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The northern tribes in Galilee were absorbed by the older population, and their country became "Galilee of the Gentiles," rather than an integral part of Israel. The plain of Megiddo was long held by the Canaanites, and up to the last was exposed to invasion from the sea-coast. It was, in fact, the battle-field of Palestine.
The case of the Gibeonites, who, after they became servants, still occupied their cities, and remained, in many respects, a distinct people for centuries; and that of the 150,000 Canaanites, the servants of Solomon, who worked out their tribute of bond-service in levies, periodically relieving each other, while preparing the materials for the temple, are additional illustrations of independence in the acquisition and ownership of property.
It seems to me we are here standing on rather firmer ground; and provisionally we might place the beginning of our process after the time of Hebrew contact with the Canaanites. Under the earlier Hebrew monarchy there was no fresh influx of Babylonian culture into Palestine.
If the Gibeonites had sued for the friendship of the Jews when the proclamation came to their ears, there would have been no need for subterfuges later. But the Canaanites had to see with their own eyes what manner of enemy awaited them, and all the nations prepared for war.
The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here and there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten.
But the people, most of them thought, were too strong to be successfully attacked. "The cities were walled and very great," and moreover "we saw the children of Anak there." "The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south; and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.
Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land. Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, but did not utterly drive them out.
"Ham is the father of Canaan," or of the Canaanites, the people of God's curse, whom the sons of Shem who afterwards sprang from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were to cut off from the earth, for their most high abominations.
Thus the extermination of the Canaanites, for which the Hebrews pleaded long after the Divine order, and for which they had substantial warrant in Destiny's determination to rid the land of these corrupting tribes and make room for the noble life Israel was to develop, has been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for their bloody trade.
The extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith, and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of Peace to all lands, becomes a work of mercy to the human race. The ethics of the heathen will be found to vindicate the doctrines of the Bible.
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