The parts of the Bible that we find most disturbing may well offer the most to us. The things we find jarring can jolt us into a deeper understanding. The conquest of Canaan is perhaps the most infamously difficult event for modern believers to digest. It is, in fact, meant to sound shocking because it is an act of divine judgement designed to prefigure the final great judgement at the end of history. And judgement is the vital backdrop against which the biblical story of grace becomes meaningful. Canaan was given to Israel as a new Eden, prefiguring the final new heavenly earth (Revelation 21-22). Joshua is doing what his namesake (‘Jesus’= ‘Joshua’ in Hebrew) will do (see Revelation 19) before ushering in a new heavenly earth (Revelation 21-22). This is not ethnic cleansing; it’s divine judgement on a people whose sin had reached its full measure (note Genesis 15:16). The Canaanites are to be driven out (and destroyed if necessary) of the sacred space they had desecrated so terribly. And one day the sin of humanity will also reach its tipping point and then the final judgement will come. It is God’s prerogative to judge, and here he uses the Israelites as his weapon in a never-to-be repeated event that would ingrain in them the fear of God. For, God said that if they became like the Canaanites, then the tables would be turned, and they would suffer what they inflicted. God is a God of fearsome justice, and sin against him is infinitely serious. This is the vital backdrop that makes the grace revealed in the gospel of Christ so amazing and so necessary.
Give thanks to God for his grace to you and pray for those who don’t yet know him.
Read Genesis 15
