Now, if God commanded the individual destruction of all the Canaanitish nations, Joshua disobeyed him in every instance. For at his death, the Israelites still "dwelt among them," and each nation is mentioned by name.  See Judges i. 5, and yet we are told that “Joshua was full of the spirit of the Lord and of WISDOM,” Deut. xxxiv. 9. (of course, he could not have been ignorant of the meaning of those commands,)—­that “the Lord was with him,” Josh. vi. 27; and that he “left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses;” and further, that he “took all that land.”  Joshua xi, 15-23.  Also, that “the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers, and they possessed it and dwelt therein, and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them.”  “The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand,” &c.

How can this testimony be reconciled with itself, if we suppose that the command to destroy enjoined individual extermination, and the command to drive out, enjoined the unconditional expulsion of individuals from the country, rather than their expulsion from the possession or ownership of it, as the lords of the soil?  It is true, multitudes of the Canaanites were slain, but in every case it was in consequence of their refusing to surrender their land to the possession of the Israelites.  Not a solitary case can be found in which a Canaanite was either killed or driven out of the country, who acquiesced in the transfer of the territory of Canaan, and its sovereignty, from the inhabitants of the land to the Israelites.  Witness the case of Rahab and all her kindred, and the inhabitants of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjathjearim[A].  The Canaanites knew of the miracles in Egypt, at the Red Sea, in the wilderness, and at the passage of Jordan.  They knew that their land had been transferred to the Israelites, as a judgment upon them for their sins.—­See Joshua ii. 9-11, and ix. 9, 10, 24.  Many of them were awed by these wonders, and made no resistance to the confiscation of their territory.  Others fiercely resisted, defied the God of the armies of Israel, and came out to battle.  These occupied the fortified cities, were the most inveterate heathen—­the aristocracy of idolatry, the kings, the nobility and gentry, the priests, with their crowds of satellites, and retainers that aided in the performance of idolatrous rites, the military forces, with the chief profligates and lust-panders of both sexes.  Every Bible student will recall many facts corroborating this supposition.  Such as the multitudes of tributaries in the midst of Israel, and that too, when the Israelites had “waxed strong,” and the uttermost nations quaked at the terror of their name.  The large numbers of the Canaanites, as well as the Philistines and others, who became proselytes, and joined themselves to the