053. XXXIII. Conditions And Conquests In Canaan

§ XXXIII. CONDITIONS AND CONQUESTS IN CANAAN Judges 1, Joshua 15:63, Judges 2:23; Judges 3:2; Judges 3:5; Judges 3:14-28

1. The advance of Judah and Simeon. Then it came to pass that the Israelites inquired of Jehovah, Which of us shall first go up to fight against the Canaanites? And Jehovah said, Judah shall go; behold I will give the land into his hand. Then Judah said to Simeon his brother, Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; then I will also go with you into the territory allotted to you. So Simeon went with him.

2. Battle of Bezek. And they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek, and they fought against him and smote the Canaanites and the Perizzites. And Adoni-bezek fled, but they pursued and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adonibezek said, Seventy kings, with their thumbs and their great toes cut off, pick up crumbs under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me! And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died. But the Judahites could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; but the Jebusites dwell to this day with the Judahites at Jerusalem.

3. Wars in the south. And afterward the Judahites went to fight against the Canaanites who dwelt in the hills and in the South Country and in the lowlands.

4. Capture and fate of Hebron. And Judah went against the Canaanites who dwelt in Hebron (the earlier name of Hebron was Kiriath-arba); and they slew Sheshai, and Animan, and Talmai. And they gave Hebron to Caleb, as Moses had commanded; and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.

5. Of Debir. And from there Judah went against the inhabitants of Debir (the older name of Debir was Kiriath-sepher). And Caleb said, To the man who attacks Kiriath-sepher and takes it, I will give Achsah my daughter in marriage. And Caleb’s younger brother, Othniel the son of Kenaz, took it; and Caleb gave Achsah his daughter to him in marriage. And when she came to him he moved her to ask of her father a field; and she alighted from her ass; and when Caleb said to her, What is it? she answered, Give me a present; since you have assigned me to the South Country, give me now springs of water. So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

6. Conquests in the South Country. And the children of the Kenite, Moses’s father-in-law, went up out of the city of palm trees [Jericho] with the Judahites into the wilderness of Judah, which is south of Arad; and they went and dwelt with their people. Then Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they smote the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath and completely destroyed it. Therefore the name of the city was called Hormah [Devoted to destruction]. And Jehovah was with Judah, so that he gained possession of the hill-country; but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron.

7. Capture of Bethel by the house of Joseph. And the house of Joseph also went up against Bethel; and Jehovah was with them. And the house of Joseph went to spy out Bethel (the earlier name of the city was Luz). And the spies saw a man coming out of the city and they said to him, Show us, we pray you, the way to enter the city, and we will treat you kindly. So he showed them the way to enter the city; and they put the inhabitants of the city to the sword; but they let the man go with all his family. And the man went to the land of the Hittites, and built a city, and called its name Luz, which is its name to this day.

8. The Canaanites who retained their territory. But Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and its towns, nor of Taanach and its towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and its towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and its towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and its towns; but the Canaanites maintained their hold in that region. However when Israel became strong they put the Canaanites to taskwork, but did not completely drive them out. And Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who dwelt in Gezer; but the Canaanites remained in Gezer among them. Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron, nor the inhabitants of Nahalol; but the Canaanites remained among them and became subject to taskwork. Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco, nor the inhabitants of Sidon, nor of Ahlab, nor of Achzib, nor of Helbah, nor of Aphik nor of Rehob; but the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land; for they could not drive them out. Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, nor the inhabitants of Beth-anath; but he dwelt among the Canaanite inhabitants of the land; nevertheless the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh and of Beth-anath became subject to taskwork. And the Amorites forced the Danites into the hill-country; for they would not allow them to come down into the plain; but the Amorites maintained their hold in Mount Heres, in Aijalon, and in Shaalbim; yet when the house of Joseph grew stronger they became subject to taskwork.

