CHAPTERXVI.THE HEBREW THEOCRACY.NATURALLYfollowing the national covenant (Ex.19) and the giving of the law from Sinai (Ex.20) and preliminary to the civil code—“the statutes and judgments”—comes in theTheocracy—a term used to designate the system of government established for the Hebrew people.Here we may consider briefly the following points:I.The Supreme Power.II.The powers ofJehovah’s vicegerents—his chief executive officers.III.Thegeneral assemblyor congregation, and theirelders.IV.The scope afforded for self-government-democracy.V.The fundamental principles of this entire system.VI.Its union of church and state.VII.Its principles and usages in respect towar, with a notice of the war-commission against the doomed Canaanites.I.The Supreme Power.God himself wasking. In every respect the supreme power was his. Precisely this is the sense of the term “theocracy”—a government of God.This comprehensive fact appears in the following particulars:1. God demanded supreme homage as their king (Ex.19: 6 andDeut.6: 4–15, and 7: 6–11, and 10: 12–21, and 33: 4, 5 and1 Sam.8: 6–8, and 10: 18, 19 andJudg.8: 23).2. God enacted the statutes. He was the SupremeLawgiver. We sometimes speak of the “Mosaic code,” of the “statutes of Moses,” meaning by these phrases only that the statutes came from God to the people by the hand of Moses; never that Moses was himself theauthor of these statutes—the true legislator. (SeeEx.21: 1 andDeut.6: 1).3. Godnominated the chief executive. He called Moses (Ex.3: 10, 12, and 4: 16 and1 Cor.10: 2); and Joshua (Num.27: 18–23 andDeut.3: 28, and 31: 3 andJosh.1 and 5: 13–15). The same was true of the Judges, raised up for special emergencies (Judg.2: 16, 18, and 3: 9, 15, and 4: 6, and 6: 12,etc.,etc.) God called the kings:—Saul (1 Sam.9: 17, and 10: 1); also David (1 Sam.13: 14, and 16: 1 and2 Sam.5: 2 andPs.78: 70, 71); and to name no more, Solomon (1 Chron.28: 5).4. In all cases not otherwise provided for, the ultimate appeal was to God. In point we have (Num.16 and 17) a case of resistance to the authority of Moses—incipient rebellion. God interposed with his supreme authority. We have a case in civil law, not reached by the statutes,viz.the entailment of real estate in a family of daughters only. Moses brought it before the Lord for adjudication (Num.27: 5). A special provision respecting the marriage of daughters holding property in land became necessary: this new law was sought from God (Num.36: 6).——A criminal case occurred in which the law was not explicit; “it was not declared what should be done” with the criminal (Num.15: 32–36). The Lord gave them the law for the case.——In the case of Achan (Josh.7) the Lord interposed, not so much because there was no law for its decision as because the sin was flagrant and the demand for exemplary punishment was very great.——In cases which would appropriately require the calling of a Supreme Council, the people sought direction from God. (SeeJudg.1: 1, and 20: 18, 27, 28 and1 Sam.14: 37, and 23: 2, 4, 9–12, and 28: 6, and 30: 8 and2 Sam.2: 1). God made provision through the prophets for a direct revelation of his will to the people in special cases not otherwise provided for (Deut.18: 18).5. In later times the demand of the people for a human king seemed to be constructive treason. It might be so understood, and therefore the Lord reasserted his prerogative, although he yielded to their demands (1 Sam.8: 6–9, and 10: 17–25).6. It scarcely need be said that God bound himself by promise to reward the people with all national prosperityif obedient, and by threatening, to punish them with national calamity for disobedience. These points are expanded fullyLev.26 andDeut.chapters 27–30.——That God inflicted these threatened punishments early in their nation’s history may be seenNum.11: 33, and 16: 1–50.Thus it appears that in every appropriate way and in numerous vital respects God manifested his supreme authority over his people Israel.II.The powers of Jehovah’s vicegerent.Of this we have illustrations in the cases of Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and the kings. These cases show that they were precisely the Lord’s prime ministers, commissioned to execute his will. If a law touching the case existed and its application was clear, they simply adjudicated the case and put the law in force. If no statute touching the case was extant, they sought one. If the application of the law baffled their wisdom, they sought counsel from God. Hence the Scriptures speak of these prime ministers as the Lord’s “servants,” to serve him in this high capacity. (SeeNum.12: 7 andHeb.3: 2, 5 andJosh.1: 1, 2, and 5: 13–15 and2 Sam.7: 8,etc.)Of the officers holding under the chief executive there is no occasion to speak in great detail. The system of subordinate judges—lower courts—has come to view in the history of Jethro (Ex.18). In Canaan they held their courts in the gates of large cities, and (for certain criminal cases) in the cities of refuge which were cities of the Levites—from which tribe judges seem largely to have been drawn.The “elders”—“heads of the house of their fathers”—held important responsibilities—a fact due largely to the influence of the patriarchal system which had come down from the earliest times, the usages of which, therefore, had essentially the force of common law in Israel. It was in great measure due to them that after the death of Joshua the processes of government went on without any chief executive, with no king, and with no Supreme Judge except as the High Priest may have performed that function.III.The General Assembly or Congregation, and the Elders.We read of great conventions, congregations, assemblies, in which it is not definitely said thatall the peoplewere there; and also of convocations in which “all the people” were present. In some at least of the cases of the latter sort, the elders seem to have acted distinctly from the masses of the people, being the media of communication (as the case may be) between the Lord or his servant Moses of the one party and the people at large of the other. Thus shortly before the giving of the law from Sinai when God ratified a national covenant with the people, we read—“Moses called for the elders of the people and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together and said—All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Ex.19: 7, 8). Moses spake to the peoplethroughtheir elders. It was naturally impossible that any one human voice could be heard by six hundred thousand men.——So in1 Sam.8: 4–10 “theeldersgathered together and said to Samuel, Make us a king;” “and the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken untothe voice of the people.” “And Samuel told all the words of the Lordunto the peoplethat asked of him a king.”——These elders—chiefs of the people—seem to have been a well-defined class. Note how they are designated (Num.1: 16); “These are the renowned [Heb.thecalled ones] of the congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel.” AlsoNum.16: 2: “Two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation” [Heb.thecalled onesof the congregation,i. e.the men summoned to represent their constituents], “men of renown.”——The question will arise whether thesecalled men, the recognized heads and representatives of the people, held specially delegated powers; whether they were appointed for an occasion and were instructed by the people: or whether they held the headship, this representative power, by virtue of the ancient usages of the patriarchal system. The latter is the true view, for the patriarchal system had the prestige of common law; and we find not the least hint of anyelectionof these “heads of the house of their fathers” for any specialfunction—no notice of their receiving special instructions to act as delegated representatives of the people.——Let it be noted carefully that on all really great occasions when the vital issues of their covenant relation with God were pending, “all the people”—the solid masses—were convened, and of course their elders and high officers with them. We see such a case before Sinai (Ex.19); another, shortly before the death of Moses, in a solemn ratification of their national covenant: “Ye stand this dayall of youbefore the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders and your officers, with all the men of Israel” (Deut.29: 10–12), “that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God,”etc.——Again; after they had entered Canaan in the scene of rehearsing the blessings and the curses of the law fromMt.Gerizim andMt.Ebal: “And all Israel and their elders and officers and their judges, stood,”etc.