Occupying the Promised Land became real for Israel when God told Moses where its borders lay. The Israelites were familiar with the southern and eastern edges of Canaan from their travels, but only Joshua and Caleb had seen the Mediterranean coast, the northern lands, and everything in between – forty years earlier.

After God gave Moses all of the landmarks to boundary the Promised Land, he said what only God could say: “This will be your land, with its boundaries on every side.” Numbers 34:12

After Israel occupied Canaan, the land would be divided among the tribes according to their size and their needs. God appointed leaders from each tribe to assign the allotments. The list in Numbers 34:16-29 shows us God knew each of these people by name.

Towns for the Levites

We’ve already read that the Levites weren’t going to have tribal land because their inheritance was God himself and whatever was given to the Lord was shared with the Levites. But they needed places to live, so God told Israel to give them forty-eight walled towns distributed among the tribes.

Around the perimeter of each of these towns was land that stretched out almost five hundred yards in every direction so the Levites could pasture their animals.

The Levites lived throughout Israel, but their work was always centered at the tabernacle and this helped the Israelites stay in touch with their religious life. The comings and goings at the Levites’ homes served as reminders of the festivals and offerings that were required throughout the year.

Cities of Refuge

Six of the Levite towns were designated as cities of refuge for people who accidentally killed someone. If a person was accused of causing a death, he could flee to the city of refuge and be safe while his trial proceeded. If he ventured outside that protection, he was in danger of being killed by the Avenger of Blood, a relative appointed to avenge the death of the one who died.

As long as he remained in the city of refuge, the townspeople had to protect him. The person who caused an accidental death had to remain in a city of refuge until the current high priest died. Then they could return home.

The death penalty was mandatory for intentional murder and there was no ransom for this crime. A first-degree murder conviction required the testimony of at least two eye-witnesses.

God gave life and took life from people, and he sometimes employed human agents to carry out his plans, but he did not allow anyone to arbitrarily take the life of another human being. God valued every person and it grieved him to see anyone die. He wanted people to live righteous lives and live in peace with him.

 ^“Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the Sovereign Lord. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” Ezekiel 18:23

Bloodshed and the Earth

God cared about how bloodshed affected his creation.

“Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it. Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell among the Israelites.” Numbers 35:33-34

Throughout the Old Testament God cared about the soil, animals, plants, and trees of the earth. He spoke to these parts of creation as if they could hear him and some passages it seems that creation responds. The rocks cry out (Luke 19:40), the mountains and hills burst into song, and the trees clap their hands (Isaiah 55:12).

Zelophehad’s Daughters Get Married

Zelophehad’s daughters were members of the tribe of Manasseh and their fellow tribesmen were concerned that if they married into another tribe, the land they owned would no longer belong to Manasseh. This was resolved when the women agreed to marry within their own tribe. They found husbands among their father’s cousins .

This episode ends the book of Numbers. Tomorrow we begin reading Deuteronomy, which contains Moses’s final words to Israel.

The Challenge of the Bible

When we began reading the Bible, I mentioned that if you believed Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” the rest of the Bible would make sense to you. Now we are in challenging territory as we read about God taking the lives of Canaanite people. He even ordered the people of Israel to invade the land and perform these mass executions for him.

If we believe that God created the heavens and the earth, do we trust that he always does the right thing with his creation?

We have seen God wipe out people in the Bible before. God sent the Flood, and later destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, when people’s sins were so bad that they harmed themselves and their children. He wanted to stop them from perpetuating sin’s destruction.

But Abraham was horrified that God would destroy Sodom. He worried that righteous people might be swept away with the wicked and he said,

“Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Genesis 18:25

I think that’s the question we all want to ask. Did the Judge of all the earth do right when he sent Israel to destroy towns and kill people? Were there innocent people who got caught up in the wars between Israel and the Canaanites?

We can’t know the whole situation in Canaan, but the Bible always presumes that everything God did was right and best for his creation.

Praying for Help

Have you ever wanted God to deal with something troubling in your life? The writer of Psalm 12 certainly did.

“Help, O Lord, for the godly are fast disappearing! The faithful have vanished from the earth! Neighbors lie to each other, speaking with flattering lips and deceitful hearts.

May the Lord cut off their flattering lips and silence their boastful tongues.

They say, ‘We will lie to our hearts’ content. Our lips are our own—who can stop us?’

The Lord replies, ‘I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do.

 The Lord’s promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace,
purified seven times over. 

Therefore, Lord, we know you will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.” Psalm 12:1-8

Sometimes we all recognize that only God can stop the wicked or deal with a crisis. Even atheists pray to God when they are desperate enough, although no one wants to be on the receiving end when God acts. We pray for justice while hoping that we are not the ones who receive punishment.

God Tells the Truth

God doesn’t hide the hard truth about himself. He is the one who gave us these stories and made sure they were preserved through the ages for us to read. He challenges us to think about him in ways we never would on our own. In fact, you could say that the more we read the Bible, the more it reads us. God tells the truth and then we either praise him or withdraw from him. Either way, the contents of our hearts are revealed.

The value of reading the whole Bible is that it gives us a fuller picture of our great God. How are you doing with that challenge? Are you willing to take God on his own terms?

For a good article on how God dealt with the Canaanites check out this link:

https://www.gotquestions.org/Canaanites-extermination.html