CHAPTER IV

THE TRANSITION

FROM about 1200 B. C. until the time of David the Israelites were making their way into Canaan. Tradition is no doubt correct in representing the conquest of the country east of the Jordan as first accomplished, though it is wrong in making the occupation the result of a single battle, or rather of two battles. East of the Jordan the people were always half nomads, so that amalgamation with the earlier inhabitants, or gradual absorption of them, was easier here than across the river. The impression made by our narratives is to the effect that for centuries the land of Gilead retained much of primitive Israelite life and manners. It is for this reason, perhaps, that Ishbaal and David found a refuge in Mahanaim when hard pressed by enemies in Canaan-the tie of blood, so strong among the nomads, was here in full force as in the old desert days. But the political centre of the country was west of the Jordan, and our sources tell us little of the religion and manners of the transjordanic region.

In Canaan proper, at the time of the invasion, the agricultural life was fully established except in the country bordering on the Dead Sea, and the change brought about by amalgamation with the earlier inhabitants was markedthough perhaps not so marked as we are accustomed to think. Israelites and Canaanites were of the same blood and spoke the same language. The later biblical writers preferred to disguise this fact, making Canaan the son of Ham while Israel was derived from Shem. But there can be no doubt from the evidence in our hands that the two

peoples were closely related. Their customs were very similar; their names for God (except that of Yahweh) were the same; intermarriage was early tolerated. The main difference was the one already mentioned-the Canaanites were agriculturists and lived in walled towns., Since it was difficult for the nomads to reduce fortified places, the process, which is usually thought of as a conquest, was really an amalgamation in which the superior vigour of the Israelite stock asserted itself, making an Israelite nation out of the combined elements. The Israelite authors are conscious that amalgamation has taken place, for the more rigid of them allege intermarriage with the Canaanites as the reason for all the misfortunes which befell the people. Indirectly they testify to the same thing when they make certain tribes sons of Jacob by slave girls. The names of at least two of the tribes (Gad and Asher) point in the same direction, for they are the names of Syrian divinities. Judah marries a Canaanitess-that is, the tribe of Judah was made up from the two separate races. In the testament of Jacob Issachar is under task-work (Gen. 49: 15). This means that the Israelite tribe is the inferior part of the composite community. A commentary on the statement is given by the earliest account of the conquest (Judges 1), in which the author tells us frankly that in most of the cities the Canaanites were too strong to be dispossessed and that they and the Israelites dwelt together, sometimes one element being the predominant one, sometimes the other. The most that the Israelites could do in the majority of cases was to reduce the older inhabitants to the position of serfs, and this was not done until the time of Solomon.

The religion of the Canaanites was not very different from that of their nomad neighbours. There was, therefore, no violent break when the immigrants adopted the sacred places of the country and attributed their foundation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These sacred places were on the hilltops and under the evergreen trees, and were associated with the local divinities just in the way in which the

desert rocks and trees were. When the people of Shechem consecrated Abimelech as prince they did it at the Oak of the Pillar which is in Shechem (Judges 9:6). These people were Canaanites, and the maççeba at this sacred tree was probably an object of worship before the Israelite invasion. Yet it had now become the dwelling of Yahweh, for one author supposes it set up by Joshua (Joshua 24: 26), and if by him it must have been sacred to the God of Israel. It is, perhaps, not without significance that the divinity of this city is called El-berith or Baal-berith (Judges 8: 33; 9:4 and 46), for the name means God-of-the-covenant or Lordof-the-covenant. The name was given to the God because he had become the guardian of the treaty by which the two peoples bound themselves to live together in peace.

