Then in Joshua 12 we have a catalog of the various kings that they conquered, with their kingdoms, all given in detail. It is a retrospective glance at the victories which the people had won, and the natural close of this portion of the book. The rest of the book does not consist of the wars of Jehovah so much as of the details of plotting the several portions of the land which had been already gained. They had defeated some of the Canaanites, but still there were many of the accursed that were not yet dispossessed of the inheritance given by God to Israel. On this I do not dwell, but merely refer to it. The important principles which lie beyond can only be brought out now in a cursory view.
Thus Joshua. 12 is a summary of the conquests of Israel: first, those of Moses on the other side of Jordan (Josh. 12:2-62Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and ruled from Aroer, which is upon the bank of the river Arnon, and from the middle of the river, and from half Gilead, even unto the river Jabbok, which is the border of the children of Ammon; 3And from the plain to the sea of Chinneroth on the east, and unto the sea of the plain, even the salt sea on the east, the way to Beth-jeshimoth; and from the south, under Ashdoth-pisgah: 4And the coast of Og king of Bashan, which was of the remnant of the giants, that dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei, 5And reigned in mount Hermon, and in Salcah, and in all Bashan, unto the border of the Geshurites and the Maachathites, and half Gilead, the border of Sihon king of Heshbon. 6Them did Moses the servant of the Lord and the children of Israel smite: and Moses the servant of the Lord gave it for a possession unto the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh. (Joshua 12:2‑6)); next, those of Joshua on this side (Josh. 12:7-247And these are the kings of the country which Joshua and the children of Israel smote on this side Jordan on the west, from Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon even unto the mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir; which Joshua gave unto the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their divisions; 8In the mountains, and in the valleys, and in the plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in the south country; the Hittites, the Amorites, and the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: 9The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, which is beside Beth-el, one; 10The king of Jerusalem, one; the king of Hebron, one; 11The king of Jarmuth, one; the king of Lachish, one; 12The king of Eglon, one; the king of Gezer, one; 13The king of Debir, one; the king of Geder, one; 14The king of Hormah, one; the king of Arad, one; 15The king of Libnah, one; the king of Adullam, one; 16The king of Makkedah, one; the king of Beth-el, one; 17The king of Tappuah, one; the king of Hepher, one; 18The king of Aphek, one; the king of Lasharon, one; 19The king of Madon, one; the king of Hazor, one; 20The king of Shimron-meron, one; the king of Achshaph, one; 21The king of Taanach, one; the king of Megiddo, one; 22The king of Kedesh, one; the king of Jokneam of Carmel, one; 23The king of Dor in the coast of Dor, one; the king of the nations of Gilgal, one; 24The king of Tirzah, one: all the kings thirty and one. (Joshua 12:7‑24)). It will be noticed, however, that the kings are made prominent here. These were smitten if their people were not quite subdued, and their possessions became Israel's; nevertheless we must distinguish between title and actual entrance on it, as we shall see in the half of the book that follows.
To the believer it ought not to be a question whether Israel was justified in the conquest of Canaan; and the endeavors to soften the matter, whether by Jews or by Christians, are vain. It was righteous vengeance on earth, not wrath from heaven, still less grace reigning by righteousness as in the gospel. It is not well founded, if Scripture be our authority, that Joshua proposed flight or peace, with war as the unwilling alternative; nor is there any ground to suppose that the Canaanites would have been spared in case of surrender, whatever the mercy to individuals exceptionally. The Canaanites were devoted, in the most stringent and solemn manner, to utter destruction. It was not vengeance on the part of Israel, but of God, who was pleased to make His people executors of judgment.
On the other hand, Denteronomy 32:8 should be weighed: “when the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” God might have justly claimed all the world, but He was pleased to claim only the land of Canaan for the seed of Abraham. This is no Jewish fable, but the revealed will of God; and from the very call of Abraham it was certain that a land was to be distinctly given him—a land soon understood to be Canaan, however long the chosen people might have to wait for it. (See Gen. 15.) Scripture therefore is very far from being silent on God's resolve to take that land for Israel, though it was a part of His ways that their fathers should be pilgrims and strangers, while the Canaanite was then in the land.
