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.
I. THE CONQUEST OF EASTERN PALESTINE.
This region was occupied, at the time of the arrival of the Israelites, by the Moabites between the brooks Zered and Arnon, and by the Amorites north of the Arnon. The latter people were divided into two kingdoms. The land of Gilead was ruled by King Sihon, whose capital was at Heshbon; and the table-land of Bashan by Og, a remnant of the old race of the Rephaim. Tributary to Sihon, and on the border of the Arabian desert, were the Midianites (Josh. 13:21); and near the Moabites were their nomadic kinsmen, the Ammonites.
1. The Conquest of Gilead. (Num. 21:21-31.) The Amorites, under Sihon, had wrested from the Moabites the land between the Arnon and the Jabbok, a short time before the coming of Israel. Moses sent messengers, requesting the privilege of journeying through their land; but they refused to permit the passage of such a vast host, and came out to meet the Israelites in battle at Jahaz, near their border, at the brook Arnon. They were defeated, and their whole land was conquered, including their own territory north of the Jabbok, as well as their Moabite possessions south of it. Thus the Israelites obtained, as their first foothold, the rich region of the eastern table-land, from the Arnon to the Hieromax.