(Josh.8: 33). See alsoJosh.23: 2 and 24: 1 andJudg.20: 1 and1 Sam.8. It was supremely appropriate that every man of Israel should give his voice and heart in these great national consecrations of themselves to their nation’s God. The Lord sought to call into action every mind—to make a deep moral impression on every heart. Therefore none could be exempted; no man could be excused for absence.IV.The scope afforded under this system forself-government—democracy.It is readily obvious that under this theocracy, the function oflegislatorswas out of the question. The people did not make their own laws: these weregiventhem—made by the Lord alone. It only remained for them to say whether they would accept the Lord their God as their Lawgiver and Supreme King. Such assent and consent on their part was appropriate; and precisely this they gave—as we may see in the case of the moral law of Sinai (Ex.19: 3–8 andDeut.5: 27, 28); and of all the statutes and judgments of their civil code (Ex.24: 3). This national recognition of God as Supreme Lawgiver was renewed from time to time with subsequent generations of Israel (Deut.29: 10–15 andJosh.24: 15–27 andNeh.10: 28, 29),etc.Thus it appears that the laws under which they lived were not arbitrarily imposed upon them without their consent—much less, against their will; but only with their formal and solemn consent. So far forth, their government involved an element of freedom and of self-control. They were not tyrannously coerced into subjection to laws which they repudiated. A system of law, in itself most excellent and entirely unexceptionable, was presented to them for their adoption or rejection. They adopted it—apparently with the warmest approbation.Essentially the same principle obtained in regard to their highest human executive officer. They did not nominate and choose Moses of their own motion. No caucus, no primary meeting, no formal election brought out his name as the choice of the people. The Lord alone raised up Moses, prepared him for the position he was to hold and brought him before the people. Then they received him as their leader (Ex.4: 29–31 and 20: 19 andDeut.5: 27). In the same manner they accepted Joshua (Josh.1: 16–18). In the case of Saul, their first king, the Lord nominated, and the people ratified his nomination (1 Sam.10: 24 and 11: 14, 15). The Lord called David also (1 Sam.16: 1–12), but the people accepted him as king and cordially ratified his divine nomination (2 Sam.5: 1–3). Through his prophet Nathan the Lord gave the kingdom to David’s posterity (2 Sam.7) and prophetically indicated Solomon (1 Chron.22: 8, 9 and1Kings 1: 13, 29, 30); but the people still gave their full-hearted consent (1Kings 1: 39, 40). The same powers were asserted by the people in the case of Rehoboam (1Kings 12: 1–20).It should be specially noted that when the government assumed the form of ahumanmonarchy—an earthly king reigning under God in this real theocracy, it was a limited, not an absolute monarchy. The Mosaic law anticipated this change and imposed certain constitutional limitations upon the prospective king (Deut.17: 14–20). He must be one whom the Lord should choose; of native and not foreign birth; must not multiply horses, nor wives, nor treasures of silver and gold; must keep by him a copy of the law given through Moses, must read it and regard it as the constitutionunder which he reigned. When the demand for a king arose Samuel forewarned the people of the assumptions of power which, by the usages of mankind, they must expect in their king (1 Sam.8: 10–17), and took the precaution to put in writing “the manner of the kingdom”—the constitutional provisions and safe-guards under which he was to reign (1 Sam.10: 25). No copy of this constitution has come down to us; but it doubtless corresponded essentially with the limitations made by the law of Moses as inDeut.17: 14–20.The voice of the people in self-government appears also in the appointment of the judges who were to administer the law in courts of justice. We have seen how the old patriarchal system was enlarged and modified at the suggestion of Jethro (Ex.18: 13–26). This first narrative seems to rest the appointment of these judges entirely with Moses; but his own more detailed account (Deut.1: 9–18) shows that the people were heard in the nomination: “Take you wise men and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. And ye answered me and said—The thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So I took the chief men of your tribes, wise men and known, and made them heads over you,”etc.Plainly these men had acquired position by merit, and held their place and power (before this special appointment) by the general consent of the people.——The general law in the case runs—“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates,etc., and they shall judge the people with just judgment” (Deut.16: 18).Self-government is further developed in the independent action which we may notice occasionally in the several tribes. Especially in the period from Joshua to Saul, the several tribes acted singly, or in union with one or more of their fellow-tribes at their option (Judg.1: 1–3, 22 and 4: 10 and 7: 23, 24 and 8: 23, and 20: 11–46). Special cases of this independent action appear in1 Chron.4: 41–43 and 5: 18–23.——On great occasions, the people convened en masse for deliberation and united action as inJosh.22: 12, 16 and 23: 2 andJudg.20 and 21.——Obviously they assumed the right to disapprove the action of their princes as in the case of the Gibeonites (Josh.9: 18, 19)—“All the congregation murmured against the princes.”V.The Fundamental Principles of this entire System.1. Jehovah being their Supreme King, supreme love and worship must be rendered to him.2. Idolatry was a state offense, nothing less than high treason, and therefore a capital crime, punishable with death. Any one of their cities, given to idolatry, must be utterly exterminated (Deut.13: 1–18 and 17: 2–7).3. The most stringent laws ordained non-intercourse with idolatrous nations and non-conformity to their customs. Inter-marriages with them were strictly prohibited; trade and commerce were at least discouraged if not forbidden. These laws may be seen inEx.34: 11–17 andDeut.7: 1–5, 16, 23–26; and cases of their application inNum.25 and 31; also in Ezra 9 and 10 andNeh.13: 23–31.Sundry customs, some of which might in themselves be of small account, were prohibited, apparently because associated with idolatry in the usages of other nations and in the ideas of the people of Israel (Deut.14: 1–21 andLev.20: 23–26). The distinction between clean and unclean beasts seems to fall under this principle.4. This Hebrew Theocracy was engrafted upon a previously existing patriarchal government, and therefore it recognized this previous system as substantially the common law of the land, to be in force except so far as modified by special legislation under the new regime given from the Lord through Moses. This principle is illustrated in the powers and functions of theelders, known as “heads of the house of their fathers”; “princes”; “heads of the thousands of Israel” (Ex.6: 25, andNum.3: 24, 30, 35, and 1: 16, and 10: 4).5. It was manifestly an accepted principle, underlying the entire system, to give the people as wide a range of free responsible action as a theocratic government would admit. Democracy must of necessity be subordinate totheocracy; the self-ruling of the people must find its placeunderthe supreme ruling of Jehovah. Consequently the law must come entire from God, not from the people. The chief executive must receive his commission from God, though he might be formally accepted and his appointment in this way ratified by the people. The Lord sought the willing homage of thepeople—the obedience of their heart—and therefore encouraged the most cheerful and hearty expression of their will and of their homage in entering into covenant with himself, and from time to time in solemnly renewing it. He would have them feel that they were the people of the Lord by their own real consent and hearty acceptance. So much democracy therefore entered into their scheme of national polity. So much there might be. In the nature of a theocracy, there could not be more.6. As elsewhere shown, the statutes were within certain limits graduated in moral tone to the moral status of the people, being as high as they would bear—as near theoretical perfection as could be made effective—i. e.as could secure a general obedience.VI.Its union of Church and State.By this modern phrase is currently meant the subordination of the church to the civil or state authorities. Such a union in the Hebrew nation was a natural consequent upon a theocratic government. The civil code coming from God himself, the religious code must come from him by obvious fitness, not to say necessity. In his entire policy with Israel, God sought the most effective moral culture. We find this purpose underlying the entire civil government with its code of civil laws; it must of course underlie their religious institutions. Hence the church and the state were worked not only by the same hand but for the same general purpose.In practice certain crimes against the religious law were enforced by the state. Idolatry was a state offense, punishable as other state crimes. So of perjury and blasphemy. (Deut.19: 16–19.)——It was due to the common relations of church and state that to a great extent the religious orders were civil judges. In the absence of a king or other chief executive, the High Priest seems to have held that function. (SeeDeut.17: 12 and2 Chron.19: 8–11). The subordinate judges were largely taken from the priests and Levites (Deut.21: 5, and 33: 10).Since the system provided for an ultimate appeal to God, extreme cases were taken up for the sake of such appeal to the one place which was for the time the seatof God’s special manifestations to his people (Deut.17: 8–13, and 19: 17).The wisdom of this joint action of the civil law with the religious admits in their case of no question. It may suffice to refer in proof to the omnipresent power of idolatry through all the ages from Moses to the captivity, to show the vital need of the civil arm to sustain the true worship of God and save the nation. On the other hand the state was the stronger for her religious institutions. The great religious festivals, bringing the masses of the male population from every tribe three times a year for a sacred week of communion must have been of priceless value in sustaining the national unity and a national patriotism. Jeroboam was sharp enough to see that the calves at Bethel and Dan must take the place of the festivals at Jerusalem, or his kingdom would melt away from under him, and his people give their civil fealty as well as their religious homage at the old center. Hezekiah would have brought the ten tribes back if he could have drawn their people in a body to the great Passover, as he sought to do.——Hence it is quite safe to say that the state was the stronger for the national religion, and their religion the stronger for the aid of the state.