Exodus 23:28-30

"And I will send the hornet before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land."

"The hornet ..." Some have viewed this as a literal infestation of those dreadful and feared insects; some have supposed it referred to diseases and other hindrances to the proscribed populations, and others have supposed the reference to have been to the bringing of hostile armies against the Canaanites, such as the invasion of that area by one of the Pharaohs of Egypt about the period of the wilderness experience of Israel. The simple truth is that we do not know exactly what was meant by this, but no one can doubt that it happened as God promised.

"The Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite ..." The omission of the other Canaanite peoples did not exclude them from the terror that God would bring upon them. The mention of only three here actually stands for all of them, the same being a type of metaphor called synecdoche, in which one, or two or three, of related entities is merely a short form for all of them.

"Little and little ..." It is here revealed for the first time that the conquest of Canaan was scheduled to be a gradual thing, and not a sudden conquest. Israel needed the time to grow into a vigorous and powerful state sufficiently strong and experienced enough to handle the problems involved in dispossessing so large a group of peoples, and in developing an orderly and civilized nation.