CD-ROM Aktief 1995 #6/CDA_6.iso/shell/book/godsword.arj/CH07.TXT

Text File | 1993-01-29 | 29KB | 586 lines

                10 page printout, page 136 - 144
                           CHAPTER VII

               THE "CONQUEST" OF THE PROMISED LAND

     HAVING been duly impressed with the promises reiterated by
Yahveh to his Chosen People, let us turn our attention to the
wondrous manner of their fulfillment, as recorded in the inspired
history. The promises are repeated so often, from Abraham to Moses,
and with so many variant ifs, buts, conditions, provisos,
circumlocutions, and contradictions, that it is difficult to select
the most representative one. But a fair sample proceeds from amid
the smoke and fire of Sinai:

          "Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the
     way, and to bring thee into the place, which I have prepared.
     ...
          "For mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in
     unto the Amorities, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and
     the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will
     cut them off; ... thou shalt utterly overthrow them. ...
          "I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all
     the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine
     enemies turn their backs unto thee.

          "And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive
     out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before
     thee.
          "I will not drive them out from before thee in one year;
     lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field
     multiply against thee.
          "By little and little I will drive them out before thee,
     until thou be increased, and inherit the land.

          "And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea even unto the
     Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river:
     for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand;
     and thou shalt drive them out before thee.

     "Thou shalt not make no covenant with them, nor with their
     gods.

          "They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee
     sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely
     be a snare unto thee" (Ex. xxiii, 20, 23, 24, 27-33).

     Under both the old and the new "dispensations," promises are
always coupled with threats of penalties. There is a difference
in favor of the old: its punishments are always temporal; those
of the new are eternal as hell fire. It is the earthly body alone
that suffers according to Yahveh's Old Will, and that has an end
with life; in the New Testament of the gentle and loving Jesus,
the penalty only attaches when life ends, and the immortal soul
writhes out its expiation through all eternity. But even the Old
is not wanting in picturesque detail of torture that does credit
to a God distinguished for long-suffering, forgiveness, and
mercy. Here is one typical hint to the Chosen:





                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                136

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

          "If ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all of
     these commandments. ... I also will do this unto you; I will
     even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning
     ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of
     heart. ... And I will set my face against you, and ye shall
     be slain before your enemies. ... Then I will punish you
     seven times more for your sins. ... I will make your heaven
     as iron, and your earth as brass: And your strength shall be
     spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase,
     neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits. ...

          "I will bring seven times more plagues upon you
     according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among
     you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your
     cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall
     be desolate.

          "And if ye will not be reformed by me by these things,
     but will walk contrary unto me; then will I also walk
     contrary unto you, and ... will bring a sword upon you, that
     shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: ... I will send the
     pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the
     hand of the enemy. ...

          "And I will walk contrary unto you then also in fury;
     and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.
     And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of
     your daughters shall ye eat. And I will cast your carcasses
     upon the careases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor
     you" (Lev. xxvi, 14, 16-25, 28-30)

     Verily the old priests of Yahveh were fit prototypes of
those of the new dispensation of love and mercy. "It is a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. x, 31)!

     Encouraged by the promises, and thus lovingly admonished to
the fear of Yahveh, at last, after 685 long Years since Abraham
of hopeful waiting, slavery and affliction, of suffering and of
destruction, the Chosen People of Yahveh, in Yahveh's own
leisurely way, finally

               "On Jordan's stormy banks did stand,
                And cast a wistful eye
                On Canaan's fair and happy land,
                Where their possessions lie."

     Now might they have some reason to expect, from the explicit
terms of the divine covenant, that the Almighty Grantor would put
them into immediate, peaceable possession of the long promised
land. He had covenanted to send an angel and hornets on before
them, to put "the fear of Yahveh" into the rightful inhabitants,
and to drive them out well in advance of the arrival of the new
and "peculiar" occupants. But now it appeared that the place was
not "prepared" at all; the old inhabitants were still tenaciously
in their walled cities and by their domestic vines and fig-trees
undisturbed. The newcomers must yet do their own "preparing,"
driving out, and cleansing the land, by fire and sword, before


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926 Louisville, KY 40201
                                137

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

they could even begin to possess and enjoy it. And the possession
must be thorough; this was Yahveh's motto: "When I begin, I will
also make an end" (I Sam. iii, 12). Yahveh, who was a "man of
war" (Ex. xv, 3), would see to that, and even help with the angel
and hornets, though he had not done so yet, as he had promised.