——Yet let none rush to the inference that such mutual relations of church and state are therefore wise and useful in the Christian age of the world. The providences of God shut off from the primitive church the possibility of such union and shut up Christianity to make her first great conquests under the sturdy opposition of the greatest civil power of the age. Experience has long since disproved the inference above referred to. The cases are too dissimilar to admit of any logical reasoning from that age to this.In the Hebrew economy we are struck with the fact that both the religious and the civil code were enforced chiefly by considerations and influences, rewards and punishments, coming in from the present world—not from the future. Let it be supposed that religious duties were in our age enforced by such motives chiefly—and we should see at a glance the change that has passed over the world since Moses uttered the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy. Idolatry, then the head sin of the ages, was fitly resisted, not only by thecivil arm, but by the most fearful array of civil pains and penalties. The capital sins of Christendom are now of quite other sort; and the motives to repentance come appropriately from the other worlds yet before us and not from this. It may be difficult for us to realize how stern the necessity was that God should in the earlier ages govern the world, and not least his own people, by motives from the visible and not from the invisible world—from earth and time and the present life, and not from the eternal, the future and yet unseen state.[This subject will receive further attention near the close of this volume.]VII.The principles and usages of the Hebrew code in respect to war; with some notice of thewar-edictfor the extirpation of the Canaanites.By their constitution the war-power was with God. The power and the right to declare war rested in him alone. He forbade them to make war on Edom; he commanded them to exterminate Amalek and the devoted nations of Canaan, and to “vex the Midianites and smite them”. (As to Edom, seeDeut.2: 5; as to Amalek,Ex.17: 8, 14, 16 andDeut.25: 17–19; as to the Midianites,Num.25: 17, 18, and 31:).——Their rulers were expected to bring the question before the Lord—Shall I in this case go up to battle, or shall I forbear? (Judg.1: 1, and 20: 18, 23, 28).——Any one tribe might go out to war alone, or might call in the aid of another or of all:—a fact which shows that the tribes were confederated rather than united and consolidated. On great occasions, of common danger, all the tribes associated together, and, with certain specified exceptions, every man able for war was required to go. The exceptions are given (Deut.20: 5–8);viz.the man who had built a house, but had not dedicated it; he who had planted a vineyard but had not eaten of its fruits; he who had betrothed a wife, yet had not taken her; and finally, every fearful and faint-hearted man;—i. e.all who had special attractions homeward which might tempt them to desert the ranks, and they whose timid hearts made them worthless and might be contagious:—in the words of the statute, “Lest his brother’sheart faint as well as his heart.” Personal heroism was of prime account—a heroism inspired by faith in Israel’s God. The history every-where shows that such armies, fired with religious enthusiasm, strong by faith in the mighty God, were terrible in battle, and for the most part certain of victory. Often as we read these annals of the wars of Israel, we can not resist the conviction that they were means of grace as well as of manhood—an illustration of which may be seen in David before Goliath the Philistine (1 Sam.17).——When only a small number of men were needed, they were chosen, picked men, naturally the brave, skilled, and renowned. See Joshua’s first battle (Ex.17: 9); his assault upon Ai (Josh.7: 7), and the sifting of Gideon’s army (Judg.7: 1–8).The grant of Canaan to Israel and the commission to extirpate the Canaanites.These points call for special examination.It has been objected against the morality of the Old Testament Scriptures that this war-law enjoining the extirpation of the Canaanites was cruel and unjust; hence that it either misrepresents God and therefore disproves the divine authority of the Old Testament; or if it truly represents the God of the Bible, then he does not deserve the homage and the love of his creatures.——These are grave charges and should be candidly examined.The grant of Canaan and the commission to destroy the Canaanites have been vindicated by Michaelis and others on the following grounds.1. The right of prior possession and occupation.2. This right kept good by burial there, and not by any means relinquished when Jacob was driven by stress of famine into Egypt and then detained there by force.3. This right protected according to their ability by reassertion, perpetually holding forth their purpose to return and their recognition of Canaan as their land of promise.4. That no argument prejudicial to their right of war against the Canaanites can be drawn from the absence of formal manifesto, setting forth the causes of the war, inasmuch as such a setting forth of groundsand causes of war is a thing of modern and not of ancient usage.This course of argument in defense of the war-law in question seems to me defective and quite below the truth in the following points:1. Its primary position—prior occupancy—seems not fully made out.2. It makes too little account of God’s original and perfect title to all the earth, and his consequent right to give his people any portion of it at his pleasure.3. It fails to give due prominence to the moral grounds assigned by God himself for the extirpation of the Canaanites,viz.their extreme debasement in character; their abominable wickedness; their horrible violations of the common humanities of social life.As to prior occupation, Michaelis says the original home of the Canaanites was Arabia; that Herodotus testifies that at first they dwelt near the Red Sea; Justin, that they had another country before they came to Palestine; and Abulfeda that they dwelt in Arabia. But in proof that they were in Palestine before Abraham was, Moses affirms (Gen.12: 6) that when Abram first passed through, “the Canaanite was then in the land;” also that when Abram and Lot, being rich in cattle and “the land unable to bear them,” “the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the land” (Gen.13: 7); and further still in his earliest account of the location of primitive families after the flood, he says—“The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza as thou goest to Sodom and Gomorrah,”etc.(Gen.10: 19). This is the oldest known historic testimony, and unquestionably locates the Canaanites in the original land of Canaan.——Moreover, it is said that Abraham went with his flocks and herds wherever he would as if lord of the country. It may be replied—So apparently did the Canaanites also. If Abraham dug wells, so did they; if he buried his dead there, so did they—with this incidental fact in their favor;viz.that Abraham bought ground of them and paid money for his cemetery at Macpelah. This special argument from prior possession can scarcely be sustained.But it may be maintained that Abram was therevery early; and what is more, God’s first call to him to leave his native country named Canaan as his promised land; and every successive promise reaffirmed this gift. Abraham’s title to Canaan therefore rests on God’s right to give a perfect title. If the Lord of heaven and earth, the Great Creator of all lands in all the ends of the earth had not a right to give Canaan to Abraham and his posterity, thenhe is not God. Unquestionably he assumed this right and in the exercise of it pledged Canaan to the posterity of Abraham with perpetual reiteration and most solemn covenant. This fact is the more significant because it is the first step in a series of acts all of which aimed to reveal himself before the world of mankind as the true God and the Lord of the whole earth. With these ends in view he chose this people and made them his own; manifested himself among them and before all the world as their covenant-keeping God; gave them Canaan, and by manifold miracles helped them to gain possession of it. Nor is this argument weakened by the fact that by means of a special series of providences he led them down into Egypt to dwell there 430 years; suffering the Canaanites meanwhile to hold Canaan, not driving them out earlier because “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full” (Gen.15: 16). Here is suggested the real ground on which the edict for extirpating the Canaanites was made to rest. God suffered them to remain there until they had forfeited their title not to Canaan alone, but to life itself and to any further national existence.This point is too vital to be passed without careful attention. InLev.18 we meet with a series of crimes against moral purity—violations of the seventh commandment—culminating in sodomy and bestiality; and classed with these is the burning of children in the worship of Moloch (v.21). Then God says—“Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you, andthe land is defiled; therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.”——The same sentiments are repeated (vs.26–30). Unnatural lusts had sunk both men and women not only down to a level with beasts, but evenbelow them. Idolatry had so far quenched the sweet humanities from the parental heart that fathers and mothers could burn their own sons and daughters to Moloch. These horrible, unnatural crimes were not only an outrage against the heart of God the Great Father; but, as he forcibly puts it, they defiled the very land itself. The earth was nauseated with these abominations and spued out such inhabitants. God’s fair and much abused world could bear them no longer. Nature herself lifted her voice of protest against such wickedness; or, as the strong figure suggests, her stomach sickened even to nausea over such unnatural lusts and such a torturing death of innocent sons and daughters. What could a holy and righteous God do with such a people but wipe them out of existence and wash the land they had defiled clean of such pollutions?——Lev.20 reiterates substantially the same list of abominations against which God warns his people;—“Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my judgments and do them, that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein,spue you not out. And ye shall not walk in the manner of the nations which I cast out before you; for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them” (vs.22, 23).