Are you in? Or are you out?

The issue at stake does not concern morality versus immorality, purity versus impurity, or innocence versus crime. The dichotomy is between within the covenant order and outside the covenant order. We might possibly imagine Israel as being a patient undergoing surgery. The procedure carries benefits for them (covenant blessing and relationship with deity in this case), but meanwhile it also carries certain vulnerabilities. The conquest is equivalent to sterilizing the operating room. We don’t have anything in particular against ordinary hospital staff, visitors, pets, food, or even common bacteria, but when the time comes for surgery we clear them all out of the operating room, not because we are angered or offended by anything they are or do but because it is necessary for the patient that the environment be sterile. Contaminants are tô’ēbâ to the operating room; visitors may be allowed inside, but if they are, they must be as sterile as the rest of the environment.— The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, 192