The examples of sacred stones, already discussed under the head of nomadic religion, need not again be cited, though the most of them, from the nature of the case, were found on the soil of Canaan. To later writers they were uncongenial, and the effort was made to disguise their original cultic significance and to make of them historic monuments. The stones from which the sanctuary of Gilgal took its names are thus to the writer of the book of Joshua simply memorials of the crossing of the Jordan (Joshua 4:3), and the stone Ebenezer appears as a similar monument of an Israelite victory (I Sam. 7: 12). The sacred stones on Ebal (originally Gerizim, Deut. 27: 2) are made into stones of record on which the Deuteronomic law is written. But the mention of the altar in the same connection indicates that the place was a sanctuary. Numbers of such simple sanctuaries may have been founded after the Israelites entered the country, for, as we have seen, the earliest law encouraged the erection of altars wherever some extraordinary event indicated the special presence of the divinity. At the close of a day of battle Saul had a great stone set apart as a place of sacrifice, and the account indicates that this king showed his piety by erecting a number of such altars (I Sam. 14:35).

Excavation seems to show that the Canaanite sanctuaries

were for the most part open-air spaces with pillars and altars such as are indicated in the Hebrew accounts. But there are indications also that in the more advanced communities the god was represented by a metal image, in which case a building was needed for the protection of the sacred object. The God of Israel had only an ark or a tent, and permanent structures such as we find at Shiloh must have been taken over from the Canaanites. The comparatively late author who ascribes to David the intention to build the temple affirms that Yahweh had sojourned in a tent up to that time (II Sam. 7:6). This was true only in a limited sense, for the temple at Shiloh, though probably Canaanite in origin, had been appropriated by Yahweh after the conquest. That it became customary to represent Yahweh by an image is also evident from the narratives, for the later reaction against molten images indicates that the Israelites had yielded to Canaanite influence in this respect.

All that we know of the Canaanites and their kinsmen leads us to believe that they worshipped a multitude of divinities, genii locorum, such as we have already discovered among the Hebrews in the nomadic stage. The name most frequently applied to one of these gods was Baal, originally not a proper name but an appellative meaning possessor. It seems to have been a primitive Semitic word, for in Babylon it was applied to one of the older divinities in the form Bel, and afterward it was transferred to the chief god of Babylon, whose proper name was Marduk. In the Old Testament it occurs in the plural to designate the whole group of local divinities, or else with the article showing the consciousness that it was not strictly a proper name. In a number of place-names it shows that the local divinity was regarded as the proprietor of the place. Thus we have Baal-peor, the divinity of the mountain Peor (Num. 25:3-5), Baal-hermon, the god of Mount Hermon (Judges 3:3), parallel to which is Baal-lebanon in an inscription. Baal-perazim is in our narrative connected with a manifestation of Yahweh (II Sam. 5:20). Baal-tamar is evi

dently the Baal who inhabits a palm-tree (Judges 20:33). In some cases the spirit is feminine something which the later religion of Israel rejected. Thus the Baalath-beer is the Naiad of the well (Joshua 19:8; other Baalahs are mentioned in 15:9, 11, and 19:44). Finally, we have Bamoth-baal and Kirjath-baal, both of which indicate that the Baal is lord or possessor of the heights or of the city (Num. 22:41; Joshua 15: 60).

The conception of the divinity as possessor of a place or district implies private property in land, something unknown to the nomad but essential to the agriculturist. A man cannot cultivate successfully unless he has undisturbed title to his land. This is conspicuously true in the cultivation of those crops for which a considerable part of Canaan was famous-the fig, the olive, and the vine-since these crops require a series of years before they repay the care of the cultivator. Moreover, the success of the farmer depends upon the water supply, and in the border of the desert irrigation is necessary to bring the land into fruitfulness. This labour will not be expended unless the gardener is tolerably certain that he will receive his reward. But the water supply, whether it comes from the sky or from the underground reservoir which wells up in springs and fountains, is evidently given by the gods. Hence the idea of the nomad is that the oasis where the water flows out of the ground and causes a luxuriant vegetation is the garden of God. Private property in land was first ascribed to the divinity, and the agriculturist thought of himself as tenant of this proprietor. The farmer who had subdued the wild land, therefore, held that he owed something to his landlord. His agriculture was interwoven with religious rites designed to conciliate the god, and the first-fruits of the crop were paid to him in recognition of his rights. Not all the Baals were gods of agriculture, but those who most distinctly appealed to the Israelites when they were learning to till the soil must have been those who had it in their power to give or to withhold the harvest. Hosea correctly