——Perfectly definite and explicit is the repetition of the same point inDeut.12: 30, 31. When the Lord shall have cut off the Canaanites before thee, be not snared into their ways; inquire not after their gods and ways of worship:—“Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God, for every abomination to the Lord which he hateth have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods.” No fact could be more telling; none more damning. A people so given up to devil-worship as to burn their own offspring at his supposed behest, must be too debased and corrupt to live! The earth itself cries out against them, demanding their utter extirpation!A more full description of the varieties and forms of the devil-worship and fellowship common among the Canaanites may be seen inDeut.18: 9–14, to which it must suffice to refer the reader.I am well aware that some Jewish doctors, wishing to vindicate their fathers from crimes so unnatural have sought to prove that “causing children to pass throughthe fire” was a rite of purification and not actual murder. The attempt is futile:——(1.) Because some of the expressions are perfectly unequivocal;e. g.—“Even their sons have they burnt in the fire to their Gods” (Deut.12: 31). See also the cases in2Kings 17: 31, and2 Chron.28: 3, andJer.7: 31, and 19: 5.——(2.) The phrase—“To make to pass through the fire unto their gods” is used in the same sense as the phrase—“to burn in the fire.”——(3.) That the Phenicians and Carthagenians, closely related to the ancient Canaanites, did offer human sacrifices is a well established fact of history. (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary; “Moloch.”)We have seen that the title of Israel to Canaan falls back upon God’s prior title—upon his right to deed it to whom he would. On the same principle the question whether it was right and just for them to extirpate the Canaanites falls back upon two prior questions—(a.) Was it right and just for God to extirpate them?——(b.) Was it wise for Him to command the Israelites to do this work of extirpation, rather than do it himself by miracle, and without human hands? Here are our two great questions.(a.) As to the first—the right of God to destroy them for their crimes and the justice of doing it—I see not how it can be denied or questioned without denying to God the right to punish sin at all. Has God any right to govern his own universe—any right to resist the influence of sin and rebellion in his kingdom—any right to protect innocent children from being burned to death in homage to the devil? Alas for the universe if this doctrine can be maintained!——Truly we may say—If God has no right to exterminate from the earth any one individual sinner, or a nation of many thousands who are too corrupt to live, then he lacks the essential rights of a God! If he has not the power to do it, he lacks the power necessary to a God. If he has not the firmness—the nerve (shall we say?)—the sense of justice and right that would forbid his evading the duty, then he lacks the essential attributes of a God. If he has so little love for his offspring that he can see their welfare sacrificed in the worship of the devil and in the sweep of unutterable social pollutions, then he is incompetent to govern a world of sinners!(b.) But the objector will make his chief stand upon the secondary question—Was it wise for God to employ Israel to extirpate the corrupt Canaanites?The objector will perhaps say—He might have sunk all Canaan under a second flood like that of Noah’s time, and no complaint could stand against him. He might have engulfed those cities in fire as he did guilty Sodom, and all the living, cognizant of the moral grounds of the act, would have said, Amen! But that he should set such an example ofwar—the most horrid of all wars—before the nations of all history—before the ages of all time, giving it his holy sanction—nay more, setting his own most holy people to the bloody work—this is unpardonable. That he should put them to such barbarities—subject them to such demoralization of all the finer sensibilities of the human soul, seems too horrid to be thought of!It is perhaps well to meet this question in its strongest form, with its objectionable points in their most revolting aspect.I do not feel called upon to say one word to soften down any man’s sense of the horrors of war. Warishorrid—but sin is more horrid—certainly such sin as that of the old Canaanites. In fact war is horrid—not mainly because of the suffering but because of thesinthat may be in it. And this suggests the true and just reply to be made to the objection now before us,viz.that such a war as that of Israel against the Canaanites, waged in obedience to God; waged for the destruction of such sinners and to cleanse the earth from such unutterable abominations and pollutions, isnotdemoralizing—is not so either necessarily or even naturally; but if done in honest obedience to God and with a due sense of the grounds on which God commanded it, must have been the very opposite of demoralizing; must have educated the nation of Israel to a juster sense of the abominations of idolatry and of the righteous moral government of God over the wicked in the present world. It can not be doubted that these were the ends which God sought to secure in putting this service upon Israel. A lower object to be reached was to vacate the land of Canaan for Israel to occupy; but the far higher object was to wash the land of its moral pollutions; to break down and blot out nations too corrupt to live. The Lorddevolved this extirpation upon Israel that they might thereby get a deeper sense of his abhorrence of such sin—not to say also, a juster view of the intrinsic abominations which God commissioned them to punish.Or we may put the argument thus: Given—the great historic fact, the moral corruption of the nations of Canaan and the moral purpose of God to exterminate those nations for their corruption. The choice of methods lies betweenmiracleson the one hand, and the war-force of Israel, backed up by God’s providential agencies, on the other:—miracles as in the flood and on Sodom: or the war-commission given to his people Israel.Now consider.——1. Miracles had already been employed repeatedly before the eyes of mankind, and the Lord might for this reason wisely vary his methods, for the greater and better effect.2. As already argued, the moral effect upon Israel of being made the executioners of God’s righteous justice may be presumed to have been naturally wholesome. But not to push this argument—we may at least maintain,3. That seen historically—estimated in the light of the facts of the case, this methodwas morally impressive, instructive, elevating, wholesome. Recur to the first war—that against Amalek; and to the scope it gave for illustrations of prayer, and to the sense it inspired of their relations to their covenant God. Turn to the record of the war against Moab and Midian (Num.25 and 31). Mark its powerful protest against the lewdness involved in those forms of idol-worship, and note how Phineas arose to the sublime grandeur of the emergency and made a record for himself and for his whole tribe indeed in the history of the nation (Num.25: 11–13 andMal.2: 4–7). Study the wars of Joshua and the moral heroism developed there, and ask if any generation of Israel appear on the page of her national history, exhibiting a truer consecration to God or a more conscientious devotion to his will. And what shall we say of Deborah and Barak, and of the heroism that shines and gleams in the record of their achievements, or of the piety that flavors their triumphal song? The same may be said of the wars under David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and of the songs of praise and of proud triumph in Israel’s God which gave expression to the moral results of thosewars and victories. That man reads the history of the heroic age of Israel very imperfectly who does not see in it ample demonstration that staunch obedience to God in this matter of war against the idolatrous, corrupt Canaanites, fostered piety, developed Christian heroism and toned up the standard of morality. When they compromised, accepted tribute, and tried their own policy of living side by side with such idolaters instead of God’s policy of vigorous extermination, then came disaster, religious decline, and most perilous moral corruption.4. The great conflict of those early ages between God and Satan was fought on the point of idolatry—the real question being whether God or the devil should have the worship of men; whether the supremacy and the moral right to rule the world are with God or with Satan. This being the great conflict of the ages, it should not surprise us that God should let Israel’s land of promise be in a sort the battle-ground, and should bring into play the physical force of arms and let his covenant people come into the fight hand to hand against the hosts of his foes. This arrangement gave scope for his own hand in various providential agencies—thunder, hail-storm, the day prolonged miraculously; panics often smiting the hearts of his enemies, and victories that witnessed visibly to Jehovah’s present hand. In an age when men were waiting for God to manifest himself visibly and tangibly; when their spiritual perceptions were but dim, and when of necessity the first step in the process of revealing God to men demanded an appeal to the senses, it was certainly no mistake in wisdom for God to suffer this great fight to take on visible form and stand out palpably before human eyes. In the result God made it unmistakably manifest that his soul abhorred such unnatural and horrid crimes as those of the men of Canaan, and also that he had both the power and the will to inflict on them the extremest and most fearful judgments.
NATURALLYfollowing the national covenant (Ex.19) and the giving of the law from Sinai (Ex.20) and preliminary to the civil code—“the statutes and judgments”—comes in theTheocracy—a term used to designate the system of government established for the Hebrew people.
