Here is the list of the sins of the Canaanites: (1) They were having sex with their close family members. Genesis 6:9. Just as Jesus fights for the people of God and does battle with the demonic forces (Matt. Why Does God Compare Our Relationship with Him to That of a Bride and Groom? That was the very first thought that came to me. This meant that according to the covenant they had agreed to, they were deserving of death. Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice, p. 75. [1] Yahweh was not interested just in punishing sin but in maintaining the righteous purity of His people. In Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (Vol. It was directly proportional to the 40 days that the spies had spied out the land. 17:7-23; 24:20-25:30). Anyone who has ever studied the mythology or religions of ancient people knows that their gods were not moral beings, according to anyones standard in the modern world. He used another nation to do it just as He had used Israel to judge the Canaanites (2 Kgs. Molech: A God of Human Sacrifice in the Old Testament, p. 62. The Official Catholic Scripture Study International Bible, Largeprint, Bonded Leather, Black - Imperfectly Imprinted Bibles, RSV Didache Bible with Commentaries Based on the RC Cathechism, Ignatius Catholic Bible (RSV): Compact Edition - Imitation leather, Burgundy with Zipper. When a community sins, there are consequences for every member of the population, even children. Eventually, their idealistic lifestyle and unimaginable practices like child sacrifice caused them to meet their doom, though God remained patient with them for centuries. There are certainly exceptions, but they are the exceptions. They were to enter the land of Canaan, wipe out those ten nations, deal with sin in a just way within their own borders, establish a godly nation under Yahweh, and receive His blessings and protection. And yet, the Israelites encountered the descendants of the Nephilim, among the Canaanites, when they entered the promised land much later on. The Canaanites, by contrast, were destroyed at the direction of God and primarily because of their sin. The Canaanites were descendants of Noah. Molech was portrayed as a man with the head of a bull standing upright with his arms outstretched. Yahweh did not punish Israel (the northern kingdom) until 722 BC with the Assyrians (2 Kgs. 7:4, 7-11; 9:4-6; 29:16-29). Article Images Copyright 2023 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. They had crossed the Red Sea and were in the wilderness. Cursed be Canaan! (1988). Some believe the Nephilim were directly responsible for the earth being so corrupt that God ultimately sent the Flood, destroying all life, except for Noah with his wife, his three sons and their wives, and the animals on the ark. Genesis 15:18-21: "On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.", Genesis 9:25-27: "He said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. They wanted land. End quote. 18:7-8). When God did give the land over to Israel, he told Israel not to think it was because of their own righteousness. 0000002540 00000 n Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice and Sacrificial Monuments in their Mediterranean Context. Is this more like the story of the rescue from raiders or bombing a people group who were minding their own business? First, the movement of the Israelites into Canaan was the fruition of God's promise to Abram that He would give that land to his children (Gen. 12:7). 5). The Canaanites next appear in the table of nations. God uses people as they are. . According to Genesis 9:20-27, Noah became drunk and afterward cursed Canaan.This is the Curse of Canaan, called the "Curse of Ham" since Classical antiquity because of the interpretation that Canaan was punished for his father Ham's sins. This was so prevalent in the Canaanite culture that Lots daughters, after growing up in and being influenced by Sodom, both slept with their father and thought nothing of it (Gen. 19:308). Also, this language of killing everyone may have been hyperbolic and reserved for the main political and military cities in which, by nature, all the women and children there would be more corrupt simply because of where they lived. The Canaanites Were Not Salvageable --- They Had Sunk To The Very Bottom Of The Immorality Scale: Start quote. His very nature demands that He punish and deal with sin. . There isnt an easy answer to these questions but as we explore more about the Canaanites, perhaps we can come to a bit more clear of an answer. The Twelve Spies, as recorded in the Book of Numbers, were a group of Israelite chieftains, one from each of the Twelve Tribes, who were dispatched by Moses to scout out the Land of Canaan for 40 days as a future home for the Israelite people, during the time when the Israelites were in the wilderness following their Exodus from Ancient Egypt.The account is found in Numbers 13:1-33, and is . Jones, Clay. The Canaanite religion was the group of ancient Semitic religions practiced by the Canaanites living in the ancient Levant from at least the early Bronze Age through the first centuries AD. Israel had sinned, violated Yahwehs covenant, taken some of the devoted things, stolen, lied, and put things among their own