02/23/2021 – Day 282 – Numbers 33 – 36 // “Putting God in the Dock” (book title by C.S. Lewis)
Read again 33: 51-55, but I will quote just verse 55: “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell.”
And a quote from a familiar warrior in my footnote to that passage:
“All who, without commission from God, dare to execute private revenge, and who, from ambition, covetnousness, or resentment, wage ware and desolate kingdoms, must one day answer for it. But if God, instead of sending an earthquake, a pestilence, or a famine, be pleased to authorize and command any people to avenge his cause, such a commission surely is just and right. The Israelites coudl show such a commission, though no persons can do so . Their wars were begun and carried on expressly by Divine direction, and they were enabled to conquer by miracles. Unless it can be proved that the wicked Canaanites did not deserve their doom, objectors only prove their dislike to God, and their love to His enemies. Man makes light of the evil of sin, but God abhors it. This explains the terrible executions of the nations whoch had filled the measure of their sins.”
Matthew Henry