Here we may consider briefly the following points:
I.The Supreme Power.
II.The powers ofJehovah’s vicegerents—his chief executive officers.
III.Thegeneral assemblyor congregation, and theirelders.
IV.The scope afforded for self-government-democracy.
V.The fundamental principles of this entire system.
VI.Its union of church and state.
VII.Its principles and usages in respect towar, with a notice of the war-commission against the doomed Canaanites.
I.The Supreme Power.
God himself wasking. In every respect the supreme power was his. Precisely this is the sense of the term “theocracy”—a government of God.
This comprehensive fact appears in the following particulars:
1. God demanded supreme homage as their king (Ex.19: 6 andDeut.6: 4–15, and 7: 6–11, and 10: 12–21, and 33: 4, 5 and1 Sam.8: 6–8, and 10: 18, 19 andJudg.8: 23).
2. God enacted the statutes. He was the SupremeLawgiver. We sometimes speak of the “Mosaic code,” of the “statutes of Moses,” meaning by these phrases only that the statutes came from God to the people by the hand of Moses; never that Moses was himself theauthor of these statutes—the true legislator. (SeeEx.21: 1 andDeut.6: 1).
3. Godnominated the chief executive. He called Moses (Ex.3: 10, 12, and 4: 16 and1 Cor.10: 2); and Joshua (Num.27: 18–23 andDeut.3: 28, and 31: 3 andJosh.1 and 5: 13–15). The same was true of the Judges, raised up for special emergencies (Judg.2: 16, 18, and 3: 9, 15, and 4: 6, and 6: 12,etc.,etc.) God called the kings:—Saul (1 Sam.9: 17, and 10: 1); also David (1 Sam.13: 14, and 16: 1 and2 Sam.5: 2 andPs.78: 70, 71); and to name no more, Solomon (1 Chron.28: 5).
4. In all cases not otherwise provided for, the ultimate appeal was to God. In point we have (Num.16 and 17) a case of resistance to the authority of Moses—incipient rebellion. God interposed with his supreme authority. We have a case in civil law, not reached by the statutes,viz.the entailment of real estate in a family of daughters only. Moses brought it before the Lord for adjudication (Num.27: 5). A special provision respecting the marriage of daughters holding property in land became necessary: this new law was sought from God (Num.36: 6).——A criminal case occurred in which the law was not explicit; “it was not declared what should be done” with the criminal (Num.15: 32–36). The Lord gave them the law for the case.——In the case of Achan (Josh.7) the Lord interposed, not so much because there was no law for its decision as because the sin was flagrant and the demand for exemplary punishment was very great.——In cases which would appropriately require the calling of a Supreme Council, the people sought direction from God. (SeeJudg.1: 1, and 20: 18, 27, 28 and1 Sam.14: 37, and 23: 2, 4, 9–12, and 28: 6, and 30: 8 and2 Sam.2: 1). God made provision through the prophets for a direct revelation of his will to the people in special cases not otherwise provided for (Deut.18: 18).
5. In later times the demand of the people for a human king seemed to be constructive treason. It might be so understood, and therefore the Lord reasserted his prerogative, although he yielded to their demands (1 Sam.8: 6–9, and 10: 17–25).
6. It scarcely need be said that God bound himself by promise to reward the people with all national prosperityif obedient, and by threatening, to punish them with national calamity for disobedience. These points are expanded fullyLev.26 andDeut.chapters 27–30.——That God inflicted these threatened punishments early in their nation’s history may be seenNum.11: 33, and 16: 1–50.
Thus it appears that in every appropriate way and in numerous vital respects God manifested his supreme authority over his people Israel.
II.The powers of Jehovah’s vicegerent.
Of this we have illustrations in the cases of Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and the kings. These cases show that they were precisely the Lord’s prime ministers, commissioned to execute his will. If a law touching the case existed and its application was clear, they simply adjudicated the case and put the law in force. If no statute touching the case was extant, they sought one. If the application of the law baffled their wisdom, they sought counsel from God. Hence the Scriptures speak of these prime ministers as the Lord’s “servants,” to serve him in this high capacity. (SeeNum.12: 7 andHeb.3: 2, 5 andJosh.1: 1, 2, and 5: 13–15 and2 Sam.7: 8,etc.)
Of the officers holding under the chief executive there is no occasion to speak in great detail. The system of subordinate judges—lower courts—has come to view in the history of Jethro (Ex.18). In Canaan they held their courts in the gates of large cities, and (for certain criminal cases) in the cities of refuge which were cities of the Levites—from which tribe judges seem largely to have been drawn.
The “elders”—“heads of the house of their fathers”—held important responsibilities—a fact due largely to the influence of the patriarchal system which had come down from the earliest times, the usages of which, therefore, had essentially the force of common law in Israel. It was in great measure due to them that after the death of Joshua the processes of government went on without any chief executive, with no king, and with no Supreme Judge except as the High Priest may have performed that function.
III.The General Assembly or Congregation, and the Elders.
We read of great conventions, congregations, assemblies, in which it is not definitely said thatall the peoplewere there; and also of convocations in which “all the people” were present. In some at least of the cases of the latter sort, the elders seem to have acted distinctly from the masses of the people, being the media of communication (as the case may be) between the Lord or his servant Moses of the one party and the people at large of the other. Thus shortly before the giving of the law from Sinai when God ratified a national covenant with the people, we read—“Moses called for the elders of the people and laid before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together and said—All that the Lord hath spoken we will do” (Ex.19: 7, 8). Moses spake to the peoplethroughtheir elders. It was naturally impossible that any one human voice could be heard by six hundred thousand men.——So in1 Sam.8: 4–10 “theeldersgathered together and said to Samuel, Make us a king;” “and the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken untothe voice of the people.” “And Samuel told all the words of the Lordunto the peoplethat asked of him a king.”——These elders—chiefs of the people—seem to have been a well-defined class. Note how they are designated (Num.1: 16); “These are the renowned [Heb.thecalled ones] of the congregation, princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of thousands in Israel.” AlsoNum.16: 2: “Two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation” [Heb.thecalled onesof the congregation,i. e.the men summoned to represent their constituents], “men of renown.”——The question will arise whether thesecalled men, the recognized heads and representatives of the people, held specially delegated powers; whether they were appointed for an occasion and were instructed by the people: or whether they held the headship, this representative power, by virtue of the ancient usages of the patriarchal system. The latter is the true view, for the patriarchal system had the prestige of common law; and we find not the least hint of anyelectionof these “heads of the house of their fathers” for any specialfunction—no notice of their receiving special instructions to act as delegated representatives of the people.——Let it be noted carefully that on all really great occasions when the vital issues of their covenant relation with God were pending, “all the people”—the solid masses—were convened, and of course their elders and high officers with them. We see such a case before Sinai (Ex.19); another, shortly before the death of Moses, in a solemn ratification of their national covenant: “Ye stand this dayall of youbefore the Lord your God; your captains of your tribes, your elders and your officers, with all the men of Israel” (Deut.29: 10–12), “that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God,”etc.——Again; after they had entered Canaan in the scene of rehearsing the blessings and the curses of the law fromMt.Gerizim andMt.Ebal: “And all Israel and their elders and officers and their judges, stood,”etc.(Josh.8: 33). See alsoJosh.23: 2 and 24: 1 andJudg.20: 1 and1 Sam.8. It was supremely appropriate that every man of Israel should give his voice and heart in these great national consecrations of themselves to their nation’s God. The Lord sought to call into action every mind—to make a deep moral impression on every heart. Therefore none could be exempted; no man could be excused for absence.
IV.The scope afforded under this system forself-government—democracy.
It is readily obvious that under this theocracy, the function oflegislatorswas out of the question. The people did not make their own laws: these weregiventhem—made by the Lord alone. It only remained for them to say whether they would accept the Lord their God as their Lawgiver and Supreme King. Such assent and consent on their part was appropriate; and precisely this they gave—as we may see in the case of the moral law of Sinai (Ex.19: 3–8 andDeut.5: 27, 28); and of all the statutes and judgments of their civil code (Ex.24: 3). This national recognition of God as Supreme Lawgiver was renewed from time to time with subsequent generations of Israel (Deut.29: 10–15 andJosh.24: 15–27 andNeh.10: 28, 29),etc.
