xcv.
Exod. xxiii. 29, 30. / will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little will I drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased and inherit the land.
THE more we investigate the dispensations of Providence, the more we shall see, that " God's ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts." If we had been left to form conjectures respecting man in his first creation, who would have conceived that God should suffer the work of his hands to be so marred as Adam was by the fall, and so large a portion of his creatures to perish in everlast- ing misery? Nor, if we were told that God would take to himself, from amongst the fallen sons of Adam, a peculiar people, and rescue them by so many signs and wonders from their bondage in Egypt, should we have imagined that he would, after all, keep them in the wilderness for the space of forty years, till the whole generation were swept away; and suffer two individuals only, of the whole nation, to enter the promised land. But " his ways are in the great deep ; and his footsteps are not known." When, at last, he had brought his people into Canaan, we should then at least suppose that he would give them a speedy and quiet possession of the land. Yet, behold, he tells them, beforehand, that he will " not drive out the inhabitants at once, but only by little and little."
We propose to inquire into, I. The design of God in the dispensation here re- ferred to —
It was intended,
1. As an act of mercy, to preserve his people —
[The people altogether amounted to about two millions ; and the country which they were to occupy extended from the Red Sea to the Euphrates a. But, if so small a population were spread over so wide a space, the wild beasts would
a ver. 31. with Gen. xv. 18.