Into Canaan, Asking for a King

The last lesson ended with Moses dying at the threshold of the promised land. In this lesson the people go in—and discover that once inside the promised land, the hard part has only begun.

Joshua led the people across the Jordan, the walls of Jericho fell, and Canaan was gained piece by piece. The text sums it up: “Nothing failed of any good thing which the LORD had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.” (Josh 21:45) Of the three promises from Lesson 2, the ‘land’ has come true here.

This part has some very hard passages: the Israelites are commanded to fight the peoples of Canaan. The text itself gives the reason, and we say what the text says: as early as Abram’s day, God said “the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full” (Gen 15:16); before they went in, Moses also told the people that it was “Not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart… but for the wickedness of these nations” (Deut 9:5). This lesson goes as far as the text goes.

After Joshua died, “another generation arose after them who didn’t know the LORD.” (Judg 2:10) Judges goes round the same circle again and again: the people abandon God and are oppressed by foreign peoples; they cry out, and “The LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them” (Judg 2:16); when a judge dies, “they turned back, and dealt more corruptly than their fathers” (Judg 2:19). Deborah, Gideon, Samson—each circle lower than the last. The last sentence of Judges says that in those days there was no king in Israel (Judg 21:25).

In this darkest age there is a small story: Ruth, a Moabite woman, goes back to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law. She marries Boaz and bears a son, Obed: “They named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David” (Ruth 4:17). In the family tree of the king God would raise up is a foreign widow.

At last the people came to Samuel: “make us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Sam 8:5). God said to Samuel: “they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me as the king over them” (1 Sam 8:7). Still God gave them a king. The first king, Saul, did not obey God’s word, and Samuel said to him, “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam 15:22). God found another, “a man after his own heart” (1 Sam 13:14): the young shepherd David.

After David became king, he wanted to build a house for God. Instead, through the prophet Nathan, God turned it around and made a promise to him: God would build a house for David, David’s offspring would succeed him, and “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” (2 Sam 7:13) After the covenants with Noah, with Abraham and at Sinai, this is another great covenant of the Old Testament—the covenant with David. Yet David also committed great sin—taking another man’s wife and having him killed; the prophet said to him, “You are the man!” (2 Sam 12:7), and he confessed: “I have sinned against the LORD” (2 Sam 12:13). The Bible honestly records this king’s sin, and his repentance.

David’s son Solomon asked for wisdom and completed the temple. At its dedication he prayed: “heaven and the heaven of heavens can’t contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kgs 8:27). But in his old age, “his wives turned away his heart after other gods” (1 Kgs 11:4). The throne that was to last ‘forever’ was clearly heading for trouble. David wrote psalms and Solomon wrote proverbs—so the next lesson pauses to read the poetry and wisdom books this period left behind.