Lecture IV THE INFLUENCE OF CANAAN

If the nation of Israel may be said to have been born in captivity, baptised in the Red Sea, and awakened to national consciousness at Mount Sinai, then the settlement in Canaan corresponds to the no less critical period of adolescence, when, training and tutelage being over, youth must choose its own path and fight its way in the world. Certain it is that the entrance into Canaan largely determined the future of this people, for it must have profoundly modified the national character, turning as it did nomadic tribes into a settled and civilised people; but above all, and what more concerns us, it proved extremely critical for the fate of that as yet untried revelation of Jehovah, which had still to win its way against the heathenism of the common people, and was now by this new experience called upon to measure its strength against the attraction of a competing faith.

The peculiar and pathetic love of the Jews for Canaan is largely due to the remembrance that it was not their own land but the long promised gift of Jehovah, standing therefore to all time as the material proof of His love for Israel; while their estimate of it was intensely deepened by the wilderness experience which preceded. That estimate seems to us somewhat exaggerated, for to-day Palestine has almost given up the struggle against the always threatening advance of the desert. It has certainly changed for the worse under neglect and misrule, but it can never have been a too indulgent land; only comparison with the bare and awful desert can have called forth the description, "a land flowing with milk and honey." With the long memory of restless nomadic life and the bitter thought of bondage, any land would seem welcome that offered them freedom and safety; while to those approaching it from the desert it seemed as fair and fruitful a land as men could desire.

All lands have contributed largely to the character of the nations they have reared, and the wilderness ancestry and the character of Canaan have played their part in the development of Israel.

The very geographical position of Canaan helps us to understand the Hebrews, and even to see how it was that in this land it was possible to nurture from such unpromising beginnings the wonderful development of religion that was to make this smallest of all lands one of the most sacred spots on earth, and this strange and limited people among the greatest contributors to the moral and religious ideas of humanity. Crushed in between the sea and the desert, hemmed in by great military powers, the little buffer state itself the very crossways of East and West, its roads never long at rest from the tramp of armies; here was a land in which all dreams of fame and empire were hammered out, and nothing left possible save an empire of spiritual power and the fame of a unique religion. A people strangely proud and passionately exclusive, they could never rest under the dominion of their great neighbours, however light the burden imposed; and since sustained resistance was out of the question by reason of their inferior numbers and lack of military power, they resorted to irritating acts of rebellion, or intrigued with the enemies of their overlords, and so brought down on their land frequent vengeance. Such was their untameable nature that the only practical policy open to Babylon, if she wished to insure the loyalty, or at least, the neutrality of Palestine, was to deport the Jews bodily to where they could be under observation.

So we find the greatest heroes of Jewish history—from Moses, through Gideon and Samson, to David and Judas Maccabæus—are those who deliver the nation from oppression; while Israel's prayers are largely cries for succour against enemies, or for Divine vengeance on the oppressor; only too eloquent a witness of the sense of their own impotence. Yet it was precisely this experience that forced their religion to rise above the common type, to conquer its natural tendencies, and to become the most magnificent faith in God that the world has seen. Of this they themselves were not ignorant; for one of their writers points to the easy lot of Moab as the cause of their irreligion (Jer. xlviii. 11), and one of the Psalmists says that it is the men who have no changes who fear not God (lv. 19). We need not consider the utterly feeble objection that all this makes the religion of Israel the outcome of natural necessity, rather than of Divine revelation; for God made the land that made Israel.

The entry into Canaan was therefore one of the most critical periods in the history of this people and in the development of the religion of the Old Testament. It is, however, extremely difficult to discover from the means at our disposal just how or when that entry was effected. The sources for this period are found in the Books of Joshua and Judges, but, from comparison with much in the history that follows, it is clear that they do not present us with absolute history; yet a critical examination of these books enables us to recover the essential facts.

