V.1-4 This will sound hard to believe, that the loving, tender God who we know, could be the same Person as we read of here, leading people into war! Maybe 1 Cor. 15:46 and 10:11 will help us. The Lord is teaching us lessons in our new spiritual life from the physical lessons of the Old Testament. Israel’s enemies were the nations living around them, about 14 of them — our enemies are those around us who Satan uses to attract us to go back into the world from which the Lord has taken us. (Read Eph. 6:11-12). Do you get the idea? It wasn’t how well they could fight, or how good their weapons were, but to realize that God was their Leader and their strength. We need to realize this too.
V.5-9 Notice how carefully God makes arrangements for all these cases. Those who were afraid were not worthy to go out to battle.
V.10-11 God did not delight in battles. But He was going to give them the whole land.
V.13-15 How to treat the nations farther away from Israel.
V.16-20 How to treat those in the land they were going to possess.