With the Canaanites: "everything that breathed" includes men, women, children of any age, and animals. Why animals. Why were the Philistines not considered as terrible?
(Joshua 10:40) . . .And Joshua proceeded to strike all the land of the mountainous region and the Neg′eb and the She·phe′lah and the slopes and all their kings. He did not let a survivor remain, and everything that breathed he devoted to destruction, just as Jehovah the God of Israel had commanded.
(Deuteronomy 20:10-18) 10 “In case you draw near to a city to fight against it, you must also announce to it terms of peace. 11 And it must occur that if it gives a peaceful answer to you and it has opened up to you, it must even occur that all the people found in it should become yours for forced labor, and they must serve you. 12 But if it does not make peace with you, and it actually makes war with you and you have to besiege it, 13 Jehovah your God also will certainly give it into your hand, and you must strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. 14 Only the women and the little children and the domestic animals and everything that happens to be in the city, all its spoil you will plunder for yourself; and you must eat the spoil of your enemies, whom Jehovah your God has given to you. 15 “That is the way you will do to all the cities very far away from you that are not of the cities of these nations. 16 It is only of the cities of these peoples that Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance that you must not preserve any breathing thing alive, 17 because you should without fail devote them to destruction, the Hit′tites and the Am′or·ites, the Ca′naan·ites and the Per′iz·zites, the Hi′vites and the Jeb′u·sites, just as Jehovah your God has commanded you; 18 in order that they may not teach YOU to do according to all their detestable things, which they have done to their gods, and YOU may indeed sin against Jehovah YOUR God.