A study of the preface to this lecture will show that the story of the Conquest is obscure in its details and difficult to reconcile with modern discoveries. A careful examination of our sources shows that the description of the entry of the Hebrews into Canaan as a "conquest," which was settled by a few decisive battles, is at least rather fanciful; and as a matter of fact we have quite another picture in the first chapter of Judges, which partakes more of the character of an "alien immigration," a method of "conquest" in which the Jews have always been remarkably successful. The history in Joshua certainly represents the Conquest as striking, complete, and followed by a ruthless extermination of the defenders of their native land. In view of the relations that were for long maintained between the Canaanites and the Hebrews, the representation in Judges i. must be regarded as nearer to the facts than the story of the Conquest according to the Book of Joshua. The children of Israel dwelt side by side with the Canaanites, simply because they were not able to drive them out; and as a result the tribes were frequently divided by strong belts of Canaanitish territory. Right through the time of the Judges we get warfare between the Israelites and the inhabitants of the land; sometimes in pitched battles between the Canaanites and the united tribes of Israel (Judges iv. v.), but more generally in guerilla warfare or in the sudden surprise of a Canaanitish garrison (Judges xviii.). The result of the conflict seems to have been the gradual absorption of the two elements into one nation. The records definitely admit that it was not until the time of David that the Jebusites were driven from Jerusalem (2 Sam. v. 6, 7), and not until Solomon that the superiority of the Israelites was finally established (1 Kings ix. 20, 21). It surely is an immense relief to think that the huge slaughters recorded in the Book of Joshua are, to say the least, exaggerations.

The history in Judges also clearly shows that there was little cohesion between the tribes. They filtered across the Jordan only by degrees, and there is evidence that this process may have extended over a considerable time. We have records of quarrels between Gideon and Ephraim (Judges viii. 1), and between Jephthah and Ephraim (Judges xii. 1). These inter-tribal conflicts might have been serious, were it not for the circumstance that the Israelites were no sooner settled in the land than other tribes of desert invaders began to press upon them, and they had to sink family differences in order to combine against the common enemy.

The song of Deborah (Judges v.) is one of the most valuable documents we possess for the light which it throws on the conditions of religious and national life in this period, for it is probably the only document in the Old Testament, earlier than the founding of the monarchy, that is contemporary with the events it describes. It shows that the tribes had somewhat improved their position, for they now seem to be in possession of the highlands of Ephraim, although the plains are still in the hands of the Canaanites. The growing power of the Israelites and their threatening predominance moved the Canaanites to a united effort to repress Israel. It is to face this danger that the Prophetess Deborah calls the tribes; but from the way in which the praise and blame is meted out we can see that a strong sense of national unity was still lacking. The important point to be noticed is that the bond of unity to which Deborah could appeal was the name of Jehovah. It should be noted also that in the enumeration of the tribes, Judah, Simeon, and Levi are altogether omitted. In the case of so important a tribe as Judah this is significant, for it agrees with the fact that until the time of David this tribe does not come into prominence. It has been conjectured that Judah was only a small tribe, and may have invaded Canaan from the south, for it is difficult to conceive how it could have crossed the strong Canaanitish territory which separated it from the other tribes. At any rate, at this time it was not regarded as one of the tribes of Israel; it may have been that this tribe embraced a strong Canaanitish element (Gen. xxxviii.), and this fact may have contributed to the resentment which broke out among the other tribes when Judah assumed the hegemony in the time of David, and which led in the end to the disruption of the Kingdom.

In our sources the history of this period has attached to it a religious interpretation: apostasy, and disobedience to the commands of Jehovah were the causes of the people being sold into the power of their enemies; when they returned to the worship of Jehovah and penitently pleaded for His forgiveness then deliverers were raised up who vanquished their oppressors. This can be nothing but a late interpretation, for the religion of the Book of Judges is of quite a fixed order, and many of the stories recorded in it will not lend themselves to any such interpretation. The hand that supplied this reading of the history of this period has been identified with the author of Deuteronomy, or, as some would prefer to say, with the school of thought that produced that work. There is a religious lesson in this history, as in all history; but it is hardly to be found in a series of apostasies and returns. There are really four separate endeavours to account for the undoubted fact of the Canaanites being spared. (1) Israel was not able to drive them out (Judges i. 19, 27). (2) Israel was only commanded to drive them out by degrees, "lest the beasts of the field increase upon thee" (Deut. vii. 22). (3) It was a providential arrangement to keep the Israelites practised in war (Judges iii. 1, 2). (4) It was due to direct disobedience to the command of Jehovah (Judges ii. 20).

The history does not entitle us to assume that the judges were officials who exercised kingly rights over a united Israel. The word translated "Judge" more often means "Deliverer," and this is certainly the part that they play. Of some of the so-called minor judges we know nothing beyond their names, and there is evidence that they have simply been used to fill out a traditional period of 480 years (1 Kings vi. 1). Whenever the "Judges" assumed kingly or judicial functions trouble and rebellion always followed. The figure of Samson displays little fitness for ruling a nation or guiding it in religion, but the stones of his life are illuminating for the understanding of the morality and interests of that age.

