Numbers 33:50-56--Drive Out the Inhabitants

Numbers 33:50-56
English Standard Version

Drive Out the Inhabitants
50 And the LORD spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, saying, 51 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you pass over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, 52 then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images and demolish all their high places. 53 And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it. 54 You shall inherit the land by lot according to your clans. To a large tribe you shall give a large inheritance, and to a small tribe you shall give a small inheritance. Wherever the lot falls for anyone, that shall be his. According to the tribes of your fathers you shall inherit. 55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. 56 And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.”

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Why was it okay for the people of Israel to go to war against the inhabitants of the Promised Land, because God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth is the ultimate authority over nations, kingdoms and territories and He had deeded this land to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as part of an eternal covenant and it is He, not Moses or the people of Israel that decided that it was right for these people to go to war against the people that lived in the land that God had promised to the people of Israel.

God's command is clear.  They were to drive all of the Canaanites out of the land and to completely destroy all of their idols and places of worship to their false gods.  They were not to leave any trace of these to be a temptation to future generation or to have any sexual relations with any of the Canaanites or allow any of them to remain in the land so that they could corrupt God's people in future generations.  If only they had completely obeyed this command!  We'll see much of the Old Testament has to do with this generation not fully obeying this command at this time.

As said above, it was God who was giving the land to the people.  While God makes the boundaries for all nations, no other nation can point to something quite like this to say that God deeded a specific parcel of land to them as an eternal inheritance.  They are actually commanded to possess it and settle in it.

God tells them once again that they will inherit their land based off of the size of their tribe and clan.  The largest tribes will receive the largest allocations of land and the smallest tribes the smallest allocations (we'll see shortly that the Levites would only receive the cities of refuge as the sacrifices and the tithes were their inheritance and the LORD was their portion forever).

God gives a stern warning that if they do not obey (whenever we see this, we know God is saying, "I know you will not obey and this is what's going to happen to you.") God will cause the Canaanites that they leave in the Land to be like barbs in their eyes and thorns in their sides(OUCH) and God would cause the things that He had planned to be reserved for the Canaanites to also happen to His people who were rebellious and would not obey (because the Canaanites would turn the hearts of the people against God).

I'm not exactly sure what God had planned for the Canaanites that Israel got caught up in, but it definitely seems that God is saying that this is exactly what is going to happen to them even though I'm guessing the people at this time were saying and thinking, "May it never be."