**Many have asserted, in order to alleviate the dif- ficulty, that an allotment of the world was made by Noah to his three sons, and that by this allotment the Land of Promise fill to the share of Shem ; that the descendanto of Ham were therefore usurpers and in- terlopers, and that, on this ground, the Israelites, as the descendanto of Shem, had the right to dispossess them. This explanation is as old as Eplphanius, who thus answered the objection ofthe Manicheans. Oth- ers justify the war on the ground that the Canaanites were the first aggressors — a jostification which ap- plies only to the territory on the other side of the Jordan. Michaelis, to whom we must refer for a lengthened investigation of the subject (Lowe o/Mo- SM, § 29, vol. i, p. Ul-179, Smith's transl.), dissatis- fied with these and other attempted apologies, asserto that the Israelites had a right to the land of Canaan as the common pasture-land of their herdsmen, in con- sequence of the undisturt>ed possession and appropria- tion of it from the time of Abraham till the departure of Jacob into Egypt ; that this daim had never been relinquished, and was well known to the Canaanites, and that therefore the Israelites only took possession of that whichJl)elonged to them. The same hypoth- esis is maintained by Jahn (flefrrew CcmnumwiaUh, ch. ii, § X, Stowe's transl.). In the Fragmente at- tached to Taylor's edition of Calmet's Dictionary (iv, 95, 96) another ground of justification is sought hi the supposed identity of race of the Egyptian dynasty under which the Israelites were oppressed with the tribes tiiat overran Canaan, so that the destraction of the latter was merely an act of retributive justice f»r the injuries which their compatriote in Egypt had
inflicted on the Israelitea. To afl these and similar attempte to justify, on tlie ground of Itgcd r^i ^ (breible occupation of the land by the Israelites, and the extermination (at least to a great extent) of the existing occupante, it is to be objected that no soeh reason as any of these is hinted at in the sacred ne- ord. The right to carry on a war of extermination is there rested simply on the divine command to do so. Tliat the Israelites were instrumento in God's hand is a lesson not only continually impressed on their minds by the teadiing of Moses, but enforced by their de- feat whenever tliey relied on their own strength. That there iiMf have been grounds of justification, on the plea of human or legal right, ought not, indeed, to be denied ; but it is, we imagine, quite dear, ftum the numerous attempte to find what these groonds were, that they are not steted m the Old Testament; and to seek for them as though they were necessary to the justification of the Israelites, seems to be an abandonment of the high ground on which alone their justification can be safely rested^-the express com- mand of God.
" It may be said that this is only shifting the diffi- culty, and that just in proportion as we exculpate the Israelites frx>m the charges of robbery and murder, in their making war without legal ground, we lower the character ofthe Being whose commands they obeyed, and throw doubt on those commands being really given by God. This has indeed been a fiivorite ob- jection of hnfideb to the divine authority of the Old Testament Such objectors would do well to consider whether God has not an absolute right to dispose of men as he sees fit, and whether an exterminating war, from which there was at least an opportunity of es- cape by fiight, is at all more opposed to our notions of justice than a destroying flood, or earthquake, or pestilence. Again, whether the fact of m^lnng a chosen nation of Bit worshippers the instrument of punishing those whose wickedness was notoriously great, did not much more impressively vindicate his character as the only God, who 'will not give his glory to another, nor his praise to graven images,' than if the punishment had been brought about by natural causes. Such considerations as these must, we apprehend, silence those who complain of injustice done to the Canaanites. Bat then it is objected fur- ther that such an arrangement is fttiught with evQ to those who are made the instrumento of punbhment, and, as an example, is peculiarly liable to be abased by all who have the power to persecute. As to the first of these objections, it must be remembered that the conduct of the war was never put into the hands of the Israelites ; that they were continually remind- ed that it was for the wickedness of those nations that they were driven out; and, above all, that they them- selves would be exposed to similar punishment if they were seduced into idolatry, an evil to which they were especially prone. As to the example, it can apply to no case where there is not an equally dear expressioii of God's will. A person without such a commission has no more right to plead the example of the Israel- ites in justification of his exterminating or even har- assing those whom he imagines to be God's enemies, than to plead the example of Moses in justification of his promulgating a new law purporting to come from God. In a word, the justification ofthe Israelites, as it appears to us, is to be sought in this alone, that they were dearly commissioned by God to accomplish this work of judgment, thus at once giving public testi- mony to, and receiving an awfrd impression of His power and authority, so as in some measure to check the outrageous idolatry into which almost the whole world had sunk" (Kitto, Cydop, s. v.).