Thus it appears that the laws under which they lived were not arbitrarily imposed upon them without their consent—much less, against their will; but only with their formal and solemn consent. So far forth, their government involved an element of freedom and of self-control. They were not tyrannously coerced into subjection to laws which they repudiated. A system of law, in itself most excellent and entirely unexceptionable, was presented to them for their adoption or rejection. They adopted it—apparently with the warmest approbation.
Essentially the same principle obtained in regard to their highest human executive officer. They did not nominate and choose Moses of their own motion. No caucus, no primary meeting, no formal election brought out his name as the choice of the people. The Lord alone raised up Moses, prepared him for the position he was to hold and brought him before the people. Then they received him as their leader (Ex.4: 29–31 and 20: 19 andDeut.5: 27). In the same manner they accepted Joshua (Josh.1: 16–18). In the case of Saul, their first king, the Lord nominated, and the people ratified his nomination (1 Sam.10: 24 and 11: 14, 15). The Lord called David also (1 Sam.16: 1–12), but the people accepted him as king and cordially ratified his divine nomination (2 Sam.5: 1–3). Through his prophet Nathan the Lord gave the kingdom to David’s posterity (2 Sam.7) and prophetically indicated Solomon (1 Chron.22: 8, 9 and1Kings 1: 13, 29, 30); but the people still gave their full-hearted consent (1Kings 1: 39, 40). The same powers were asserted by the people in the case of Rehoboam (1Kings 12: 1–20).
It should be specially noted that when the government assumed the form of ahumanmonarchy—an earthly king reigning under God in this real theocracy, it was a limited, not an absolute monarchy. The Mosaic law anticipated this change and imposed certain constitutional limitations upon the prospective king (Deut.17: 14–20). He must be one whom the Lord should choose; of native and not foreign birth; must not multiply horses, nor wives, nor treasures of silver and gold; must keep by him a copy of the law given through Moses, must read it and regard it as the constitutionunder which he reigned. When the demand for a king arose Samuel forewarned the people of the assumptions of power which, by the usages of mankind, they must expect in their king (1 Sam.8: 10–17), and took the precaution to put in writing “the manner of the kingdom”—the constitutional provisions and safe-guards under which he was to reign (1 Sam.10: 25). No copy of this constitution has come down to us; but it doubtless corresponded essentially with the limitations made by the law of Moses as inDeut.17: 14–20.
The voice of the people in self-government appears also in the appointment of the judges who were to administer the law in courts of justice. We have seen how the old patriarchal system was enlarged and modified at the suggestion of Jethro (Ex.18: 13–26). This first narrative seems to rest the appointment of these judges entirely with Moses; but his own more detailed account (Deut.1: 9–18) shows that the people were heard in the nomination: “Take you wise men and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. And ye answered me and said—The thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So I took the chief men of your tribes, wise men and known, and made them heads over you,”etc.Plainly these men had acquired position by merit, and held their place and power (before this special appointment) by the general consent of the people.——The general law in the case runs—“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates,etc., and they shall judge the people with just judgment” (Deut.16: 18).
Self-government is further developed in the independent action which we may notice occasionally in the several tribes. Especially in the period from Joshua to Saul, the several tribes acted singly, or in union with one or more of their fellow-tribes at their option (Judg.1: 1–3, 22 and 4: 10 and 7: 23, 24 and 8: 23, and 20: 11–46). Special cases of this independent action appear in1 Chron.4: 41–43 and 5: 18–23.——On great occasions, the people convened en masse for deliberation and united action as inJosh.22: 12, 16 and 23: 2 andJudg.20 and 21.——Obviously they assumed the right to disapprove the action of their princes as in the case of the Gibeonites (Josh.9: 18, 19)—“All the congregation murmured against the princes.”
V.The Fundamental Principles of this entire System.
1. Jehovah being their Supreme King, supreme love and worship must be rendered to him.
2. Idolatry was a state offense, nothing less than high treason, and therefore a capital crime, punishable with death. Any one of their cities, given to idolatry, must be utterly exterminated (Deut.13: 1–18 and 17: 2–7).
3. The most stringent laws ordained non-intercourse with idolatrous nations and non-conformity to their customs. Inter-marriages with them were strictly prohibited; trade and commerce were at least discouraged if not forbidden. These laws may be seen inEx.34: 11–17 andDeut.7: 1–5, 16, 23–26; and cases of their application inNum.25 and 31; also in Ezra 9 and 10 andNeh.13: 23–31.
Sundry customs, some of which might in themselves be of small account, were prohibited, apparently because associated with idolatry in the usages of other nations and in the ideas of the people of Israel (Deut.14: 1–21 andLev.20: 23–26). The distinction between clean and unclean beasts seems to fall under this principle.
4. This Hebrew Theocracy was engrafted upon a previously existing patriarchal government, and therefore it recognized this previous system as substantially the common law of the land, to be in force except so far as modified by special legislation under the new regime given from the Lord through Moses. This principle is illustrated in the powers and functions of theelders, known as “heads of the house of their fathers”; “princes”; “heads of the thousands of Israel” (Ex.6: 25, andNum.3: 24, 30, 35, and 1: 16, and 10: 4).
5. It was manifestly an accepted principle, underlying the entire system, to give the people as wide a range of free responsible action as a theocratic government would admit. Democracy must of necessity be subordinate totheocracy; the self-ruling of the people must find its placeunderthe supreme ruling of Jehovah. Consequently the law must come entire from God, not from the people. The chief executive must receive his commission from God, though he might be formally accepted and his appointment in this way ratified by the people. The Lord sought the willing homage of thepeople—the obedience of their heart—and therefore encouraged the most cheerful and hearty expression of their will and of their homage in entering into covenant with himself, and from time to time in solemnly renewing it. He would have them feel that they were the people of the Lord by their own real consent and hearty acceptance. So much democracy therefore entered into their scheme of national polity. So much there might be. In the nature of a theocracy, there could not be more.
6. As elsewhere shown, the statutes were within certain limits graduated in moral tone to the moral status of the people, being as high as they would bear—as near theoretical perfection as could be made effective—i. e.as could secure a general obedience.
VI.Its union of Church and State.
By this modern phrase is currently meant the subordination of the church to the civil or state authorities. Such a union in the Hebrew nation was a natural consequent upon a theocratic government. The civil code coming from God himself, the religious code must come from him by obvious fitness, not to say necessity. In his entire policy with Israel, God sought the most effective moral culture. We find this purpose underlying the entire civil government with its code of civil laws; it must of course underlie their religious institutions. Hence the church and the state were worked not only by the same hand but for the same general purpose.
In practice certain crimes against the religious law were enforced by the state. Idolatry was a state offense, punishable as other state crimes. So of perjury and blasphemy. (Deut.19: 16–19.)——It was due to the common relations of church and state that to a great extent the religious orders were civil judges. In the absence of a king or other chief executive, the High Priest seems to have held that function. (SeeDeut.17: 12 and2 Chron.19: 8–11). The subordinate judges were largely taken from the priests and Levites (Deut.21: 5, and 33: 10).
Since the system provided for an ultimate appeal to God, extreme cases were taken up for the sake of such appeal to the one place which was for the time the seatof God’s special manifestations to his people (Deut.17: 8–13, and 19: 17).
The wisdom of this joint action of the civil law with the religious admits in their case of no question. It may suffice to refer in proof to the omnipresent power of idolatry through all the ages from Moses to the captivity, to show the vital need of the civil arm to sustain the true worship of God and save the nation. On the other hand the state was the stronger for her religious institutions. The great religious festivals, bringing the masses of the male population from every tribe three times a year for a sacred week of communion must have been of priceless value in sustaining the national unity and a national patriotism. Jeroboam was sharp enough to see that the calves at Bethel and Dan must take the place of the festivals at Jerusalem, or his kingdom would melt away from under him, and his people give their civil fealty as well as their religious homage at the old center. Hezekiah would have brought the ten tribes back if he could have drawn their people in a body to the great Passover, as he sought to do.——Hence it is quite safe to say that the state was the stronger for the national religion, and their religion the stronger for the aid of the state.——Yet let none rush to the inference that such mutual relations of church and state are therefore wise and useful in the Christian age of the world. The providences of God shut off from the primitive church the possibility of such union and shut up Christianity to make her first great conquests under the sturdy opposition of the greatest civil power of the age. Experience has long since disproved the inference above referred to. The cases are too dissimilar to admit of any logical reasoning from that age to this.