With this revised conception of the history of the Conquest, and of the events which followed, we are in a better position to estimate the effect of the change from nomadic life to a settled existence, and to understand how critical for the future of the religion of Jehovah this change was.

We see tribes possessing little national unity, but bound together by a religion in which lay the germ of a mighty future, entering a land where the inhabitants had reached a higher stage of civilisation, and possessed a religion that drew its power from the fact that it was the worship of Baal, the possessor and owner of the land. In face of these conditions it was almost inevitable that many of the customs of the original inhabitants should be gradually adopted, and that the religion of Jehovah should borrow something from the religion indigenous to the land. This was certainly the result which followed. For a considerable period we find a religion prevalent among the common people, which is simply a conflation of the two religions. There were certain elements common to both, and certain advantages in the one, together with corresponding weaknesses in the other, that prepared the way for this syncretism.

We shall now turn to examine the religion of the Canaanites, which we shall find to partake largely of the common elements of Semitic religion. Their deities were personifications of natural forces, and among these there is no one which is supreme, and nothing that tends to Monotheism. The gods are friendly and destructive by turn, and of unreliable character. It is nothing more than an undeveloped Polytheism. The religion, as it is seen in the Old Testament, groups itself around three names: Baal, Ashtoreth (often written in plural form Ashtaroth), and Molech (otherwise written Moloch, Milcom, and known to the Phœnicians as Melkart).

The name of Baal has a hateful memory in the pages of the Old Testament as the Canaanitish deity to whom Israel constantly apostatised. The exact significance of Baal in the Canaanitish religion is a matter of dispute. He has been identified with the sun, and by the Greeks with Zeus; so that it has been inferred that Baal was the President of the Canaanitish Pantheon. This view is no longer generally accepted, for it certainly fails to fit in with the records of the cult preserved in the Old Testament. The word "Baal" is not a proper name, but signifies "the Possessor"; it is used in Semitic language for "husband," as the possessor of the wife, and is used as the name for deity, as the possessor of the land. Every land, and indeed every locality, will therefore have its own Baal; so that in the Old Testament we hear of the "Baalim" (the Hebrew plural), and these local Baalim are further distinguished by the addition of the name of their locality or of some event with which they were connected, as Baal-Peor, Baal-Berith, Baal-Zebul. The "Baal" is especially responsible for sending rain and sunshine, and for giving fruitful seasons. He is, therefore, the god of agriculture, and the great events of the agricultural year, such as harvest and vintage, are observed as his festivals. It is natural to find the uncertainty of the weather reflected in the character of the Baalim, with the result that we get a religion alternating between intoxicating joy and the deepest gloom. To appease the fickle god or to win his favour sacrifices, even of human lives, are presented, and if Baal continues unheeding, scenes of the most unrestrained fanaticism prevail. It is this gloomy religion which darkens the times of the later Kings of Judah.

The Canaanitish Baal should be distinguished from the Baal of Tyre (Melkart) whose worship was introduced by Ahab. Here the introduction of an alien Baal, with probably different rites and ceremonies, awoke the resentment of the prophetic party under the leadership of Elijah, but the worship of the Canaanite Baal was maintained for long unchecked.

Closely connected with the worship of the Baalim we find the worship of the Ashtaroth (Judges ii. 13). The pronunciation of this word is obscure; it was probably Ashtart, and the singular form, Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 5), has been formed by inserting the vowels of the word bosheth (shame), a common device in the Old Testament for expressing contempt. Ashtart is the female counterpart of Baal, and is spoken of in the plural for a similar reason. Monuments of the worship of Ashtart are still to be found, and from these it is evident that we have here the worship of the goddess of sexual passion, as common in polytheistic systems, and best known in the Greek worship of Aphrodite. The whole conception of Ashtart can be traced to the famous goddess Ishtar of Babylonian religion, and there is only too certain evidence that in Canaan as elsewhere the degrading rite of religious prostitution was used in this worship of female divinity (Hosea iv. 13). The identification of Ashtart with the "Queen of Heaven" (Jer. vii. 18; xliv. 15–25) is not so certain. As far as the worship of the latter is described to us, it looks like an importation of the Babylonian worship of Ishtar, who was identified with the planet Venus or sometimes with the moon. The "cakes to pourtray her" (Jer. xliv. 19) may have been crescent-shaped cakes.