9. Effect upon the Hebrew. So Jehovah left those nations, not driving them out at once; merely that the successive generations of the Israelites might become familiar with war. And the Israelites dwelt among the Canaanites, and they took their daughters as wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

10. Assassination of the king of Moab by Ehud. Then the Israelites became subject to Eglon the king of Moab. And they cried to Jehovah, and Jehovah raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man. Now the Israelites sent tribute by him to Eglon the king of Moab. And Ehud made him a two-edged dagger about a foot in length, and hung it under his clothing upon his right thigh. And he offered the tribute to Eglon king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man. And when Ehud had finished offering the tribute, he sent away the people who had carried the tribute. But he himself turned back from the sculptured stones near Gilgal, and said, I have a private message for you, O king, And the king said, Silence! And all who stood by him went out from his presence. Then Ehud went in to him, as he was sitting alone in the cool upper apartment. And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you. And as he arose from his seat, Ehud reached out his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and plunged it into his body, so that the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the dagger out of his body; and the filth came out.

11. His escape. Then Ehud went out into the porch, and shut the doors of the upper apartment upon him and locked them. Now when he had gone out, the king’s servants came; and they looked, and, behold, the doors of the upper apartment were locked; and they said, Surely he must be covering his feet in the private room in the cool apartment. So they waited till they were perplexed by his strange failure to open the doors of the upper room; therefore they took the key and opened them, and there was their lord lying prostrate on the earth, dead. But Ehud had slipped away, while they were waiting, and had passed beyond the sculptured stones, and was making good his escape to Seirah.

12. His rally of the Ephraimites and repulse of the Moables. And when he arrived, he blew a trumpet in the hill-country of Ephraim; and the Israelites went down with him from the hill-country and he at their head. For he said to them, Follow me, because Jehovah hath delivered your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand. So they followed him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites, and did not allow a man to pass over.

TERRITORIAL DIVISION OF CANAAN AFTER THE CONQUEST.

I. Real Character of the Conquest. In the different strata of the book of Joshua, the conquest of Canaan is presented from several distinct points of view. The late priestly writers regarded it as complete within less than a decade. The Northern Israelite narrative also as signs later victories to the beginning of this period. The great decisive battle, recorded in the fourth and fifth chapters of Judges (§ XXXVI), which gave the Hebrews the mastery over the Canaanites, evidently occurred many years after the crossing of the Jordan. In the light of the oldest records found in the first chapters of Judges and in the corresponding early sections of Joshua, it is clear that the conquest followed rather than preceded the settlement of Canaan. The conquest itself was gradual. By colonizing the unoccupied portions of Palestine, by intermarriage and by alliance with the native tribes, and in some cases by open attack, the Hebrews slowly became masters of the land. The process continued through fully a century. It was the pioneer stage in Israel’s history—a period of toil and almost constant conflict. Each tribe or group of tribes under local leaders won its own victories and defended its own borders. During this period the Hebrews were intent not only upon acquiring territory but also upon building houses and learning from their Canaanite neighbors the arts and institutions of agricultural life.

II. Conditions in the South. According to the earliest record, the tribes of Judah and Simeon, accompanied by clans of the Kenites, went up alone from Jericho, the City of Palms, to conquer their homes in southern Canaan. The order of their conquests was from north to south, and all the implications of the narrative support the conclusion that they entered Canaan from the east rather than from the south, as has sometimes been urged. But one decisive battle for the possession of southern Canaan is recorded. The Canaanites were led by a certain Adoni-Bezek (or Zedek) who, in the later Judean narrative, is described as the king of Jebus. It is in connection with this battle that the later Judean historian has quoted the famous stanza from the ancient song commemorating the victory:

Thou sun stand still in Gibeon, And thou, moon, in the valley of Aijalon.

Then the sun stood still, And the moon stayed Until the nation had taken vengeance on its foes. The later historian has interpreted these highly poetical words literally. In their original setting they emphasize the extent of the victory. So great was this victory that to those who contemplated it the day seemed to have been supernaturally lengthened. Upon the vanquished king was visited the same cruel fate as had overtaken the other conquered foes who fell into the hands of the Israelites. Jebus, the citadel of ancient Urusalamu (i. e. Jerusalem), remained, however, in the possession of the Canaanites until the days of David.

