Lecture 28: The Conquest, the Canaanites, and the Promise Kept and Still Waiting

The lecture, section by section

1. The shelf thins out

   Publishers print what preachers buy, and since few preach the Former Prophets, reliable resources thin out after the Torah. Trent Butler's Word commentary is the strongest exegetically, its author having grown steadily more conservative since writing it; the starred first buy is David Howard Jr. in the NAC, a series that stays excellent across these books. And for exposition Essex commends Dale Ralph Davis without reserve: a fine Hebrew scholar and a wit, whose No Falling Words on Joshua models how to preach these narratives.

2. Three substitute conquests

   Because archaeology, as critics read it, seems not to support a unified invasion, alternative models have multiplied, surveyed in Merrill's Kingdom of Priests. Peaceful infiltration has peasants drifting in from outside over generations until they simply take over; the peasants' revolt model makes Israel an internal Canaanite uprising whose religion followed the revolt; the emergence model has farmers slowly prevailing over others until an Israel appears late in the period, its conquest stories devised afterward. Essex's verdict is short: once the Bible's history is overthrown, you can conjure as many models as you like. The biblical account is plain, one people brought out of Egypt, organized as an army, led by Joshua under Yahweh's own direction.

3. The ethical stumbling block

   Before the historical objection there was the ethical one: how could a loving God command the death of every Canaanite? Skeptics read Joshua almost relieved at Israel's disobedience, as if failure were the moral high ground. Evangelicals cannot take that road; Deuteronomy 7 gives the command, Jericho was placed wholly under the ban by Yahweh's own strategy, and Achan died for touching what was devoted. Nor is the answer the old two-gods theory of broad Christendom, wrath in the Old Testament, love in the New, for the Scriptures reveal one God, compassionate and gracious and a righteous judge of sin.

4. Four views, and where Essex lands

   Zondervan's Show Them No Mercy gathers four evangelical answers. Radical discontinuity treats wrath as a strange, rarely revealed attribute, and reads, Essex notes, nearly like liberalism. Moderate discontinuity, written by Merrill, is essentially Essex's own position: the command was given to Israel, not the church, and God has the full right to bring death upon rebels, for if he did not, what becomes of the final judgment? Eschatological continuity reads the Canaanite judgment as a prototype of the last judgment, which is true as far as it goes; spiritual continuity sees God judging rebels directly and indirectly all through history. And the Latter Prophets settle the deepest point: the God who sent Israel against Canaan is the same God who raised Assyria and Babylon against rebel Israel and Judah.

5. The question that remains

   Neither the historical nor the ethical debate belongs in the synopsis paper; the question that does is exegetical. How does the book of Joshua relate to the Abrahamic promise of the land? It is, Essex says, the key interpretive issue of the book for those who accept its history and have made their ethical peace.

6. Measuring the maps

   Set the maps side by side. The tribal allotments of chapters 13 to 21 run far in every direction, Asher's portion reaching Tyre and Sidon, land no text ever records Asher possessing. The promise runs farther still: Joshua 1:4 draws it from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great river Euphrates and out to the sea, matching Genesis 15 and Numbers 34. Even the Davidic and Solomonic empire of 1 Kings 4, four centuries later, only approaches those lines, and much of that was vassal territory where Israel never dwelt. At no point in the Old Testament did Israel inhabit all that was promised, or even all that was allotted.

7. And yet: not one promise failed

   Now the tension bites. Joshua 21:43 to 45 declares that the Lord gave Israel all the land he swore to their fathers, that they possessed it and lived in it, that he gave them rest on every side, and that not one good promise failed. How can that stand beside chapter 13's very much of the land remains, and the refrain they did not drive them out? The book itself asserts both, so both must be true at once.

8. One verb, two aspects

   Howard's commentary resolves it through the Hebrew verb natan, to give, tracked through every occurrence in the book. The land was God's gift; God also gave its peoples into Israel's hand; and he was doing so in Joshua's day in fulfillment of his promises. But the giving is viewed from two perspectives. In the perfect, the giving is complete: the land already belongs to Israel, the title and rights conferred, the organized resistance crushed, everything open before them. In the imperfect and participle, the giving is still under way, imminent or in process, completed only as Israel actually possesses and dwells. In both, God is the giver and the guarantor.

9. Fulfilled, and still future

   So the answer is yes and no, and each honestly. From God's side, yes: he gave the land in full, title conferred, promises kept, which is exactly what 21:43 to 45 celebrates in the perfect tense. From Israel's side, no: they never possessed and dwelt in the land to the extent of the promise, and to that extent the Abrahamic land promise still awaits its fulfillment. The Latter Prophets confirm the reading: they do not look back to Joshua as the promise's final settlement but forward, to a restoration in which Israel will at last both receive and inhabit all that was sworn.

1. Essex insists the ban was Yahweh's righteous command, not Israel's cruelty baptized, and ties it to the reality of final judgment. How does taking God's judgment seriously in Joshua change the way you speak about the gospel's warnings today?

2. Not one good promise failed, and yet much land remained: God's giving was complete while Israel's possessing was not. Where in your own life is there a gap between what God has given and what you have actually moved in to enjoy?

3. When archaeology or any outside authority seems to contradict Scripture, the models multiply. What does this lecture's approach teach about where final authority rests, and how would you counsel a believer shaken by a confident academic claim?