Of a similar character was the worship that gathered around the name of Molech. We have here simply the word for king (Milk) with the vowels of bosheth. Of this name, Moloch, Milcom, and Melkart of Tyre are variations. Molech is not to be distinguished from Baal, as may be seen from Jer. xix. 5, where the practice of passing children through the fire, which was certainly connected with the worship of Molech, is a part of the worship of Baal. This burnt-sacrifice of children evidently belonged to the Canaanitish religion (2 Kings xvi. 3).

This then was the religion of the Canaanites: in times of prosperity and fruitful seasons, one of rejoicing and festivity; but in time of famine, drought or national danger, one of the most hopeless gloom and of the most fearful fanaticism. In conflict with this religion, the purer worship of Jehovah yet presented certain weaknesses; these are found chiefly in points of possible identification, which in the course of the history actually took place. This may be difficult for us to understand until we remember that Baal and Molech, to Semitic ears, simply meant "Lord" and "King"; and Jehovah was the "Lord" and "King" of Israel. If the character of Jehovah was not clearly apprehended as moral by the common people, we can see how easy it was for confusion to take place.

The great weakness of the religion of Jehovah was that He was not the God of Canaan. His home was in distant Sinai, and the only symbol of His presence was the ark, a symbol bound up with the idea of war. As the people settled down to a peaceful agricultural life, the need for Jehovah, the warrior God, would not be keenly felt. There was certainly a party from the very first who recognised the difference between Jehovah and Baal and fought against their identification, but so long as Baal was believed to be a real being the danger of his secret worship at least was never far away. Every land had its own god, and although the people knew that Jehovah was their God, yet they might think it necessary, and not inconsistent, to pay their respects to the local Baalim on whom they were dependent for the fruits of the earth (Hosea ii. 8). Nothing therefore but a national calamity could revive the old religion in face of the attractions of the new; if peace had been continuous it is hard to see how the religion founded by Moses could have persevered. Such dangerous peace the Children of Israel were not to enjoy. We soon hear the rousing call to the help of Jehovah in the Song of Deborah, and it was the threatened domination by the Philistines that called the monarchy into existence and revived the religion of Jehovah.

Meanwhile, however, a process of syncretism was gradually taking place, which it was to be the task of the Prophets to unravel; and how far it had gone may be seen from the difficulty they found in making the character of Jehovah and the moral demand made upon His worshippers clear to the people. "Jehovah," it must be remembered, was a name largely personal. Baal was a general name for deity, and could be applied to Jehovah quite truthfully. That this actually took place may be seen from a number of passages in the Old Testament. The most instructive instance is to be found in Hosea ii. 16; but the names given to places point in the same direction: David calls the spot where Jehovah broke his enemies, Baal-perazim; the same god is called indiscriminately, Baal-berith (Judges viii. 33; ix. 4) and El-berith (Judges ix. 46). This practice accounts for the names of Saul's son, Eshbaal, and of Jonathan's son, Meribbaal (1 Chron. viii. 33, 34), both of which have been altered in the Book of Samuel to "bosheth." (In obedience to the command of Exod. xxiii. 13, Bosheth was substituted for Baal in reading the Scriptures. The written text was altered in many places at a later period; the Chronicler must have found Baal in his text of Samuel; that is about 200 B.C.) The names of Jehovah and Baal therefore came to have the same significance, and the distinction began to be missed; Jehovah was still the God of Israel, but the moral elements of His religion were gradually diluted with the naturalistic conceptions of the worship of Baal. Jehovah becomes the Baal of the land; that is, the relation between Him and Israel is conceived in a natural and even physical way. It is therefore no longer a covenant relation, which depends on the observance of moral obligations, but one of nature which cannot be broken by either party. Naturally the sanctuaries of the Canaanites are taken over by the Israelites, and Jehovah is worshipped in "the high places." All through the history worship at these local sanctuaries is condemned, but only from a later standpoint, for the earliest Book of Laws permitted an altar to be erected anywhere where Jehovah had manifested Himself (Exod. xx. 24). Around some of these undoubtedly Canaanitish sanctuaries the stories of the Patriarchs gathered, but from the practices which prevailed at such places as Bethel we can see that heathen rites were used, for here Jeroboam set up the golden calves, which seem to have been used in the worship of Jehovah, for neither Elijah nor Amos condemns them. Jehovah is now worshipped all over the land, but there is the same tendency to regard each separate place as having its local deity, and so Jehovah is multiplied (perhaps, Jer. xi. 13) and needs to be further identified by the addition of place names, as in the strange name El-bethel (Gen. xxxv. 7), El-elohe-Israel (Gen. xxxiii. 20), in a way that is very like the multiplication of the Baalim. So deeply was the worship of Jehovah mixed up with Canaanitish ideas that in the reign of Josiah the only possibility of reform lay in forbidding the worship at the local sanctuaries altogether and concentrating all worship at the central sanctuary of Jerusalem.