possessions. In Genesis 10:15-19 we read of 11 groups in the area of Syria and Palestine that descended from Canaan. The Canaanites were a Semitic-speaking cultural group that lived in Canaan (comprising Lebanon, southern Syria, Israel and Transjordan) beginning in the second millennium B.C.E. 26-27; 2 Cor. There were only ten nations specifically marked for destruction (Deut. The Canaanites represented a continuation of the corrupt line that led to the Flood, so it makes perfect sense that God would want that very specific line destroyed, because permitting them to continue on would only result in the earth becoming utterly corrupt again. Israel's sons and daughters intermarried with the Canaanites and joined the Canaanites in worshiping their false gods. How to Have Joy in Your Golden Years Despite These 10 Life Garrett Kell explains in an article for TGC, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. 20). And even though He is a merciful and longsuffering God, there is a point where, for the sake of His holiness and the good of others in His creation, He must punish evil. The Canaanites were descendants of Noah. Abram traveled though the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. When Achan stole from Yahweh after the defeat of Jericho (Josh. ( Genesis 15:18) God kept that promise when he caused the nation of Israel, which descended from Abraham, to occupy the region. [11] Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, p. 205. 10:5) so that we may be loyal to our covenant with Yahweh and free of corruption. Its supposed to be unsettling. During the time of Moses, God gave the reason for the Canaanites' downfall: "The land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants" ( Leviticus 18:25 ). If someone wanted to guarantee a victory in battle, they could sacrifice one of their children to ensure the gods fought on their behalf (Judg. Leviticus 18:10 (5) They were having sex with their aunts. The main focus of Deut. The extermination of the Canaanites had to do with removing all influence of the idolatry of immoral gods and practices that would corrupt the lives of the Israelites and lead to perverted and dysfunctional culture. Yahweh wanted the lives of His people and their worship to remain completely pure. In Joshua 6:1 we read that they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.. Women were no less guilty than men, and in many cases they were the principal instigators. 18:20-30; Deut. But what do we do with this story? I dont think there are any Canaanites today. There, Israel had sinned against the covenant they made with Yahweh, when they worshipped the golden calves. Rather, for the same reason that only ten nations were marked for destruction and the others (even though they were unbelievers) were left alone in the First Testament, so today, in a post-Second Testament world, not every nation or people group is marked for destruction, though they are unbelievers as well. The earliest Canaanite laws did prescribe the death penalty for those caught in incest or adultery, but by the fourteenth century BC the penalty had been reduced to a financial fine. xref The Canaanites were people who lived in the land of Canaan, an area which according to ancient texts may have included parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Yet the text makes it clear that this second law did not apply to those living in Canaan. Leviticus 18:6 (2) They were having sex with their mothers. Anat, Baals wife and goddess of war and love, fought her way into the grave to rescue her husband. God chose a place hostile to the Lord to give to Abraham and His chosen people as an inheritance. Why did God condone such terrible violence in the Old Testament? It had everything to do with the judgment of a people for their sins. They describe their mutilation of people and stacking the peoples heads in a self-glorification of their superiority. Yahweh did not command Israel to exterminate the Canaanites because they were a different race. In fact, the Canaanite people were Semitic just like the Israelites. 12:3). 6:10-12). They have been abusing them for days and there is no end in sight. These sins exist in every culture, then and now, but are forbidden by most governments and are socially condemned by the majority of people in the culture. Was this the Israelites taking the land of innocent bystanders? Why not just destroy the Canaanites the same way He destroyed Sodom and Gomorah and not involve people killing other men, women and children? In the second, the law states that Israel was to attack other nations outside the land of Canaan only if they were attacked first. If you built a house, you were to lay one of your sacrificed children as the cornerstone to the building to ensure that the gods blessed the house and family all of its days. I scrolled down and saw that you had beat me to this comment. 0000001321 00000 n Baker Books. The question at the heart of this topic is how an all-loving God could command the extermination of the Canaanites and have Israel carry it out, as recorded in the books of Joshua and Judges. ). 0000001464 00000 n Who were the Canaanites? The human perspective is not always the divine and right perspective.
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