In the Hebrew economy we are struck with the fact that both the religious and the civil code were enforced chiefly by considerations and influences, rewards and punishments, coming in from the present world—not from the future. Let it be supposed that religious duties were in our age enforced by such motives chiefly—and we should see at a glance the change that has passed over the world since Moses uttered the concluding chapters of Deuteronomy. Idolatry, then the head sin of the ages, was fitly resisted, not only by thecivil arm, but by the most fearful array of civil pains and penalties. The capital sins of Christendom are now of quite other sort; and the motives to repentance come appropriately from the other worlds yet before us and not from this. It may be difficult for us to realize how stern the necessity was that God should in the earlier ages govern the world, and not least his own people, by motives from the visible and not from the invisible world—from earth and time and the present life, and not from the eternal, the future and yet unseen state.
[This subject will receive further attention near the close of this volume.]
VII.The principles and usages of the Hebrew code in respect to war; with some notice of thewar-edictfor the extirpation of the Canaanites.
By their constitution the war-power was with God. The power and the right to declare war rested in him alone. He forbade them to make war on Edom; he commanded them to exterminate Amalek and the devoted nations of Canaan, and to “vex the Midianites and smite them”. (As to Edom, seeDeut.2: 5; as to Amalek,Ex.17: 8, 14, 16 andDeut.25: 17–19; as to the Midianites,Num.25: 17, 18, and 31:).——Their rulers were expected to bring the question before the Lord—Shall I in this case go up to battle, or shall I forbear? (Judg.1: 1, and 20: 18, 23, 28).——Any one tribe might go out to war alone, or might call in the aid of another or of all:—a fact which shows that the tribes were confederated rather than united and consolidated. On great occasions, of common danger, all the tribes associated together, and, with certain specified exceptions, every man able for war was required to go. The exceptions are given (Deut.20: 5–8);viz.the man who had built a house, but had not dedicated it; he who had planted a vineyard but had not eaten of its fruits; he who had betrothed a wife, yet had not taken her; and finally, every fearful and faint-hearted man;—i. e.all who had special attractions homeward which might tempt them to desert the ranks, and they whose timid hearts made them worthless and might be contagious:—in the words of the statute, “Lest his brother’sheart faint as well as his heart.” Personal heroism was of prime account—a heroism inspired by faith in Israel’s God. The history every-where shows that such armies, fired with religious enthusiasm, strong by faith in the mighty God, were terrible in battle, and for the most part certain of victory. Often as we read these annals of the wars of Israel, we can not resist the conviction that they were means of grace as well as of manhood—an illustration of which may be seen in David before Goliath the Philistine (1 Sam.17).——When only a small number of men were needed, they were chosen, picked men, naturally the brave, skilled, and renowned. See Joshua’s first battle (Ex.17: 9); his assault upon Ai (Josh.7: 7), and the sifting of Gideon’s army (Judg.7: 1–8).
The grant of Canaan to Israel and the commission to extirpate the Canaanites.
These points call for special examination.
It has been objected against the morality of the Old Testament Scriptures that this war-law enjoining the extirpation of the Canaanites was cruel and unjust; hence that it either misrepresents God and therefore disproves the divine authority of the Old Testament; or if it truly represents the God of the Bible, then he does not deserve the homage and the love of his creatures.——These are grave charges and should be candidly examined.
The grant of Canaan and the commission to destroy the Canaanites have been vindicated by Michaelis and others on the following grounds.
1. The right of prior possession and occupation.
2. This right kept good by burial there, and not by any means relinquished when Jacob was driven by stress of famine into Egypt and then detained there by force.
3. This right protected according to their ability by reassertion, perpetually holding forth their purpose to return and their recognition of Canaan as their land of promise.
4. That no argument prejudicial to their right of war against the Canaanites can be drawn from the absence of formal manifesto, setting forth the causes of the war, inasmuch as such a setting forth of groundsand causes of war is a thing of modern and not of ancient usage.
This course of argument in defense of the war-law in question seems to me defective and quite below the truth in the following points:
1. Its primary position—prior occupancy—seems not fully made out.
2. It makes too little account of God’s original and perfect title to all the earth, and his consequent right to give his people any portion of it at his pleasure.
3. It fails to give due prominence to the moral grounds assigned by God himself for the extirpation of the Canaanites,viz.their extreme debasement in character; their abominable wickedness; their horrible violations of the common humanities of social life.
As to prior occupation, Michaelis says the original home of the Canaanites was Arabia; that Herodotus testifies that at first they dwelt near the Red Sea; Justin, that they had another country before they came to Palestine; and Abulfeda that they dwelt in Arabia. But in proof that they were in Palestine before Abraham was, Moses affirms (Gen.12: 6) that when Abram first passed through, “the Canaanite was then in the land;” also that when Abram and Lot, being rich in cattle and “the land unable to bear them,” “the Canaanite and the Perizzite were then in the land” (Gen.13: 7); and further still in his earliest account of the location of primitive families after the flood, he says—“The border of the Canaanites was from Sidon as thou comest to Gerar unto Gaza as thou goest to Sodom and Gomorrah,”etc.(Gen.10: 19). This is the oldest known historic testimony, and unquestionably locates the Canaanites in the original land of Canaan.——Moreover, it is said that Abraham went with his flocks and herds wherever he would as if lord of the country. It may be replied—So apparently did the Canaanites also. If Abraham dug wells, so did they; if he buried his dead there, so did they—with this incidental fact in their favor;viz.that Abraham bought ground of them and paid money for his cemetery at Macpelah. This special argument from prior possession can scarcely be sustained.
But it may be maintained that Abram was therevery early; and what is more, God’s first call to him to leave his native country named Canaan as his promised land; and every successive promise reaffirmed this gift. Abraham’s title to Canaan therefore rests on God’s right to give a perfect title. If the Lord of heaven and earth, the Great Creator of all lands in all the ends of the earth had not a right to give Canaan to Abraham and his posterity, thenhe is not God. Unquestionably he assumed this right and in the exercise of it pledged Canaan to the posterity of Abraham with perpetual reiteration and most solemn covenant. This fact is the more significant because it is the first step in a series of acts all of which aimed to reveal himself before the world of mankind as the true God and the Lord of the whole earth. With these ends in view he chose this people and made them his own; manifested himself among them and before all the world as their covenant-keeping God; gave them Canaan, and by manifold miracles helped them to gain possession of it. Nor is this argument weakened by the fact that by means of a special series of providences he led them down into Egypt to dwell there 430 years; suffering the Canaanites meanwhile to hold Canaan, not driving them out earlier because “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full” (Gen.15: 16). Here is suggested the real ground on which the edict for extirpating the Canaanites was made to rest. God suffered them to remain there until they had forfeited their title not to Canaan alone, but to life itself and to any further national existence.
This point is too vital to be passed without careful attention. InLev.18 we meet with a series of crimes against moral purity—violations of the seventh commandment—culminating in sodomy and bestiality; and classed with these is the burning of children in the worship of Moloch (v.21). Then God says—“Defile not yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you, andthe land is defiled; therefore do I visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.”——The same sentiments are repeated (vs.26–30). Unnatural lusts had sunk both men and women not only down to a level with beasts, but evenbelow them. Idolatry had so far quenched the sweet humanities from the parental heart that fathers and mothers could burn their own sons and daughters to Moloch. These horrible, unnatural crimes were not only an outrage against the heart of God the Great Father; but, as he forcibly puts it, they defiled the very land itself. The earth was nauseated with these abominations and spued out such inhabitants. God’s fair and much abused world could bear them no longer. Nature herself lifted her voice of protest against such wickedness; or, as the strong figure suggests, her stomach sickened even to nausea over such unnatural lusts and such a torturing death of innocent sons and daughters. What could a holy and righteous God do with such a people but wipe them out of existence and wash the land they had defiled clean of such pollutions?——Lev.20 reiterates substantially the same list of abominations against which God warns his people;—“Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my judgments and do them, that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein,spue you not out. And ye shall not walk in the manner of the nations which I cast out before you; for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them” (vs.22, 23).——Perfectly definite and explicit is the repetition of the same point inDeut.12: 30, 31. When the Lord shall have cut off the Canaanites before thee, be not snared into their ways; inquire not after their gods and ways of worship:—“Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God, for every abomination to the Lord which he hateth have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods.” No fact could be more telling; none more damning. A people so given up to devil-worship as to burn their own offspring at his supposed behest, must be too debased and corrupt to live! The earth itself cries out against them, demanding their utter extirpation!
