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THE CONQUEST OF CANAAN.

IMMEDIATELY after the death of Moses, the Lord communicated his will to Joshua, the newly appointed leader of the Israelites. He was commanded to go over Jordan, to take possession of the heritage which had been promised to the descendants of Abraham. From the wilderness and mount Lebanon, unto the river Euphrates and the great sea, the congregation were to occupy the whole country.

Joshua accordingly, having made all necessary preparations, by provisioning his army, sending spies to see the condition of the road by which he must march, and of the city of Jericho, on which his first attack was to be made, set forward and came, in one day, to the banks of the Jordan, the boundary of the fertile land of promise. Here another miracle was performed in behalf of the Hebrews. At the point where it was desired to cross, the stream, which always overflowed its banks in harvest weather, was not fordable, and Joshua had neither boat nor raft with which to effect the passage. The Lord therefore parted the waters, as he had

done in the Red Sea, so that the flood which came down towards the lake of Sodom was arrested in its progress, and stood piled, like a wall, in the midst of its channel, while the people walked dry-shod through the bed of the river. From this period the children of Israel obtained supplies of corn and meat in Palestine, and the manna and quails, with which they had been fed during their wanderings, ceased. Henceforth, also, the ordinary course of nature operated with regard to their vestments, their tents, their arms, and their shoes, which previously had been preserved from destruction or decay by Divine interposition.

The Canaanitish kings and princes, when they heard how Jehovah had brought his people into their land, were stricken with amazement and fear; nevertheless they fortified their cities and towns, and determined to offer the utmost resistance to the invaders. Jericho was forthwith besieged; but as the Hebrews had no battering-rams or scaling-ladders, and but few other munitions of war, the Lord again displayed his favour and might, by causing the walls of the city to fall down at the blast of the Levites' trumpets, and by delivering the place a prey to his worshippers, without subjecting them to the hazards and loss incident to warlike operations. All that were in Jericho, men, women, and children, except one family, a member of which had been kind to the spies of Joshua,

were put to death; and the city was spoiled and delivered to the flames, and a heavy curse denounced against whosoever should seek, at any future time, to restore it from its ruins.

From Jericho the army proceeded to Ai; but here in their first assault the Iraelites were unsuccessful. This was a judg

ment on them, because one of their number had defiled himself by pilfering, for his own use, from among the spoils of Jericho, some of the gold and silver which should have been dedicated to the service of the Lord. The transgressor, however, having been detected, and stoned to death, Ai also was captured, its inhabitants put to the sword, and its king hanged upon a tree, and buried beneath a great heap of stones at the entrance of the city, which, like Jericho, was consumed by fire.

The princes and chiefs of Canaan now formed a confederacy against the common enemy; the inhabitants of Gibeon alone holding aloof from the league, being desirous to form an alliance with a foe which it seemed impossible to withstand. These people, "working wilily," sent to Joshua a deputation, with old sacks upon their asses, with leathern wine bottles, old and rent and bound up, old clouted shoes upon their feet, and old garments upon their loins, with provisions dry and mouldy, to pretend that they had come from a far country, and desired peace and amity with Israel. Joshua, deceived

by appearances, made a convention with these crafty ambassadors, who thus escaped the destruction with which their country was threatened; but their dissimulation was not permitted to go unpunished. When the trick by which they had beguiled the Israelites was detected, their whole race was condemned by Joshua to be perpetual bondmen, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of the Lord. Their countrymen also, when informed of their defection, seem to have entertained stronger hatred against them than against the foreign enemy who had appeared among them, and made a fierce war upon their city; insomuch that Joshua, as an ally, was compelled to hasten to the mountains, to save them from destruction.

It was by a night march that the children of Israel ascended from Gilgal to Gibeon, which was then beleaguered by the troops of five Amoritish kings, at the head of whom was Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem. The rapidity of his march, the valour of his followers, and the suddenness of his onset, but, above all, the aid and encouragement of the Almighty, enabled Joshua utterly to defeat and rout his opponents, who fled before his host from Gibeon to Azekah, Makkedah, and Beth-horon, until the hour of sun-down. Terrible was the slaughter wrought by the Israelites on that day; and even this was rendered more fearful by Jehovah, at whose word a