     The task which confronted the newcomers, six hundred-odd
thousand soldiers of Yahveh, all mighty men and valiant, armed
with scavenger-paddle-spears (Deut. xxiii, 13), and with
impedimenta of a couple of million or more old men, women,
children, and camp-followers, was a war of extermination against
"seven nations more and mightier" than they; seven highly
civilized and powerful peoples, aggregating, according to the
Mosaic estimate, at least twenty-odd millions, inhabiting a
country of about 11,000 square miles, about the size of Belgium,
practically the most densely populated country in the world, with
its less than 8,000,000 people. Canaan then was nearly three
times as densely populated. The God who had wrought such fearful
wonders in Egypt, and brought out his Chosen with a "mighty hand
and an outstretched arm," is under contract now to send one angel
and hornets to help his soldiers drive these seven mightier
nations out of their land! But they must not be all driven out or
destroyed at once, or the wild animals would multiply against the
new arrivals too rapidly (Ex. xxiii, 28, 29) -- in a country
about as sparsely settled as New York City!

     Yahveh, Man of war, the merciful God, as generalissimo of
the armies of Israel, issued these notable orders of the day:

          "When Yahveh thy God shall bring thee into the land
     whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many
     nations before thee, [naming again the "seven nations
     greater and mightier]; and when Yahveh thy God shall deliver
     them before thee; thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy
     them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy
     unto them: ...

          "And thou shalt consume all the people which Yahveh thy
     God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon
     them" (Deut. vii, 1, 2, 16).

     These divine war orders, possibly even more drastic and
diabolic than the brutal ones issued by a modern war-lord, are
repeated time and again in the inspired texts. These were about
the only commands of Yahveh which his Chosen People ever so much
as partially obeyed. We shall see in the sequel that the Almighty
Yahveh did not deliver and drive out so completely as the Chosen
had perhaps the right under the covenant to expect; nor were they
able, despite the divine allies of angel and hornets, to massacre
the home-defenders of the land to the degree of extermination
which Yahveh ordered and promised. But scores of times the
official report of battle after battle, and massacre after
massacre, reads like this first one: "And they utterly destroyed
all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and
sheep, and ox, and ass, with the edge of the sword. And they
burnt the city with fire" (Josh. vi, 21, 24).



                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                138

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

     A little later the original orders were modified so as to
give play to the holy lust and greed of Yahveh's Chosen, it being
ordered: "Thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of
the sword; but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle,
and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt
thou take unto thyself" (Deut. xx, 13, 14).

     The Chosen were urged forward with this repeated divine
assurance: "There shall no man be able to stand before you: for
Yahveh your God shall lay the fear of you and the dread of you
upon all the land that ye shall tread upon" (Deut. xi, 25). And
just before Moses passed to his reward -- or was afflicted with
his promised punishment -- above but not across Jordan, he put on
record Yahveh's final reassurance: "Yahveh thy God, he will go
over before thee, and he will destroy these nations from before
thee, and thou shalt possess them" (Deut. xxxi, 3). With this
illusory promise on his lips Moses died.

     Joshua succeeded to the command next under Yahveh; and he
proceeded to cross over Jordan under circumstances that are
reported in two ways. Beginning his campaigns of quasi-conquest
with the famous fall of Jericho, where he "utterly destroyed all
that was in the city," but kept the gold and silver and other
loot for the treasury of Yahveh (Josh. vi, 21, 24), he swept on
from massacre to massacres city after city being taken and burned
by Joshua: "he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all
that breathed, as Yahveh God of Israel commanded" (Josh. x, 40).

     Here we may begin to see in what fashion the glittering,
sweeping promises of Yahveh were kept. A brief retrospect will
recall to us the original simple promise of 685 years before to
Abram, to give to him and his seed "the land to possess it."
Later the "covenant of circumcision" was superimposed as a single
condition; then 400 years of abject slavery in a strange land was
imposed as a dismal preliminary, lengthened into 430 years by a
bit of forgetfulness on the part of Yahveh. At last he
"remembered" his people and his covenant, and he commanded Moses
to lead the hosts of Israel out of Egypt into the promised land.
This looked like a tardy start towards performance. But because
the people got hungry and thirsty while camping for a year in the
wilderness around Sinai, the "fierce anger of Yahveh was kindled"
against them, and untold numbers of them were massacred by
plague, fire and sword, and fiery serpents, and the entire
millions of them were condemned to wander forty years in the
wilderness until their carcasses were all scattered in the
wilderness -- or were not, as the case may be. Then, at length,
the children of Israel, or the children of the children, were
sent across into the land which had been promised to be made
ready and waiting for their undisturbed possession.

