NOTES for Jos 24:13

The land that the Hebrews who came from Egypt conquered was, of course, not empty. There were already cities, villages, fields, gardens, and vineyards there. The Hebrew people received all this "for free." In reality, of course, the people of God 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 vanished forever, were slaughtered or expelled, and the conquerors received everything they had 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 it was a matter of conquering a city and destroying it, no one moved into other people's houses. The words of the sacred writer cannot be understood literally. Yet they are certainly true with regard to the Hebrews' entry into a life that was new for them and far more comfortable than life in nomadic times.

They received an entire civilization ready-made, and, incidentally, mastered it quickly and firmly: over the span of only one or two generations the Hebrews turned from nomads into farmers and artisans, learning everything the local inhabitants knew how to do. And for this they had to thank only God, Who had brought them to the promised land and given 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 began to spread widely among the Hebrew people, the worship of local Palestinian gods, which was strangely combined among them with elements of Yahwism.

Humanly speaking, there was nothing surprising here: the Hebrews learned everything from their neighbors, adopted their way of life, and in such a situation adopting the worship of local gods was more than natural. But it was precisely this naturalness that the people of God had to avoid: in this way they were in fact betraying and losing the One Who had given them the land they loved so much. To many it seemed that love for the land also meant love for the local gods.

In reality, precisely for the sake of love for the land given by God, it was necessary to reject the gods that, as the pagans thought, protected it. But not everyone understood this; those who did were a minority. The people of God had to pass through exile; they had to lose the land given by God in order to understand this simple but vitally important truth. They had to understand it so that they would never again repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, who turned away from God for the sake of the land He had given.