Numbers 33:50

THE BALANCE OF THE TEXT OF THIS CHAPTER

"And Jehovah spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan of Jericho, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images, and demolish all their high places: and ye shall take possession of the land, and dwell therein; for unto you have I given the land to possess it. And ye shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer thou shalt give the less inheritance: wheresoever the lot falleth to any man, that shall be his; according to the tribes of your fathers shall ye inherit. But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as pricks in your eyes, and as thorns in your sides, and they shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell. And it shall come to pass, that, as I thought to do unto them, so will I do unto you."

This directive effectually ordered the extermination of the Canaanites whom Israel was commissioned to destroy and to possess their land. Men may scream about this if they wish; but it was altogether a just and necessary condition of Israel's achievement of what God intended through them.

"Think of all the innocent people and little babies this condemned to death!" All right, let's think of them. Their culture had become so vile, so reprobate and contrary to God's will, that it was impossible for little children to be reared in such an environment in such a manner as to allow any possibility of their pleasing their Creator! Their whole civilization was out of control and justly consigned to destruction. As for the innocents and little children, Christ himself would take care of their redemption in the times and manner known to himself; and it was a mercy for them (in their depraved environment) to die. Furthermore, another phase of this often overlooked is that the vast majority of Adam's race at that time were approaching a stage of wickedness, if indeed they had not already reached it, in which they deserved the same fate as the antediluvians who were totally removed by the Great Deluge. What a mercy it was, therefore, on the part of God, that he would continue the vast majority of Adam's evil race as they were, but destroy only that portion of it that was necessary to provide a haven for the Chosen Race, through whom the hopes of all mankind were eventually to be delivered in the person of the holy Christ!

The only shameful thing about this commission to destroy the Canaanites was that Israel refused to do it, and in that alone lay their own total failure at last. Why did they not do it?

(1) The custom of the times allowed captured peoples to be used as slaves. It is not hard to see how Israel reacted to that.

(2) The lust of Israel was aroused and captured by the allurement of vast numbers of women, many of whom no doubt were persons of great physical beauty and attractiveness.

(3) There were still remnants of the old pagan superstitions in Israel as revealed in Stephen's valedictory in Acts 7, and, in the case of the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, those pagan traditions went back to the very roots of their tribes. Rachel herself seems to have been, at least partially, an idolater, as witnessed by her stealing the gods ([~teraphiym]) of Laban; and Joseph married the daughter of the Egyptian Priest of On, and it is exceedingly likely that from these pagan roots, there eventually flowered the full paganism of the Northern Israel as denounced by all the minor prophets.

(4) Added to all of this, the natural revulsion of normal human beings against taking the lives of vast numbers of helpless and defeated peoples must have entered unto Israel's utter failure to follow the Divine instructions here given.

(5) And, in addition to all this, the deployment of two and a half tribes of Israel east of Jordan robbed Israel of sufficient strength to have disposed of this commission quickly and efficiently.

"Demolish all their high places ..." (Numbers 33:52). Orlinsky gave the meaning of "high places" in this verse as, "cult places."[14] These were sex-oriented shrines erected under any convenient grove of trees or upon any hill-top eminence, and were characterized by the most depraved acts of orgiastic sex and perversion. The shameful immorality was rationalized as the "worship" of the Baalim (the gods of the land), the theory being that the sexual practices in those cultic centers was a form of "procuring the help of the gods in the production of fruitful harvests." Of course, this destruction of that kind of worship was the absolute necessity that underlay God's order to exterminate the Canaanites. The subsequent history of Northern Israel, and later, that of the Southern Israel also, afford an overwhelming demonstration of just how absolutely necessary such an order of extermination really was, and just what a wretched tragedy overwhelmed Israel because they failed to obey it!

Israel was commanded to drive out all of the inhabitants of the land. It was not enough for them to clear off enough land where they could exist. They were to take complete control of it for their God. God would not share this land with any other gods.[15]

"Jehovah spake unto Moses in the plains of Moab ..." (Numbers 33:50). Repeatedly, we find the solemn affirmation God Himself is the author of the commandments given to Israel in the Pentateuch; and yet this is precisely the fact that many alleged "scholars" deny and contradict. Of such claims in this chapter, for example, Wade remarked that such citations, "Can at most imply that the writer used some writing which he attributed to Moses."[16] Such snide and arrogant denials are part and parcel of that found in Genesis where Satan said, "Ye shall not surely die." No proof is offered; none is available; unbelievers need no proof; the fountain of unbelief is within themselves. As Whitelaw declared, "Of this document containing this itinerary, there can be no question that we have here elements of extreme and unquestioned antiquity."[17] In this light, by what authority can any man deny that Moses is the author of it? Indeed, who but Moses could have provided this? Why do not the critics busy themselves with finding out who wrote the diary of Julius Caesar, or the journal of Columbus, or the travels of Marco Polo? They could have a lot better luck on tasks like that!

We should not leave this chapter without observing that this and the final three chapters of Numbers are actually interim preparations for the crossing of Jordan, although, of course, the actual entry into Canaan will be related only after a number of Moses' final words to the people have been given in the Book of Deuteronomy.