In Real Life
“They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.”
Today’s Text: Joshua 16:1-10 (Living Life Daily Devotional)
“They” are the clans of Joseph (Ephraim and Manasseh). Sometimes it’s not easy to determine whether some detail that God reveals to us is meant to be understood positively or negatively. Is it good that there were Canaanites living among the the people of Ephraim? Is it good that they were basically made slaves?
The more I read the Bible, the more I am convicted that God’s command to “exterminate” the population of the promised land was not meant to be executed literally. Rather, based on spiritual principles, God’s command was to “exterminate” the idolatry in the land.
It’s worth noting that Ephraim and Manasseh were Joseph’s sons by Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Genesis 41:45).
God had commanded Israel to not intermarry with foreigners (Deuteronomy 7:3; Nehemiah 13:23-27). To read that command literally would be a mistake. We come to understand what God really meant by that command through His dealings with His people in real life.
In real life, Ephraim and Manasseh had a foreign mother; Judah married a foreign woman (Tamar). And through the tribe of Judah, Boaz had a foreign mother (Rahab) and a foreign wife (Ruth). And of course, Jesus came from that lineage. So two of the strongest tribes of Israel, Joseph and Judah, were established by marriages to foreign women.
We can only conclude that despite God’s literal command, it was His sovereign plan to establish the progeny of His chosen people through intermarriage with foreigners.
Given that, God must not have intended for the command about intermarriage to be understood literally. Rather, God wanted His people to understand the spiritual principle behind the command and to follow that spiritual principle:
for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.
— Deuteronomy 7:4
In other words, the command against intermarriage is not about race, but about faith. It’s the same spiritual principle that drove the “extermination” of the population. In both cases, the God’s intention is to eliminate idolatry, not peoples.
And so, the fact that the Jebusites and the Canaanites became slaves of the Israelites was not good. It was bad. Israel had the power, and they should have exercised their power as God wanted them to—to show love and mercy and to enfold the foreigners into the people of God.
Maybe that is why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians (a very spiritually zealous community) -
He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
— 2 Corinthians 3:6
And the spiritual principle of Paul’s statement is this: the “letter” is a surface-level, literalistic understanding of Scripture. On the other hand, we find the Spirit of God interpreting God’s commands in real life.
Father, Your lovingkindness, faithfulness, and mercy endure forever and knows no human bounds. You are the Author of our Salvation, and You show us Your grace, mercy, and patience, along with Your holiness, in Your dealings with Your people. Help us not just to gain head knowledge of letters but a heart knowledge of Your Spirit. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
