Main news for 6 August 2021

The land conquered by the Hebrews who came from Egypt was, of course, not empty. There were already cities, villages, fields, gardens, vineyards. The Hebrew people received all this "for free." In reality, of course, God's people found nothing free on the land given by God. When we read in the Bible about the conquest of Palestine, it is important to remember that this conquest did not mean that the local inhabitants disappeared forever, were slaughtered or expelled, and the conquerors received everything they owned ready-made.

Many cities were indeed taken by storm and destroyed, others surrendered without a fight, and not all local tribes resisted the conquerors. But even when the issue was the conquest of a city and its destruction, no one moved into other people's houses. The sacred writer's words cannot be understood literally. Yet they are unconditionally true with regard to the Hebrews' entering a life new to them and much more comfortable than in nomadic times.

They received a whole civilization ready-made, which, by the way, they mastered quickly and firmly: within only one or two generations the Hebrews turned from nomads into farmers and craftsmen, learning everything the local inhabitants knew. And for this they had to thank only God, who led them to the land He had promised and gave them the opportunity to conquer it.

Meanwhile, their gratitude was far from always adequate; more often one had to speak of "gratitude" in quotation marks: after the conquest of Palestine, paganism, the worship of local Palestinian gods, began spreading widely among the Hebrew people, strangely combining with elements of Yahwism.

Speaking humanly, there was nothing surprising here: the Hebrews learned everything from their neighbors, they adopted their way of life, and in such a situation adopting the worship of local gods was more than natural. But this very naturalness was what God's people had to avoid, for in this way they were in fact betraying and losing the One who had given them the land they loved so much. It seemed to many that love for the land meant love for the local gods as well.

In reality, precisely for the sake of love for the land given by God, it was necessary to reject the gods that pagans thought protected it. But far from everyone understood this; those who did were a minority. God's people had to pass through exile, had to lose the land given by God, in order to understand this simple but vital truth. To understand it so as never again to repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, who turned away from God for the sake of the land He had given.