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For the men who wrote them had God's spirit with them; and God's spirit is the spirit in which God made and governs this world, and just as God cannot change, so God's spirit cannot change; and therefore the rules and laws according to which the world runs on cannot change; and therefore these rules about God's government of the world, which God's spirit taught the old Hebrew Psalmists, are the very same rules by which He governs it now; and therefore all the rules in these Psalms, making allowance for the difference of circumstances, have just as much to do with France, and Germany, and England now, as they had with the Jews, and the Canaanites, and the Babylonians then.
It is a society of nomad clans, which own no allegiance to any central authority, which have no king and do not yet form a nation. This is a stage of social growth which in every ancient people precedes the rise of the nation and of monarchy. The Hebrews are rising out of this stage when we first see them. Their neighbours the Moabites and Canaanites have already passed beyond it.
Evidently the red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell, demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the earth.
And now Joshua was old, and saw that the cities of the Canaanites were not easily to be taken, not only because they were situate in such strong places, but because of the strength of the walls themselves, which being built round about, the natural strength of the places on which the cities stood, seemed capable of repelling their enemies from besieging them, and of making those enemies despair of taking them; for when the Canaanites had learned that the Israelites came out of Egypt in order to destroy them, they were busy all that time in making their cities strong.
When Joshua and Caleb heard these speeches of the people teeming with blasphemy, they rent their garments and tried to restrain the people from their sinful enterprise, exhorting them particularly to have fear of the Canaanites, because the time was at hand when God had promised Abraham to give the land of Canaan to his descendants, and because there were no pious men among the inhabitants of the land for whose sake God would have been willing to leave it longer in their possession.
True, multitudes of the Canaanites were slain, but not a case can be found in which one was either killed or expelled who acquiesced in the transfer of the territory, and its sovereignty, from the inhabitants of the land to the Israelites. Josh. ii. 9-11; ix. 9, 10, 24. Many of them were awed by these wonders, and made no resistance. Others defied God and came out to battle.
Almost from the beginning, too, she had had the newspaper and the hotel and some talk about a bank. Canaanites held their heads high.
The conquest of Canaan was a slow process, which was not completed till the days of the monarchy. Jerusalem was not captured till the reign of David, Gezer was the dowry received by Solomon along with his Egyptian wife. At first the Canaanites were treated with merciless ferocity. Their cities were burned, the inhabitants of them massacred, and the spoil divided among the conquerors.
Here a question arises of sufficient importance for a separate dissertation; but must for the present be disposed of in a few paragraphs. The leading directions as to the disposal of the Canaanites, are mainly in the following passages, Exod. xxiii. 23-33, and 33-51, and 34, 11 Deut. vii. 16-25, and ix. 3, and xxxi. 3, 1, 2.
He appointed also five hundred and fifty rulers over those Canaanites who were reduced to such domestic slavery, who received the entire care of them from the king, and instructed them in those labors and operations wherein he wanted their assistance.
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