The kids and I studied the article "Why Did God Wage War Against the Canaanites" in the January public WT. We got out the See the Good Land brochure and looked at the map on page 11 which is the nations to be displaced from the Promised Land. If you back up and look at page 7, you will see that the very area that the Canaanites were going to be removed from was originally the land of the Patriarchs. In other words, Abraham, Issac and Jacob lived there first. It was legally their's to begin with. We have to remember that the reason they ended up in Egypt was because of famine (along with the rest of the world back then), and unfortunately, their descendents were enslaved. The land still belonged to them rightly.
At any rate, in the article in the WT it covers five common questions about God warring against the Canaanites. One point covers the child sacrifice that occurred. There have been excavations done that show the whole area was one huge cemetary for murdered newborns, sacrifices to their god. I tried to put it into terms the kids could understand. I said, "Say that the President and the local churches together now told us in order for the government to work and good things to happen, your children had to be sacrificed. They were going to send the police to your door. You are to give them your firstborn child, and the police will take them to your church, throw gasoline on them and burn them. That is basically what the Canaanites did." And then we listed a number of people we knew who were firstborn children that we would not have known if it had happened to them like it did in Canaan.
Also, the article points out that of course Jehovah did not want the Caananites practices to spread to the Israelites. Can you imagine? Can you imagine if the Israelites started practicing the sacrifice of their firstborn? Think about the birth order of Jesus!! The firstborn!!! They really had to be stopped. The article also points out that God gave them 400 years - gave the Canaanites 400 years to "reform". Rahab was one example of one of them who did. At any rate, we paused to think about how long 400 years actually is. If we went back 400 years from today, we are talking about in the time of the Renaissance, Leonardo DaVinci times! Really helped put into perspective how long 400 years is and how long Jehovah gave the Canaanites.
I could not help thinking, upon further reflection, how Satan being the mimic god was retaliating against Jehovah. When the Israelites were in Egypt, the last plague was the Angel of Death and the firstborn - if the blood of the lamb was not on the doorpost, then the firstborn died. But of course, Jehovah gave ample warning - this was the last of 10 plagues so anyone with a humble heart could see who the true god and what the right decision would be - and provision for safety and deliverance. Also, the Angel of Death did not involve torture which of course Satan's Baal in Canaan did.
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