=The right and wrong of conquest.=—­One may ask, what right had the Hebrews to attack and kill these people and seize their homes?  Ideal Christian standards develop slowly.  In these days of which we speak such standards had hardly been thought of.  All weak nations were at the mercy of their stronger neighbors, and no one ever questioned the morality of it.  It is good to know, moreover, that conquest, after all, was not the chief method by which the Hebrews made themselves masters of Canaan.  After they had established themselves, here and there, in certain towns, and certain sections of the country, they gradually made friends with their Canaanite neighbors whom they had not been able to conquer at the beginning.  In time their children intermarried with the children of the Canaanites until at last there came to be one nation, which was known as the Hebrews, or the Children of Israel.

STUDY TOPICS

1.  Read any one of the following sections:  Numbers 11. 13-14, 20, 21; Deuteronomy 34; Joshua 1. 6.

2.  Draw a map showing in a general way the movements of the Hebrews described in this chapter.

3.  Look up in the Bible dictionary, “Manna,” “Spies,” “Kadesh,” “Jericho.”

4.  Compare the conquest of Canaan with the treatment of the American Indians by white settlers.

5.  How should the natives of Africa be treated in the opening up of Africa to civilization?

CHAPTER VII

LEARNING TO BE FARMERS

The wandering Hebrew shepherds were not savages nor barbarians.  In many ways Abraham and his friends were cultured, civilized people; but their civilization was of a different kind from that of the settled farmers and villagers of Canaan.  So when the Hebrews crossed the Jordan and gradually fought their way to the highland fields and villages where they were able to settle down and live as farmers and vineyard keepers instead of shepherds, they soon found that they had much to learn.  The only teachers to whom they could turn were the Canaanites.  Very soon, therefore, they made friends with their Canaanite neighbors.

“Tell us how to plant wheat,” the Hebrews said to them, for example; or, “Will you please show us how to prune these grape vines?” or, “Won’t you give us a few lessons in driving oxen?  We can’t make these young steers pull.”

LEARNING TO RAISE AND USE CATTLE

This lesson about the training and care of cattle was one of the first and most necessary parts of their new education.  As shepherds they knew all about sheep and goats; and this knowledge was still valuable, for on many a Canaanite hillside goats could thrive where no other animal could live.  But as farmers they must also raise cattle, not only because of the milk, and the beef, but because they needed the oxen to draw their carts and plows and harrows.  Oxen and asses, not horses, were the work animals of the farmers of those days.  Oxen were more powerful than asses.  Horses were seldom seen at all.  They were used chiefly in war by the great military emperors of Egypt and Assyria.