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CHAPTER XII

THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. — ISA. 1: 19.

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? MIC. 6:8.

FTER seven years the Israelites became weary of the conquest, and the land already taken was divided among the tribes. While the seven nations comprising the Canaanites proper were subdued they were not entirely driven from the country, about onefourth of the land remaining in their possession. This failure fully to occupy the land of Canaan was in direct violation of their instructions, and left the covenant with Abraham only partially fulfilled; but the Israelites were too impatient to enjoy the bounties of this fertile country to consider seriously the danger of sharing the Promised Land with their enemies, a mistake for which they dearly paid in later years.

If there was one thing more than another that Moses urged upon the attention of the Israelites, it was the necessity of obedience to God as the indispensable condition of their safety and prosperity. This had been proved to them in some measure while they were yet in the wilderness, and the incident at Ai, in the early days of the conquest, again emphasized the demoralizing influence of disobedience. When they were unable to stand before their enemies they knew that they had transgressed against the Lord, and the nation mourned in humiliation. This lesson, however, needed to be repeated many times, and still continues to be repeated, for the human mind is slow to learn and take to heart the impossibility of disobeying the law of good and at the same time enjoying

the fruits which come of righteousness. The blind expectation of the Israelites, that they could transgress God's commands and escape punishment, still survives in the prevalent belief that the sins and errors of mortals will be finally passed over and forgiven without their individual reformation.

While the terrible sentence against Achan and his family appears altogether out of proportion to the offense, it was not more inconsistent than the view of divine justice which in the later Christian centuries was embodied in the doctrine of eternal punishment; but it was imperative that the accepted belief concerning the administration of God's law, crude though it was, be carried out until a better understanding of that law was reached. It was their necessity to progress from where they were, and to put faithfully into effect what they conscientiously believed to be the divine will concerning the punishment of transgressors, else they would have remained stagnant or have degenerated into worse conditions. It was the carnal sense of the Israelites, the "old man" of the earth, not the offspring of God, that sinned and was punished; and the legitimate design of that punishment was to show the unprofitableness of fleshly servitude.

Moses had set before them the blessing and the curse that they might make their choice, but neither the promise of material blessings nor the threat of material curses has ever impelled men to seek good for its own sake; and without that selfless seeking, human peace and prosperity can have no permanent basis. The logical necessity of the truth, that good includes all that is substantial and enduring, is that the delusion of satisfaction in evil must sometime be broken, if need be by the reaction of suffering. Thus in these experiences of Israel the human mind was becoming slowly aroused to the consciousness that evil carries its own chastisement. The world has consumed a long time over this simple lesson in ethics, and there is little to indicate that the lesson has yet been very well learned.

The Old Testament records devote considerable space to Israel's wrongdoings, not for the mere purpose of recounting evil or to inform future generations, but to show the consequences of sin and the wisdom of avoiding them. The passing of Joshua had left the Israelites without a leader, with their religion as the chief bond of union, but this bond began to weaken as they mingled with the Canaanites and were beguiled by their idolatries. The decline of their allegiance to Jehovah was naturally followed by dissensions and disunity, until every man did that which was right in his own eyes,' and as the carnal mind thus asserted its sway, the glory and prosperity of Israel relatively faded.

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The worship of materiality, which is embodied in the idolatry of all ages, necessarily deadens the spiritual sense, and brings the idolaters into subjection to the evil they exalt. The conditions of which Moses and Joshua had repeatedly warned them, in the event of their serving false gods, now began to come upon the Israelites. The generation which had come into Canaan, which had seen. the great things God had done for Israel in the wilderness and in subduing their enemies, had passed away, and another generation had arisen "which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel." Not having these proofs in their own experience, they turned the more readily to the deities of the Canaanites, which appealed to their lower senses, and thus placed themselves on the same level with the people whom they had been commanded to drive out of the land. They were to have no intercourse with these people, or even to make mention of the names of their gods. It is easy to understand the deleterious effect this condition would have upon the morale of the Israelites, which their enemies were quick to perceive and take advantage of. It was well known that Israel had obtained possession of this land through some means associated with their religion, and when they became apostate to that religion, the Canaanites seized the opportunity to attack and defeat them.

'After several years of servitude to their enemies, the Israelites cried unto the Lord, and a deliverer was raised up for them. This recurrence of apostasy, disaster, repentance, and deliverance was repeated seven times between Joshua and Samuel, occupying altogether a period of more than four hundred years. It was a continual round of crying unto the Lord when they were sore oppressed, and of forsaking Him in time of safety; but God never failed to help them as often as they turned to Him in sincerity. These generations of sinning mortals might come and go, but there was that which remained unchanged from age to age, and that was the God of Israel. "For what nation is there," asked Moses, "who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon Him for?" It is not recorded that any other nation recognized and acknowledged the same relationship to Deity. One might well ask why all this should be so when the Israelites proved so fickle in their allegiance, so unmindful of their privileges, and so forgetful of their blessings. Why, indeed, should God continue to succor and deliver this people, with all their wickedness and ingratitude, whenever they turned their faces towards Him?

Very obviously because He could not be untrue to Himself. As St. Paul said, "If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself." God cherished no resentment against the Israelites because of their backslidings and idolatries, for the simple reason that resentment, anger, and revenge are entirely foreign to the character of Deity. If it were possible for these qualities of the carnal mind to become identified with God, and thus to become part of the divine activity, His divine nature would necessarily be subverted and destroyed. It is the possession and practice of these evil qualities that constitute the sinfulness of mortals, and their need of redemption and regeneration; therefore it were impossible for God, who is the Redeemer of men, to express the qualities that make up His unlikeness. The superstition and ignorance of the time might think and write of Him

as being hot with anger against the Israelites, or as selling them into the hands of their enemies; but Isaiah had a more enlightened sense when he said, "Ye have sold yourselves," since it was their own defection from good which delivered the Israelites into the hands of evil.

The chronicles relating to this period indicate how intensely human was the Israelites' conception of Deity. While they acknowledged God as their king, He was a king with the attributes of earthly rulers, the chief distinction between Jehovah and human beings seeming to be of degree rather than of quality. The thought of God as the sender of evil as well as good, as the destroyer as well as the giver of life, continued up to the time of the Messiah, and to some extent still remains. A degraded view of Deity is the logical corollary of a degraded view of man; therefore, as a perfect and wholly good creator was absolutely incompatible with an imperfect and sinful creation, Deity was believed to be also conscious of evil, and to permit its defiling presence throughout His universe. It was but a step from that belief to the supposition that God Himself expressed evil in His dealings with men. This conception was not indigenous to Israel, it was and is the doctrine of the carnal mind; and the carnal mind, by its very nature, is incapable of revealing the truth about either God or man.

It will be remembered that when Jesus was once on the way to Jerusalem, one of the Samaritan villages refused him hospitality, and some of his disciples asked, "Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, as Elijah did?” But Jesus rebuked them and said, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." If, then, he who came forth from God to do the will of the Father rebuked the suggestion of taking the lives of offenders in return for their wrongdoing, we may know without a doubt that God had nothing to do with bringing misfortune upon either the Israelites or their enemies, be