Scripture Notes by Townsend

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1868

Scripture Notes.

By Townsend

THE NATIONAL RIGHT OF ISRAEL TO CANAAN.

Josh. xxi, 43. And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein.

The laws of nations are always the same. If any nation, or tribe, or part of a tribe, takes possession of an unknown, undiscovered, unoccupied, or uninhabited country, the right of property vests in them; they are its proprietors and owners. After the deluge, the world might be said to be in this state; and Michaelis has endeavored to prove, that the ancestors of Abraham were the original occupiers of the pasture land of Canaan. Canaan, therefore, by the law of nations, as well as by the promises of God, was the lot of Abraham’s inheritance; and the rightful land of his descendants. The Canaanites and the Perizzites had only just established themselves in Canaan when Abraham removed from Haran to that country; and were so weak and few in number, that they never interfered with the rights of sovereignty, assumed and exerted by Abraham. The Canaanites were merchants and adventurers, who had been originally settled near the borders of the Indian ocean; and who, having been dispossessed by the Cuthic Sidonians, had migrated westward, to form establishments on the sea coasts of Palestine, and carry on commerce with the herdsmen who traversed it. They were for some time contented with their factories on the sea coasts, but they gradually obtained possession of the inland country. The Perizzites, too, were a warlike tribe, who now first made their appearance in Canaan; they had originally inhabited the N. E. of Babylonia. Whether they had been dispossessed of their settlements; whether they were seeking new establishments; or for whatever purpose they were now in Palestine, they gave no interruption to Abraham’s progress, although he entered the Holy Land, and continued his journeying with a large retinue, as a powerful prince. He took possession of Canaan as the territory of his ancestors; not indeed as a fixed habitation, but as a pasture land adapted to his numerous flocks and herds. He traversed the whole country as a proprietor, without a competitor. He had the power of arming three hundred and eighteen of his own servants, born in his own house: and it is most probable he had others (whether trained like these to arms or not) who are not enumerated. He declared war as an independent prince of this country, against the neighboring princes; and formed an alliance with Abimelech, as an equal, and as a sovereign. It is true he purchased land of a Canaanitish family of Heth, but this was because the Hittites had gradually made a more fixed settlement in that part of the country; their intrusion had not been at first prevented by the ancestors of Abraham, and by this sufferance they made that district their peculiar property. As Abraham thus traversed and possessed Canaan, with undisputed authority, so too, did Isaac and Jacob. They exercised, as he, sovereign power; they never resigned that power; nor gave up to others the property of that land, which now by long prescription, as well as by the promise of God, had become entirely their own.

The ancestors then, of the Israelites, Michaelis argues, were either the sole sovereigns, or the most powerful of those princes who possessed, in early ages, the Holy Land. By the famine in Joseph’s time, they were compelled to take refuge in Egypt; yet they never lost sight of the sepulchres of their fathers. And though we do not read that acts of ownership were continued to maintain and perpetuate their right, we can have but little doubt that something of the kind took place, for Jacob was taken from Egypt to be buried there; [and St. Pierre remarks, “savages consider the tombs of their ancestors as titles to the possession of the lands which they inhabit.” See Burder.] Joseph assured them they should return; and their Egyptian oppressors, a kindred branch of the powerful tribes which had by this time entirely taken possession of Palestine, refused to let them go, lest they should claim the inheritance of their fathers.

If this claim of the Israelites can be proved to be well founded, they would have been entitled, by the law of nations, forcibly to take possession of the Holy Land; and it will be interesting to observe how God, in his merciful providence, afforded them the opportunity of successfully regaining their lawful inheritance, and at the same time accomplishing his own divine purposes to the fulfillment of his prophecies, and to the happiness and security of his church. The Israelites may be considered as the servants and ministers of God, punishing the idolatry of the Canaanites, and instituting in its place, in the midst of an apostate world, the religion of the one true God. In every victory they obtained, they must have admired the faithfulness of that promise, which had foretold their entire possession of this land; and they must have been persuaded, that if they served other gods, they would bring down upon themselves the punishments predicted by Moses. See Michaelis and Faber. —Townsend.