     Yahveh repeatedly promised to accomplish this annihilation
of the nations, and to help his Chosen People to execute this
program of universal extermination. They were to possess the land
completely, with no one to share it with them or to molest them
in it, or to corrupt their holy lives by wicked examples of




                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                139

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

idolatry and whoredom. This precise reason, as justification for
the extermination of millions, was expressly stated by Yahveh
himself: "They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee
sin against me" (Ex. xxiii, 33). The land was to have rest.

     But after a number of preliminary massacres of extermination
as above noticed, Yahveh and his Chosen seem to have slacked
their murderous zeal, or to have failed in their ability to
perpetrate their purpose, or else the exaggeration of their
chroniclers was toned down. Joshua did not exterminate the
Hivites, but made peace with them and spared the lives of the
people, in direct disobedience of orders, and made them "hewers
of wood and drawers of water to Yahveh" (Josh. ix, 27). He then
helped these Hivites in a war made against them by the five
kings, on the occasion when the sun stood still upon Gibeon and
the moon in the valley of Ajalon (Josh. x, 12, 13) so that the
massacre might be completed. Then the kings of the Canaanites
(already totally exterminated, Num. xxi, 3) Amorites, Hivites
(already enslaved "unto this day") Hittites, Perizzites,
Jebusites, and others, leagued and went to fight against Israel.
And the inspired record assures us that Joshua and his Israelites
"smote them, until they left them none remaining. And all the
cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua
take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly
destroyed them, as Moses the servant of Yahveh commanded" (Josh.
xi, 8, 12). But the Jebusites continued to inhabit "Jebus, which
is Jerusalem" (Judges xix, 10), until, at least, the time when
part of the city was taken by David; and Jerusalem was certainly
not destroyed until it was captured by the Babylonians. The
Canaanites and others for centuries afterwards occupied the land.
But it is solemnly declared: "So Joshua took the whole land,
according to all that Yahveh said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it
for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by
their tribes. And the land rested from war" (Josh. xi, 23).

     This sounds like the thorough fulfillment of Yahveh's sacred
promise and covenant. And for further assurance, inspiration
itemizes the muster-roll of conquered lands and kings:

          "And these are the kings of the country which Joshua
     and the children of Israel smote ... which Joshua gave unto
     the tribes of Israel for a possession according to their
     divisions;

          "In the mountains, and in the valleys, and in the
     plains, and in the springs, and in the wilderness, and in
     the south country; The Hittites, the Amorites, and the
     Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites"
     (Josh. xii, 7, 8).

     A long list of countries and their kings which Joshua took
and smote, of which thirty-one were on the west side of Jordan,
is given in Joshua xii.

     And time and again the inspired historian repeats the
refrain, reckless of its verity: "And Yahveh gave unto Israel all
the land which he swore to give unto their fathers; and they
possessed it, and dwelt therein. And Yahveh gave them rest around

                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                140

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

about: ... there stood not a man of all their enemies before
them; Yahveh delivered all their enemies into their hand" (Josh.
xxi, 43, 44).

                        BUT NOT CONQUERED

     What is then our legitimate surprise to read, in the very
next chapter of the sacred history that Yahveh himself negatives
this whole Solemn record? In Joshua xiii, 1, Yahveh says to
Joshua: "Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth
yet very much land to be Possessed"; and a good part of chapter
xiii is taken up with an account of "the land that yet remaineth"
to be possessed -- being precisely the lands and cities just
recorded as taken. Nor had a single one of the seven nations been
destroyed and driven out, as so often promised, commanded, and
proclaimed to have been totally accomplished.

