Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 61:243 (Jul 1904)
Article: When Did Israel Enter Canaan?
Author: Louise Seymour Houghton

BSac 61:243 (July 1904) p. 496

When Did Israel Enter Canaan?

Mrs. Louise Seymour Houghton

The pivotal importance of the question lies in its relation to the national development of the Hebrew people. The history of that development has come to be far otherwise important than for the sacred interest which attaches to the people Israel as the race whence, after the flesh, came our Lord. It has to do with the development of the political idea, as in modern times we have come to understand it. We know now that Israel was not in early days, nor ever, a separate people in the sense once attached to the word; but the importance, from this point of view, of the little nation which for centuries occupied that thoroughfare and battle-ground of the world, Canaan, is hardly yet recognized. Egypt had a culture, and Babylon a genius for jurisprudence, quite unknown to Israel; both were far richer and stronger than she; but neither has permanently influenced the world. Not only by reason of her geographical position, but far more because of the unique alliance between the religious and the political idea in Israel, she has been in a. very literal sense the heart of the nations, the vital organ of the world. Her life has gone pulsing through the world’s life, from the earliest day of her national existence until now. And as there is a supreme moment in the existence of the human organism when the mysterious life-principle awakes and the heart begins to beat, so there was a supreme moment when this heart of the world began to beat with the mysterious consciousness of divine

BSac 61:243 (July 1904) p. 497

activity in national affairs, and that national idea which has ever since been slowly coming to maturity was made ready to be born.

Unquestionably the supreme moment when this life-principle awoke in Israel is the period of the Judges. For it was through the conflicts and triumphs of these untaught heroes that an unorganized horde of desert wanderers struggled into national self-consciousness, and gave to the world the truth, embodied in Israel’s history from that time, latent in the history of all peoples, perceived by the pioneers of our own nation, but not even yet clearly apprehended by the world,—the truth that there is a divine element in national life; that a nation is something other than the sum of all its parts, and that that something other is divine. It is in the book of Judges that we learn to define the word nation as a “people working with God for the progress of the human race.” This is why the book of Judges is, to-day, perhaps the most important work of ancient literature; this is why the intricate problems of that book are not met by any theory as yet current— as of synchronisms and the various origins of its strange hero tales. Though every one of these tal...