God promises humans deliver retribution

Israel’s destruction of the nations who inhabit Canaan matches the pattern of the flood narrative as a consequence for filling the land with violence, but I’ve wondered why, this time, it was Israel who delivered the consequence. I mean, Noah was a passive observer when God let creation collapse upon his generation.

It didn’t bother me too much that the LORD uses people to deliver retribution since the LORD uses Babylon later to do the same thing to Israel, but recently I realized that’s what the LORD had promised to do. He promised after the Flood narrative that humans would be the ones to require retribution for human bloodshed:

Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.

I’m not sure that I follow the reasoning, but this response after the Flood is definitely connected with Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.