THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN.
After the forty years of the Wandering came the seven years of the Conquest. Yet it is true, that in the complete sense the conquest began before the Israelites crossed the Jordan under Joshua, and was not finished until long after the period of the Judges. As Dean Stanley says: "The conquest began from the passage of the brook Zered, under Moses; it was not finally closed till the capture of Jerusalem by David. But in a more limited sense it may be confined to the period during which the territory, afterward known by the name of Palestine, was definitively occupied as their own by the Israelites." The map on [page 36] shows us the territorial divisions of the land before the conquest; the one which we are now studying presents the campaigns by which it was won. These may be divided into three sections. 1. The conquest of the territory on the east of the Jordan, in three campaigns, during the rule of Moses. 2. The conquest of that on the west of the Jordan, under the leadership of Joshua, in three campaigns. 3. A series of supplementary conquests completing the work of subjugation.
SHECHEM.