     It is a number of times expressly declared: "Nevertheless,
the children of Israel drave not out" the very several peoples
named, "but they dwell among the Israelites unto this day" (e.g.,
Josh. xiii, 13; xv, 63; xvi, 10; xvii, 12, 13). Even under the
judges they "could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley,
because they had chariots of iron" (Judges i, 19). And as Joshua
approached death, he gave this warning and admission: 'That ye
come not among these nations, these that remain among you ... but
they shall be snares and traps unto you and scourges in your
sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this
good land" (Josh. xxiii, 7, 13). Nearly the whole of Judges i
(19-34) is a schedule of peoples whom the Chosen "could not drive
out -- but they dwell among Israel to this day" -- very long
afterwards. And it is by divine inspiration related: "Now these
are the nations which Yahveh left, to prove Israel by them. ...
namely ... all the Canaanites ... and the Hivites that dwelt in
Mount Lebanon. ... And they were to prove Israel by them, to know
whether they would hearken unto the commandments of Yahveh. ...
And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites,
and Amolites, and Petizzites and Hizites, and Jebusites
[precisely the nations who were so annihilated that "not a man
was left of them to breathe"]: And they took their daughters to
be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and
served their gods" (Judges iii, 1-6)! What a rare bit! One
wonders what was the matter with Yahveh and his hornets.

     This admission that the children of Israel "dwelt among" the
seven nations proves that the 600,000 soldiers of Yahveh had not
exterminated the 20-odd millions of inhabitants of Canaan, but
remained a small and, as is now to be seen, conquered minority
among their vengeful enemies.

     For these several nations quickly took their turn in
conquering and subjecting Israel. First, the King of Mesopotamia
kept them in subjection for 8 years (Judges iii 8); then the
Moabites for 18 years (iii, 14); then the oft-destroyed
Canaanites enslaved them for 20 years (iv, 3); then the
Philistines for 18 years (x, 8) ; and again for 40 years (xiii,
1); and so on all but continuously until the time of David,
though Yahveh had promised: "Ye shall reign over many nations,
but they shall not reign over you" (Deut. xv, 6).

                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                141

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

     Thus the performance of the reiterated promise of complete
inheritance is seen to be a dismal failure. The covenant of quiet
and peaceable possession was equally illusory and unperformed.
War between the soldiers of Yahveh and the seven nations was
continuous under Joshua, was hardly interrupted during the four
hundred-odd years of the judges, was Saul's chief occupation and
the occasion of his death, and was so incessant and sanguinary
during David's whole reign that he had no time and was too
bloody-handed to build the phallic temple of Yahveh. As late as
Solomon, six hundred years after the "conquest" of extermination
by Joshua, these nations still dwelt in "thy land"; Solomon
levied tribute on six of these same nations (i Kings, ix, 15-23).

                 THE ABJECT SUBJECTION OF ISRAEL

     The sacred record contains many instances, of which but a
sample or two will be cited here, of the desperate straits to
which Yahveh's heroes of the "conquest" were reduced by their
exterminated enemies. In the days of Samuel the judge, the
Philistines beat the Chosen so badly that the latter sought
recourse to miracle or magic, and brought up the wonder-working
Ark of the Covenant of Yahveh out of Shiloh, so that, they said,
"when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our
enemies" (1 Sam. iv, 3). It is recorded that the Philistines were
afraid when they beard of the advent of the Ark, and said: "Woe
unto us, for Gods [Elohim] are come into the camp." Nevertheless,
they attacked the soldiers of Yahveh at Ebenezer (which was not
then in existence; vii, 12), killed 30,000 of them, and, to their
own great misfortune, captured the Ark, which they kept until, to
get well rid of it, they sent it back to the Chosen accompanied
by suggestive golden images of emerods and mice.

     When Saul was king, the Ammonites besieged Jabesh-Gilead, a
city of the Benjaminites, and the Chosen were so abjectly
terrified that they immediately offered to surrender and become
slaves of the Ammonites. Nahash, the Ammonite leader, replied
that he would accept "on this condition. ... that I may thrust
out all your right eyes, and lay it for a reproach on all Israel"
(1 Sam. xi, 2). The elders of Jabesh begged seven days' time in
order to send throughout Israel for aid; and they said: "If there
be no man [What of Yahveh or his hornets?] to save us, we will
come out to thee" (xi, 3), and suffer their eyes to be punched
out and themselves to be made slaves! They then send out a wild
call for aid to Saul; and when the tidings became known
throughout Israel, "all the people lifted up their voices, and
wept" (xi, 4). King Saul sent swift couriers from Dan to
Beersheba, commanding every man in Israel, under pain of being
"hewed to pieces," to report at once for war. And, it is said,
"the fear of Yahveh fell upon the people" (as well as, maybe, the
fear of Saul's dire threats); and they "came with one accord," to
the number of 330,000 men. The next day they defeated and drove
off the Ammonites, who are reported to have waited complaisantly
a whole week till a force could be raised in all Israel to
destroy them!





