying all religions are equally valid and then ostracize the conduct of God in the OT
6. That we recognize that condemnation of the conduct of God in the OT is really a strike at Judaism, and not a strike against Christianity, because Judaism still considers the OT their only scriptures.
7. That God is still the same moral being in both the Old and New Testaments but that His laws regarding man's conduct have changed--a change that was prophesied and anticipated in the OT.
8. That any moral judgment being made requires an absolute moral standard by which to make the judgment. If we deny the existence of God or any moral absolutes, on the basis of what standard do we judge something to be immoral in any time or place?