A more full description of the varieties and forms of the devil-worship and fellowship common among the Canaanites may be seen inDeut.18: 9–14, to which it must suffice to refer the reader.
I am well aware that some Jewish doctors, wishing to vindicate their fathers from crimes so unnatural have sought to prove that “causing children to pass throughthe fire” was a rite of purification and not actual murder. The attempt is futile:——(1.) Because some of the expressions are perfectly unequivocal;e. g.—“Even their sons have they burnt in the fire to their Gods” (Deut.12: 31). See also the cases in2Kings 17: 31, and2 Chron.28: 3, andJer.7: 31, and 19: 5.——(2.) The phrase—“To make to pass through the fire unto their gods” is used in the same sense as the phrase—“to burn in the fire.”——(3.) That the Phenicians and Carthagenians, closely related to the ancient Canaanites, did offer human sacrifices is a well established fact of history. (See Smith’s Bible Dictionary; “Moloch.”)
We have seen that the title of Israel to Canaan falls back upon God’s prior title—upon his right to deed it to whom he would. On the same principle the question whether it was right and just for them to extirpate the Canaanites falls back upon two prior questions—(a.) Was it right and just for God to extirpate them?——(b.) Was it wise for Him to command the Israelites to do this work of extirpation, rather than do it himself by miracle, and without human hands? Here are our two great questions.
(a.) As to the first—the right of God to destroy them for their crimes and the justice of doing it—I see not how it can be denied or questioned without denying to God the right to punish sin at all. Has God any right to govern his own universe—any right to resist the influence of sin and rebellion in his kingdom—any right to protect innocent children from being burned to death in homage to the devil? Alas for the universe if this doctrine can be maintained!——Truly we may say—If God has no right to exterminate from the earth any one individual sinner, or a nation of many thousands who are too corrupt to live, then he lacks the essential rights of a God! If he has not the power to do it, he lacks the power necessary to a God. If he has not the firmness—the nerve (shall we say?)—the sense of justice and right that would forbid his evading the duty, then he lacks the essential attributes of a God. If he has so little love for his offspring that he can see their welfare sacrificed in the worship of the devil and in the sweep of unutterable social pollutions, then he is incompetent to govern a world of sinners!
(b.) But the objector will make his chief stand upon the secondary question—Was it wise for God to employ Israel to extirpate the corrupt Canaanites?
The objector will perhaps say—He might have sunk all Canaan under a second flood like that of Noah’s time, and no complaint could stand against him. He might have engulfed those cities in fire as he did guilty Sodom, and all the living, cognizant of the moral grounds of the act, would have said, Amen! But that he should set such an example ofwar—the most horrid of all wars—before the nations of all history—before the ages of all time, giving it his holy sanction—nay more, setting his own most holy people to the bloody work—this is unpardonable. That he should put them to such barbarities—subject them to such demoralization of all the finer sensibilities of the human soul, seems too horrid to be thought of!
It is perhaps well to meet this question in its strongest form, with its objectionable points in their most revolting aspect.
I do not feel called upon to say one word to soften down any man’s sense of the horrors of war. Warishorrid—but sin is more horrid—certainly such sin as that of the old Canaanites. In fact war is horrid—not mainly because of the suffering but because of thesinthat may be in it. And this suggests the true and just reply to be made to the objection now before us,viz.that such a war as that of Israel against the Canaanites, waged in obedience to God; waged for the destruction of such sinners and to cleanse the earth from such unutterable abominations and pollutions, isnotdemoralizing—is not so either necessarily or even naturally; but if done in honest obedience to God and with a due sense of the grounds on which God commanded it, must have been the very opposite of demoralizing; must have educated the nation of Israel to a juster sense of the abominations of idolatry and of the righteous moral government of God over the wicked in the present world. It can not be doubted that these were the ends which God sought to secure in putting this service upon Israel. A lower object to be reached was to vacate the land of Canaan for Israel to occupy; but the far higher object was to wash the land of its moral pollutions; to break down and blot out nations too corrupt to live. The Lorddevolved this extirpation upon Israel that they might thereby get a deeper sense of his abhorrence of such sin—not to say also, a juster view of the intrinsic abominations which God commissioned them to punish.
Or we may put the argument thus: Given—the great historic fact, the moral corruption of the nations of Canaan and the moral purpose of God to exterminate those nations for their corruption. The choice of methods lies betweenmiracleson the one hand, and the war-force of Israel, backed up by God’s providential agencies, on the other:—miracles as in the flood and on Sodom: or the war-commission given to his people Israel.
Now consider.——1. Miracles had already been employed repeatedly before the eyes of mankind, and the Lord might for this reason wisely vary his methods, for the greater and better effect.
2. As already argued, the moral effect upon Israel of being made the executioners of God’s righteous justice may be presumed to have been naturally wholesome. But not to push this argument—we may at least maintain,
3. That seen historically—estimated in the light of the facts of the case, this methodwas morally impressive, instructive, elevating, wholesome. Recur to the first war—that against Amalek; and to the scope it gave for illustrations of prayer, and to the sense it inspired of their relations to their covenant God. Turn to the record of the war against Moab and Midian (Num.25 and 31). Mark its powerful protest against the lewdness involved in those forms of idol-worship, and note how Phineas arose to the sublime grandeur of the emergency and made a record for himself and for his whole tribe indeed in the history of the nation (Num.25: 11–13 andMal.2: 4–7). Study the wars of Joshua and the moral heroism developed there, and ask if any generation of Israel appear on the page of her national history, exhibiting a truer consecration to God or a more conscientious devotion to his will. And what shall we say of Deborah and Barak, and of the heroism that shines and gleams in the record of their achievements, or of the piety that flavors their triumphal song? The same may be said of the wars under David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah, and of the songs of praise and of proud triumph in Israel’s God which gave expression to the moral results of thosewars and victories. That man reads the history of the heroic age of Israel very imperfectly who does not see in it ample demonstration that staunch obedience to God in this matter of war against the idolatrous, corrupt Canaanites, fostered piety, developed Christian heroism and toned up the standard of morality. When they compromised, accepted tribute, and tried their own policy of living side by side with such idolaters instead of God’s policy of vigorous extermination, then came disaster, religious decline, and most perilous moral corruption.
4. The great conflict of those early ages between God and Satan was fought on the point of idolatry—the real question being whether God or the devil should have the worship of men; whether the supremacy and the moral right to rule the world are with God or with Satan. This being the great conflict of the ages, it should not surprise us that God should let Israel’s land of promise be in a sort the battle-ground, and should bring into play the physical force of arms and let his covenant people come into the fight hand to hand against the hosts of his foes. This arrangement gave scope for his own hand in various providential agencies—thunder, hail-storm, the day prolonged miraculously; panics often smiting the hearts of his enemies, and victories that witnessed visibly to Jehovah’s present hand. In an age when men were waiting for God to manifest himself visibly and tangibly; when their spiritual perceptions were but dim, and when of necessity the first step in the process of revealing God to men demanded an appeal to the senses, it was certainly no mistake in wisdom for God to suffer this great fight to take on visible form and stand out palpably before human eyes. In the result God made it unmistakably manifest that his soul abhorred such unnatural and horrid crimes as those of the men of Canaan, and also that he had both the power and the will to inflict on them the extremest and most fearful judgments.