                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                142

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

     How the Israelites could do this, an unarmed mob, as the
following account proves, is one of the standing wonders not
revealed. It will be noted that Saul's threat of death could
raise in all Jewry but 330,000 men, about one-half of the alleged
armed host that crossed the Jordan with Joshua. The truly God-
forsaken condition of the Chosen People despite the celebrated
"everlasting covenant," is shown by the following picture drawn
by the inspired historian within two years after Saul was made
king:

          "The Philistines garbered themselves together to fight
     with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand
     horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore
     in multitude: and they came up, and pitched in Mishmash. ...

          "When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait,
     then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in
     thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits. And
     some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and
     Gilead. As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the
     people followed him trembling. ...

          And Saul numbered the people that were present with
     him, about six hundred men. ...

          "Now, there was no smith found throughout all the land
     of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make
     them swords and spears: But all the Israelites went down to
     the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his
     coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. ...

          "So it came to pass in the day of battle, that there
     was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the
     people that were with Saul and Jonathan" (i Sam. xiii, 5-7,
     15, 19, 20, 22).

     From bad to worse the Chosen People had gone and yet went.
Saul, under threat of death, had gathered an unarmed rabble of
330,000, which was later reduced to only 600; this was in the
year 1095 B.C. But a sudden temporary increase, which recalls the
prodigies of the sojourn in Egypt, is recorded, with a notable
contradiction. In 1017 B.C., when Yahveh in his anger (2 Sam.
xxiv, 1) or Satan (i Chron. xxi, 1) "moved" or "provoked" David
to number Israel, Joab took the census and reported that "of
valiant men that drew the sword" there were in Israel 800,000,
and in Judah 500,000 (2 Sam. xxiv, 9), a vast host of Hebrew
soldiers further exaggerated by the historian of Chronicles, who
records the returns of the same census: the "men that drew sword"
in Israel were 1,100,000 and in Judah 480,000 (I Chron. xxi, 5).
In the light of the other returns noticed, we see that the war
casualties and Jahvistic massacres of the Chosen People surpassed
all human records.

     Only sixty years later, in 957 B.C., in the civil wars
following the death of Solomon, Abijah, successor to Rehoboam as
king of Judah, in one battle is said to have had 400,000 "chosen
men," and Jeroboam, King of Israel, to have had 800,000, all


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                143

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?

"being mighty men of valor" (2 Chron. xiii, 3); and in this
single fight "there fell down slain of Israel five hundred
thousand chosen men" (xiii, 17), the casualties of Judah not
being recorded. That these figures are also "inspired" there is
no doubt. There is no other such battle in all history.

     In the brief space of fifty-six years yet later, these vast
armies of Yahveh's Chosen had vanished like the hosts of
Sennacherib; and when Benhadad King of Syria came against Israel
with armies that "filled the country," "the children of Israel
pitched before them like two little flocks of kids"; Ahab
"numbered all the people, even all the children of Israel, being
seven thousand" (I Kings xx, 27, 15).

     Thus we see the Chosen People, the redoubtable soldiers of
El-Sabaoth, whom he had brought in with a mighty band and
outstretched arm -- and hornets -- and whom he had hedged about
with an "everlasting covenant," reduced by the inhabitants of the
land which was to be perfectly "prepared" for their sole
possession to a dire state of misery and oppression. And Israel
was the,"peculiar treasure" of Yahveh, his Chosen People; so
warlike that the "Men of war" were alone numbered, and were
captained by their Yahveh, the "mighty man of war," in person.

     The "everlasting covenant" of Yahveh may have been the
original "scrap of paper."

                          ****     ****

                        IS IT GOD'S WORD?
                               by
                         Joseph Wheless
                              1926


                          ****     ****


    Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.

   The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
that America can again become what its Founders intended --

                 The Free Market-Place of Ideas.

   The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
us, we need to give them back to America.

                          ****     ****


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                144