Hi friends,
I’ve often heard the criticism that the invasion of Canaan was just a typical land grab by one of many late Bronze Age tribal groups. So, of course they say “God made us do it” to justify what they already wanted to do: slaughter their enemies and take their stuff.
But before we even engage with this criticism, I realized there’s an even deeper skepticism: did it ever happen, or is it an invented pre-history?
As I’ve been looking into this, I found Kenneth Kitchens’ review of the timeline to be interesting. In part, he asks:
WHY, then, does Merenptah (in his Year 5, 1209/1208) report a people Israel, a foreign tribal grouping by the very accurate determinative signs (in a very accurately written text) who are west of Ascalon and Gezer, and south of Yenoam, and hence in the central Canaanite hill country, if no such named people existed? How curious that we have, in Canaan for 200 years directly following this episode, a clear and massive rise in population that installed themselves in a rash of fresh, new villages the length of the land (On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 685-686).
For this and many other reasons, I think we can have confidence that there was a significant influx of ‘Israelites’ at the time of the traditional dating.
Second, what kind of entry into the land was it?
Kitchens notes, based on an exceedingly close reading of Joshua and Judges,
As we have seen, the book of Joshua does not depict a sweeping conquest and occupation all in five years or less; see our chapter 5 above. This is the standard traditional fiction continually left unchallenged, deriving from an approach that fails to read aright biblical texts that follow Near Eastern literary canons, not modern ones. Joshua was strictly a raider, knocking off kings and damaging places (no doubt) en route, NOT OCCUPYING THE TERRAIN RAIDED, but always returning to Gilgal. Hazor might be destroyed — but it was not instantly resettled by Israelites (in fact, not by them till David’s time). Thus the usual (and false) contrast between the wrong understanding of Joshua and what is narrated in Judg. 1 is trotted out uncritically all over again (ibid, 716-717).
Reading this gave me a very different perspective. It’s a significant adjustment to my understanding of these texts.
But reflecting on it, it is curious to imagine people totally defeating and removing former inhabitants, taking possession of all the homes and land, and starting to rebuild everything destroyed in such a short span of time! It’s more of an imaginative fiction, often based on thinking that texts written as hyperbolic are meant to be taken literally, that misleads us into thinking that every single Canaanite was killed.
Third, in my Bible reading today, I came across Deuteronomy 9:1-6.
It’s a remarkable text. It reads, in part:
You are not going to take possession of their land because of your righteousness or your integrity. Instead, the LORD your God will drive out these nations before you because of their wickedness, in order to fulfill the promise he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.
As Christopher Wright explains,
At a primary theological level, these verses reinforce the point made already in many ways that Israel owed all they were and all they possessed to the grace and gift of God, and not in any way to their own merit. They could stake no claim on divine favors in advance, nor could they retrospectively explain any success and prosperity that came their way as the due reward for their righteousness.
Wright goes on to argue a few further points. I’d summarize them like this:
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God, the ultimate judge, is rightly punishing the Canaanites for their wickedness by the means of enabling his people to defeat them and enter their territory.
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God, the righteous judge, eventually punishes the Israelites in the same way for their wickedness. He later uses the wicked nations of Assyria and Babylon to bring his judgment on wayward Israel.
Wright wraps it up, “And so is the idolatrous tendency to claim for one’s own cause the name and support of the God otherwise excluded from all consideration.”
Instead of seeing their victories as an indication that they were better than the Canaanites, God goes out of his way to remind his people that they were also stiff-necked, and would be held accountable to the exact same moral standards as any other nation.
I recognize this is just a brief introduction to a massively complicated topic. But to bring it together,
- The historical record, from a variety of archaeological and independent sources, confirms an Israelite entry into the land.
- The entry was not a total, quick replacement of the population from Canaanite to Israelite but a gradual development that unfolded over generations, reaching its high point in Solomon’s kingship, and then starting to decline again (with brief periods of resurgence) before the exiles.
- At no point does God give the Israelites license to think they were better than their enemies, or to think that God is “on their side.” Rather, the Israelites are to humbly consider their own rebellion against God, the consequences of wickedness, the generosity of God’s grace to them, and to be motivated to live obediently in their relationship with God.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, too!