Along with this would coalesce the moral necessity of judgment on its actual inhabitants (Gen. 15:1616But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. (Genesis 15:16)). Natural right of course it was not, but a divine gift, to be made good by the extermination of the enemy. But for this very reason it is absurd to argue that the God of the Old Testament is the same in character and working as the God of the New, unless earthly righteousness be the same as heavenly grace. It is to play into the hands of infidels if theology countenance such an illusion as the denial of the difference of dispensation, on the pretense that the difference is in form only with an essential agreement: only we must bear in mind that the former is excellent in its season, the latter perfect for eternity.
Undoubtedly, ever since sin came into the world, God is its righteous judge and avenger. In this very land the destruction of the cities of the plain was a standing witness to it; so did Israel prove in the wilderness, as well as in the land, and this up to the destruction of their city by the Romans. But New Testament time is not necessarily New Testament principle; nor is providential government in the world to be confounded with the principles of Christianity; nor temporal judgment with that of the secrets of the heart, the issue of which is the lake of fire.
But every Christian must feel that Jehovah was the roughly justified in visiting their iniquity upon the Canaanites; for indeed the land, according to the energetic language of Scripture, could not but vomit out its inhabitants because of their abominable idolatries and their unnatural crimes almost unspeakable. They had many warnings also, both in the judgment executed on the most notorious in the land at the beginning of God's ways with the fathers, and then again at the end when the children were brought out of Egypt and through the wilderness, with such wonders as did speak to their consciences, however they might brave all at the last.
But it is ridiculous to contend that the practical principle of the gospel, suffering for righteousness and for Christ's sake, is not in direct contrast with the calling of the Israelite, the appointed executor of divine wrath. The Christian ought to know better than either to question the propriety of the past, or to assimilate it with the present. He ought to know also that the Lord Jesus is Himself coming again, and this not more surely in grace to take us to be with Himself in the Father's house, than to appear in judgment of His adversaries, let them be Jews or heathen, or falsely professing Christians; for God is about to judge the habitable world by that man whom He has raised from the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is the confusion of the two distinct principles which does the mischief: for Christians in making them worldly-minded; for unbelievers in affording material for their unseemly scoffs. He who holds both without confusion alone adheres to the truth intelligently, and affords no countenance to the infidel, while he maintains his own proper separation from the world unto Christ. There are judgments yet to be inflicted, but upon apostate Christendom, and even apostate Judaism. Never will the church have in her hand a two-edged sword to execute vengeance on the heathen. This is an honor reserved for all Jewish saints (Psa. 149:66Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand; (Psalm 149:6)), not for Christians. We shall be at that time glorified. The only vengeance which the church can rightly execute is of a spiritual kind (2 Cor. 7; Eph. 6). It is the sheerest confusion to pervert such intimations as these into the work of the gospel, and to interpret them of destroying men's condition as heathen by the sword of the Spirit, and turning their antagonistic into a friendly position. God has made it as clear as light in His Word that there is to be an outpouring, first of providential judgments, ending with the ruin of Babylon, next of the Lord's own intervention in vengeance at the close of the present dispensation and the introduction of His reign of peace for a thousand years. But all this is as distinct from the ways of the gospel as from the state of things in eternity.
It is curious also to notice how modern Rabbinism approaches in this to modern theology. They do not hold the execution of divine vengeance in its plain and natural sense at the end of this age. They both soften down, the one for the Jew, the other for Christendom, the solemn threats of God into a sort of moral suasion—a conquest to be effected not by external violence, but by the exhibition of truth and righteousness putting to shame the adherents of falsehood and corruption. Alas it is not only with sneering infidels we have to do, but with real but half-hearted and wholly unintelligent believers who have ceased to be, or even understand, a true witness in the church for Christ, rejected in the world, but glorified on high. Hence they court and value worldly influence themselves, instead of maintaining our true place as a chaste virgin espoused to Christ, above the world through which we pass, and cast out by it, till we are caught up to meet the Lord, and He appears for its judgment.