The Israelites Commanded to Extirpate the Canaanites, yet Some of Them Providentially Preserved to Prove Israel

    God commanded that the Canaanites should be expelled or destroyed without exception, yet he did not design that this should be accomplished universally. They were not eventually all expelled, yet Israel was guilty in not expelling them. Men may speculate on these points, and show their presumption in adjusting them, but they are a part of the ways of God which are past finding out. A child, in reading the history, may see this truth, but their adjustment is beyond the efforts of human intellect. "And ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: but ye have not obeyed my voice; why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you," Judges ii. 2, 3. How awfully sovereign is this conduct! God keeps the Canaanites in the land, while in judgment he declares that they would be a snare unto his people! If he knew that they would be a snare to his people, why did he not, on that very account, drive them out? Would not, should not, every human father do so? God is a sovereign, of the measures of whose conduct we are not fit to judge; and we have no right to bring him to our law. In all things we are certain that he acts justly and wisely. But his justice and wisdom we are not able to comprehend. The idolatry of Israel might have been prevented or lessened by the total expulsion of the idolatrous nations, yet God does not expel them! Human rulers would not, should not, [act after this example. The intention of this act of Divine sovereignty, God tells us, was to prove Israel. By this means it was manifested that the Israelites were by nature no better than the rest of mankind. Had they been preserved free from idolatry and great crimes, they would have gloried in their own righteousness; and all nations would have considered that Israel was chosen by God to their high destinies on account of their excellence. For a similar reason, Divine Providence left David, and others of his ancient people, to fall into grievous sins. In like manner, the gross immorality of the heathen world, and the sins even against nature, which were generally committed, were designed by God to prove the guilt and universal depravity of human nature.

    There is another awful feature in the Providence that spared some of the Canaanites in the land. When God determined that any of them should remain, why did he give a universal command for extirpation? Why did he thus give occasion for the guilt of Israel in not executing his orders? Here is sovereignty in its awful and incomprehensible majesty. And will the pride and petulance of human wisdom never cease its attempts to fathom the counsels of the incomprehensible God? Divine Sovereignty designed also that some of the Canaanites should be spared, "that the generations of the children of Israel might know to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing there- of." Every spiritual Israelite is a soldier; and while he is in this -world, he will never want enemies to exercise him in the spiritual warfare.