Page 29 - Biblical Backgrounds student textbook

Study Section 5: Conquering and Settling the Canaan
(Joshua, Judges, and Ruth)

5.1 Connect.

The Jewish people lived as nomads as they traveled to the Promise Land. This means that they
were a people who did not stay at one location for a long time. They would migrate from one
place to another in search for better pasture. They lived this lifestyle for about forty years in
tents in various areas of Mount Sinai. While they had been attacked on occasion during their
wandering, they had defeated these enemies. Canaan had changed greatly since the days of
Abraham. The land now had armed cities throughout the region. “One day Abraham roamed at
will, seemingly, throughout Canaan, but now the region contained kingdoms with well-defined
territories.” They had developed alliances they would call upon to help in the event of a foreign
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invasion. The Hebrews, if they still had around three million people as Voss said they did when they set
out from Egypt, were a formidable enemy. Yet the true fear was of the Jewish God. This is especially the
case considering the stories they had heard about the Hebrew God who had brought Egypt to its knees
40 years earlier. In this section we will examine some of the important background to the conquest and
settling of the promised land.

5.2 Objectives.
1. Students should be able to identify the direction the Jews entered the promised land from and
the division of the land among the tribes of Israel.

2. Students should be able to describe the government structure in Canaanite and Jewish culture
at the time.

3. Students should be able to summarize the religious environment of the Jews in Canaan.

4. Students should be able to describe the important social and economic of the period.

5. Students should be able to identify the major people groups of the land that interacted with Israel
during the conquests.

5.3 Ancient Mesopotamia and Abraham.

The location of the inhabitants of the Promised land requires multiple levels of explanation.
The biblical reader must understand what the land looked like before and after the conquests.
Before the conquests, the peoples who inhabited the land had built up major defensive cities.
Genesis 10:15-19 names the people groups in the Canaan area that descended from Canaan:

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“Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the
Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the
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Hamathites. Afterward the clans of the Canaanites dispersed. And the territory of the
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67 Keith N. Schoville, “Canaanites and Amorites,” Peoples of the Old Testament World, edited by Alfred J. Hoerth
and others (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 167.

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