“And it came to pass, when all the kings which were on this side Jordan, in the hills, and in the valleys, and in all the coasts of the great sea over against Lebanon, the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, heard thereof…”-Joshua 9:1
Yesterday we talked about the 6-nation states who decided to gang up to battle against the Israelites led by Joshua.
However, not all the people groups living in the land of Canaan felt so ballsy and bold.
The leaders of Gibeon obviously were quaking in their boots because they attempted a deceitful but non-violent means to avoid being slaughtered by Israel.
I’ll be getting into a deep discussion about the Gibeonites and their sly ways later, but before that, let me clear up a misunderstanding a lot of folks have about the so-called Canaanites and the many other tribes and nations that resided in the Holy Land.
First and foremost, understand that “Canaan” is a name referring to a whole region.
It would be just the same as me saying Asia.
Canaan or KENA’NI in Hebrew was not a self-ruling nation in and of itself.
Got it?
Again, when the Bible speaks of the “Land of Canaan”, it isn’t any different than saying Europe, the Middle East or Asia.
For example, there ain’t no such a thing as the nation of Asia (or even the nation of Europe for that matter).
And there isn’t any single people group, tribe or nationality of Asia.
When I say someone’s Asian, I’m referring to someone who either resides or hails from that region or whose ancestors hailed from that region.
Asians identify themselves according to specific nationalities such as Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Singaporean, Korean and so on.
It’s the same thing with the six nation states that decided to band their forces together to attack Israel.
Sure, the Scriptures will sometimes loosely refer to all the residents residing in the region of Canaan as “Canaanites”, but that’s not how they identified themselves.
It was only those who were specifically descended from the Tribe of Canaan that called themselves Canaanites.
Recall that Canaan was the grandson of Noah who was cursed because of his father Ham’s ungodly behavior when he walked into Noah’s tent when he was sprawled out naked and in a drunken stupor.
Bottomline, while the whole Land of Canaan was named after the Tribe of Canaan, the truth is this tribe only occupied some of the towns, villages and cities in the region.
There were tons of other tribes and people groups who lived in the land of Canaan who would eventually come face to face with the wrath of God represented by Joshua and his army.
Leave a Reply