1. Its primary position—prior occupancy—seems not fully made out.
2. It makes too little account of God’s original and perfect title to all the earth, and his consequent right to give his people any portion of it at his pleasure.
3. It fails to give due prominence to the moral grounds assigned by God himself for the extirpation of the Canaanites, viz. their extreme debasement in character; their abominable wickedness; their horrible violations of the common humanities of social life.
As to prior occupation, Michaelis says the original home of the Canaanites was Arabia; that Herodotus testifies that at first they dwelt near the Red Sea; Justin, that they had another country before they came to Palestine; and Abulfeda that they dwelt in Arabia. But in proof that they were in Palestine before Abraham was, Moses affirms (Gen. 12: 6) that when Abram first passed through, “the Canaanite was then in the land;” also that when Abram and Lot, being rich in cattle and “the land unable to bear them,” “the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the land” (Gen. 13: 7); and further still in his earliest account of the location of primitive families after the flood, he says—“The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza as thou goest to Sodom and Gomorrah,” etc. (Gen. 10: 19). This is the oldest known historic testimony, and unquestionably locates the Canaanites in the original land of Canaan.——Moreover, it is said that Abraham went with his flocks and herds wherever he would as if lord of the country. It may be replied—So apparently did the Canaanites also. If Abraham dug wells, so did they; if he buried his dead there, so did they—with this incidental fact in their favor; viz. that Abraham bought ground of them and paid money for his cemetery at Macpelah. This special argument from prior possession can scarcely be sustained.
But it may be maintained that Abram was there very early; and what is more, God’s first call to him to leave his native country named Canaan as his promised land; and every successive promise reaffirmed this gift. Abraham’s title to Canaan therefore rests on God’s right to give a perfect title. If the Lord of heaven and earth, the Great Creator of all lands in all the ends of the earth had not a right to give Canaan to Abraham and his posterity, then he is not God. Unquestionably he assumed this right and in the exercise of it pledged Canaan to the posterity of Abraham with perpetual reiteration and most solemn covenant. This fact is the more significant because it is the first step in a series of acts all of which aimed to reveal himself before the world of mankind as the true God and the Lord of the whole earth. With these ends in view he chose this people and made them his own; manifested himself among them and before all the world as their covenant-keeping God; gave them Canaan, and by manifold miracles helped them to gain possession of it. Nor is this argument weakened by the fact that by means of a special series of providences he led them down into Egypt to dwell there 430 years; suffering the Canaanites meanwhile to hold Canaan, not driving them out earlier because “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full” (Gen. 15: 16). Here is suggested the real ground on which the edict for extirpating the Canaanites was made to rest. God suffered them to remain there until they had forfeited their title not to Canaan alone, but to life itself and to any further national existence.
This point is too vital to be passed without careful attention. In Lev. 18 we meet with a series of crimes against moral purity—violations of the seventh commandment—culminating in sodomy and bestiality; and classed with these is the burning of children in the worship of Moloch (v. 21). Then God says—“Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you, and the land is defiled; therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.”——The same sentiments are repeated (vs. 26–30). Unnatural lusts had sunk both men and women not only down to a level with beasts, but evenbelow them. Idolatry had so far quenched the sweet humanities from the parental heart that fathers and mothers could burn their own sons and daughters to Moloch. These horrible, unnatural crimes were not only an outrage against the heart of God the Great Father; but, as he forcibly puts it, they defiled the very land itself. The earth was nauseated with these abominations and spued out such inhabitants. God’s fair and much abused world could bear them no longer. Nature herself lifted her voice of protest against such wickedness; or, as the strong figure suggests, her stomach sickened even to nausea over such unnatural lusts and such a torturing death of innocent sons and daughters. What could a holy and righteous God do with such a people but wipe them out of existence and wash the land they had defiled clean of such pollutions?——Lev. 20 reiterates substantially the same list of abominations against which God warns his people;—“Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my judgments and do them, that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. And ye shall not walk in the manner of the nations which I cast out before you; for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them” (vs. 22, 23).——Perfectly definite and explicit is the repetition of the same point in Deut. 12: 30, 31. When the Lord shall have cut off the Canaanites before thee, be not snared into their ways; inquire not after their gods and ways of worship:—“Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God, for every abomination to the Lord which he hateth have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods.” No fact could be more telling; none more damning. A people so given up to devil-worship as to burn their own offspring at his supposed behest, must be too debased and corrupt to live! The earth itself cries out against them, demanding their utter extirpation!
A more full description of the varieties and forms of the devil-worship and fellowship common among the Canaanites may be seen in Deut. 18: 9–14, to which it must suffice to refer the reader.
I am well aware that some Jewish doctors, wishing to vindicate their fathers from crimes so unnatural have sought to prove that “causing children to pass throughthe fire” was a rite of purification and not actual murder. The attempt is futile:——(1.) Because some of the expressions are perfectly unequivocal; e. g.—“Even their sons have they burnt in the fire to their Gods” (Deut. 12: 31). See also the cases in 2 Kings 17: 31, and 2 Chron. 28: 3, and Jer. 7: 31, and 19: 5.——(2.) The phrase—“To make to pass through the fire unto their gods” is used in the same sense as the phrase—“to burn in the fire.”——(3.) That the Phenicians and Carthagenians, closely related to the ancient Canaanites, did offer human sacrifices is a well established fact of history. (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary; “Moloch.”)