Nothing but this process of syncretism can explain the condition of religion in the subsequent history, and it is needed to enable us to understand both the difficulty of the work of the Prophets and the form their message takes.

Nevertheless, there must have been from the earliest times elements that made for a purer faith, and that never acquiesced in this confusion between Jehovah and Baal, which certainly prevailed in the popular mind; otherwise the Reformation of the Eighth Century would be an isolated and inexplicable movement, and without that historical support the Prophets claimed. There was a party against Baal altogether, although they do not emerge until the monarchy. This party may have consisted of the "priests" of Jehovah. At mention of these we must not think of the sacrificing priests described in the Book of Leviticus. No such persons are known until after the exile; during this period anyone could sacrifice. The story of the priest in Judges xvii. gives a good idea of this class; his chief duties seem to have consisted in keeping the oracle and obtaining decisions by the lot. These decisions became the basis on which there was gradually built up the Torah (the Law), which, as the word implies, was a collection of decisions obtained by casting lots. For the purpose of obtaining these decisions the priests seem to have used an idol of some kind; for this is the most natural explanation of the Ephod and its use in the early history. There would be different degrees of intellectual and moral capacity found in the ranks of the priests, and many of them may have had higher ideals of their duties than the one mentioned in Judges. It would be likely that those who were in charge of the Sacred Ark possessed a superior dignity and maintained a purer tradition. Gradually the magical accompaniments to their oracular decisions may have given way to more judicial deliverances, although in the time of David and Abiathar they were apparently still used (1 Sam. xxx. 7). At any rate the priests kept alive the idea of Jehovah as the dispenser of justice, and helped to build up that system of laws for which Israel is so justly famous.

This "higher critical" view of the history is simply one to which we are driven by the records that stand nearest to the times they describe. It certainly alters considerably the ordinary conceptions of the type of religion that prevailed in those early days, before the coming of the Prophets; but that such was the type is only too clearly shown by the writings of the Prophets themselves. Nevertheless this view of the period, while it shuts out a somewhat stiff and mechanical religious interpretation of the history which has been forced upon it by a later age, is still not without a valuable lesson, which is perhaps not taught elsewhere in the Bible, and yet is one that we need to have always before us. It is one, the possibility of which always exists and often threatens a spiritual religion: the danger of a gradual encroachment and assimilation of pagan ideas until the original purity is lost almost beyond recovery. If this has happened anywhere it has happened in Christianity. It was the awakening to this paganisation of Christianity that provoked the struggle of the Reformation, not yet decided. Many of the conceptions that are still popularly identified with Christianity are the remnants of paganism. It is not necessary to enumerate the common customs which wear only a thin veneer of Christianity; but many of the ideas in connection with Christian Doctrine certainly owe more to pagan philosophy than they do to the New Testament. The syncretism between Paganism and Christianity has not been destroyed by the Reformation. Many of the popular ideas of the Atonement, for instance, rest on a pagan conception of God and a materialistic idea of Christ's work which are so deeply involved in the common presentation of Christianity that to present the actual New Testament teaching would seem to many like a denial of the foundation truths of the Gospel. Still more dangerous is the localisation of the god as the peculiar patron of the land, which justifies many unholy wars and makes such a thing as a national repentance almost impossible. There is a god of the British Empire who is remarkably like the Jehovah-Baal of the old syncretised religion that ruled in the period which we have been studying, and whose worship begets equal indifference to the claims of true religion, and equally cruel treatment for the prophet who strives to call men to a purer faith.

It is a relief to turn to a more comforting lesson. It is that which assures us that man's thought of God is not entirely his own, that it cannot be destroyed and is never wholly forgotten, but ever makes its way to higher truth and greater power. The way in which the higher religion comes is through the pure minds of those who wish only to live up to the fulness of the truth, and however mistaken they be, wish only to know and to do the will of God. A similar task lies equally before every honest man and every true Christian. The lesson is plain: beware of a stagnant religion that dreads progress, and keep the mind open as a child's to God's further revelation of Himself, which has yet many things to tell us.