Still further south, the Calebites had apparently already secured a foothold upon the borders of Canaan (cf. § XXVIII), and the Judahites joined with them in vanquishing the older inhabitants. The city of Hebron lay within the territory of Caleb, while the neighboring city of Debir was held by the kindred tribe of Othniel. In time the conquest of the southern tribes extended out into the South Country. This territory was the home of the Simeonites, who largely retained their nomadic habits and never played a very important part in Israel’s history. Instead, the powerful tribe of Judah gradually assimilated such kindred Arab tribes as the Calebites, the Othnielites and the Jerahmeelites, until it gained complete possession of the uplands of southern Canaan. In this region the influence of the desert life and customs was strongest, and the traditions and beliefs of Moses and of the wilderness were retained with the greatest tenacity. The older Canaanite population appears to have been largely extirpated, so that the blood of the Judahites was not so much diluted by intermarriage with neighboring peoples as that of their kinsmen in the north. A zone of Canaanite cities, beginning with Gezer on the borders of the Philistine plain, and including Shaalbim, Jebus and Gibeon, shut off the Israelites of the North from those of the South so completely that, in the great rally of the Israelite tribes against the Canaanites in the days of Deborah, no mention is made of Judah or of Simeon.

III. Conditions in the North. The oldest records tell of but one Northern city captured by the Hebrews in the initial period of settlement. That was the famous town of Bethel, a few miles from Ai, which probably became from the first, as its name, House of God, suggests, one of the favorite sanctuaries of the Northern Israelites. Other smaller villages on the borders of the upland pastures doubtless soon fell into the possession of the Hebrew immigrants. The earliest Judean narrative, however, states very definitely that all the important towns of northern Canaan at first remained in the possession of the Canaanites. These included the important zone of cities which extended across the plain of Esdraelon, beginning with Bethshean on the east, and including Taanach, Ibleam and Megiddo, and extending to Dor on the coast of the Mediterranean. This group of Canaanite cities in turn separated the northern tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh on the south from the tribes, which were struggling for homes in the rich lands further north. The later account (found in a secondary group of Judean narratives, Joshua 11:1-15), which represents the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua as achieving a great victory over the Canaanite kings of the north, is either a popular version of the sweeping victory recorded in the fourth and fifth chapters of Judges, or else the record is of a subsequent victory over the Canaanites in the far north.

IV. The Conflict with the Moabites. Occupied, as they were, with the task of conquering the soil and of building homes, and separated from each other by strong Canaanite cities, the Israelites were ill-prepared to resist foreign invasions. Local interests and the old nomadic aversion for any central authority prevented a general union of the Hebrew tribes. The result was that they fell an easy prey to the attacks of their hostile and well organized neighbors.

It is difficult to determine the order of events recorded in the book of Judges, but it is probable that the different incidents in this warlike period have been arranged in approximately their chronological order. If so, one of the earliest attacks came from the Edomites in the south, and was repulsed by the tribe of Othniel, whose territory lay immediately to the south of Canaan.

Across the Jordan the Moabites, under the leadership of their king, Eglon, soon succeeded in levying a tribute upon the tribes immediately west of Jericho. The Israelites in time found a bloody deliverer in Ehud, the Benjamite who, gaining admission to the palace as an ambassador, assassinated the Moabite king. Under the leadership of Ehud, the Ephraimites seized the fords of the Jordan, and thus delivered themselves from the aggressions of the Moabites.

During the remainder of the so-called period of the Judges, the southern tribes appear to have been free from outside attack, except from the west. How early the Philistines began their forays up through the rocky gorges, which led from the maritime plain to central Canaan, cannot be determined. Their united and aggressive advance marks the close of the period and inaugurates the era of the united monarchy. Meantime the stories of the book of Judges focus attention on events in the north, where the great problems in Israel’s early history were gradually being worked out. There was fought the great battle which gave the Hebrews possession of Canaan, and there were laid the foundations for the future Hebrew empire.