Ah, interesting. Wisdom reaches the thorny topic of driving the Canaanites out of their land, so that the Israelites could have it. People who’ve been following me through the Bible will know that this has been a bone of contention in my journey for a long time.
This book has a particular take on it. the Canaanites, apparently, were uniquely evil as a race, and deserved what was coming to them. God was in fact merciful, he could have wiped them out in a blink of an eye, as their sins deserved, but he allowed them to be eradicated gradually, giving them time to repent.
Whatever you may think of the rights and wrongs of one nation dispossessing another, it is interesting that Wisdom here tries to find a justification for it. It suggests that there is some guilt in the Israelite psyche for what they did.
I suppose I’d better tell you what I think.
I don’t condone colonial dispossession of people from their lands, but I acknowledge that it’s always happened. Western Europeans did it to native Americans, to Australian aborigines, to Africans and Indians and many others. The Canaanites themselves displaced others who had lived in the fertile land before them, and that part of the world has been fought over constantly throughout history. Competition over good land is a fact of life. Where it gets difficult is where one group asserts a divine right to own the land, and uses that to justify their occupation and oppression of others. Modern day Israel, I’m talking to you!
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