stonecypher

Vicmild, I think you've touched on the important question here.  If we accept Derek's take on Paul's hermeneutic (and I think I do), I think we must come to the conclusion that God did not really order a genocide.  Israel had some genociding to do (like we all do from time to time), and decided to justify it by making it holy.

So Paul's experience of Yahweh's fullness in Christ in some ways contradicted the Jewish experience of Yahweh.  They really did believe that slaughtering the Canaanites was God's holy work.  They also believed that the sun revolved around the earth, but just bc a biblical writer believed something doesn't make it true. 

In Israel's subsequent wrestling with Yahweh, culminating in its wrestling with God in Christ, Israel learned things it didn't know before.  And Paul knew that this new knowledge demanded a faithful reappraisal of those old texts.