Israel Among the Nations

Israel Among the Nations

The conquest, the coexistence, the cycle — and the long struggle to remain a covenant people in a land that worshipped other gods

When Joshua led Israel across the Jordan, they were not entering empty land. Canaan was populated by city-states, each with its own king, its own walls, its own gods. The story that follows — spanning the books of Joshua and Judges — is not a simple tale of military victory. It is a story of partial conquest, uncomfortable coexistence, religious syncretism, and the repeated failure to become the people God had called them to be.

This section traces that story from the crossing of the Jordan through the end of the Judges period — approximately 1400–1050 BC by traditional chronology.

The Commission

Moses is gone — taken by the Lord (Moses 1:42; Deuteronomy 34:5–6). The generation that left Egypt has perished in the wilderness. And God speaks to Joshua the son of Nun with a charge that is both military and spiritual:

The phrase “be strong and of a good courage” appears three times in Joshua 1 alone (vv. 6, 7, 9) — and each time the context shifts. The first is about military leadership. The second adds a condition: be courageous in keeping the law, “turn not from it to the right hand or to the left” (Joshua 1:7). The third is pure promise: “the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:9).

The book of Joshua, then, begins with a commission that is inseparable from covenant faithfulness. The land is given — but possessing it requires obedience.

The Conquest: What Joshua Accomplished

The early chapters of Joshua describe a series of dramatic military victories:

• Jericho (Joshua 6) — the walls fall after seven days of marching, with the ark of the covenant leading the procession. The victory is entirely God’s; Israel’s “weapon” is obedience.
• Ai (Joshua 7–8) — initial defeat because of Achan’s violation of the cherem (the ban), followed by victory after the sin is addressed. The lesson: covenant disobedience cancels divine protection.
• The southern campaign (Joshua 10) — a coalition of five kings defeated, with the famous episode of the sun standing still at Gibeon.
• The northern campaign (Joshua 11) — Hazor, the head of all those kingdoms, burned and conquered.

Joshua 11:23 summarizes: “So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the LORD said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested from war.”

The Incomplete Possession

But the summary is more theological than geographical. Scattered throughout Joshua itself are admissions that the conquest was far from total:

The result was not a clean boundary between “Israelite territory” and “Canaanite territory.” Instead, Israelites and Canaanites lived side by side — in the same valleys, sometimes in the same towns. Israel held the central hill country; the Canaanites retained the fortified lowland cities with their iron chariots (Judges 1:19). Jerusalem would not fall until David, centuries later.

Coexistence and Syncretism

Proximity made assimilation inevitable. Deuteronomy 7 had warned precisely against this:

The fear was not ethnic but religious. Intermarriage would import the gods. And that is exactly what happened. Judges 3:5–6 states it bluntly: “And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: and they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.”

Syncretism in Canaan was not a dramatic apostasy — it was gradual absorption. Israelite farmers looked at their Canaanite neighbors' agricultural rituals and wondered: What if Baal really does control the rain? They didn’t necessarily abandon YHWH — they added Baal alongside Him. The prophets would later call this “limping between two opinions” (1 Kings 18:21).

Why Canaanite Religion Was Tempting

The practical appeal was real — Baal promised visible results for farmers who needed rain, and Canaanite worship offered the cultural normalcy of doing what everyone else did. But the deeper danger was that Canaanite religion was not foreign to Israel. It was disturbingly familiar.

The Canaanite pantheon was headed by a god named El — the same word Israel used for God. Canaanite worship featured sacrifice, temples, priesthoods, sacred festivals tied to the agricultural calendar, and covenant rituals. The vocabulary overlapped. The ritual forms echoed. For an Israelite farmer watching his Canaanite neighbor’s worship, the differences may have seemed like variations on a shared tradition rather than a fundamentally different religion.

From a Latter-day Saint perspective, this familiarity is not surprising. If the patriarchs — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob — worshipped the true God in Canaan for generations, then the religious traditions of the region would have carried fragments of that original worship. Over centuries without prophetic correction, those fragments corrupted into the Baal cult. This is the dispensational pattern: truth degrades without a prophetic anchor, producing traditions that are almost right — close enough to blend with covenant worship, close enough to make syncretism feel natural rather than apostate. It is the same pattern that required restoration through Abraham, through Moses, and ultimately through Joseph Smith. (For the full treatment of Canaanite religion and its relationship to YHWH worship, see Section 04: Ugarit & Canaanite Religion.)

The Cycle of the Judges

The book of Judges covers approximately 300 years of tribal confederation — before Israel had a king, before the Temple, before Jerusalem was the capital. The refrain says it all: “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

The Pattern

The cycle repeats with mechanical precision (Judges 2:11–19):

The key verse: “And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). The failure was not just moral — it was generational. Each new generation had to be taught, and the teaching failed.

The Downward Spiral

The cycle doesn’t stay flat — it degenerates. Each judge is arguably worse than the last:

• Othniel (Judges 3:9–11) — a model judge, Caleb’s nephew, no recorded flaw
• Ehud (Judges 3:15–30) — clever but violent; assassinates the Moabite king with a hidden blade
• Deborah (Judges 4–5) — prophetess, judge, and commander; has to compensate for male failure when Barak refuses to go without her
• Gideon (Judges 6–8) — starts well (tears down Baal’s altar) but ends by making a golden ephod that becomes an idol
• Jephthah (Judges 11) — makes a rash vow with devastating consequences
• Samson (Judges 13–16) — maximum gifts, minimum character; violates every term of his Nazarite vow

By chapters 17–21, Israel is functionally indistinguishable from the Canaanites. The book ends with a Levite’s concubine dismembered, a civil war against Benjamin, and the kidnapping of women at Shiloh. The covenant people have become what they were sent to displace.

What Is a Shofet (שׁוֹפֵט)?

The English word “judge” is misleading. The Hebrew shofet (שׁוֹפֵט) in the book of Judges does not describe a courtroom official. These figures were charismatic military-political leaders raised up by God for specific crises. They resolved disputes (Deborah did this under her palm tree — Judges 4:5), but their primary function was deliverance: saving Israel from oppressors through God-empowered action.

Crucially, judges did not establish dynasties. Gideon explicitly refused kingship: “I will not rule over you … the LORD shall rule over you” (Judges 8:23). Their authority was personal and temporary — born from crisis, validated by victory, and gone when they died. This made every generational transition dangerous. Without a system for passing on both leadership and faith, the cycle was structurally inevitable.

Covenant Renewal at Shechem

Before the cycle began, Joshua made one last attempt to anchor the people. At Shechem — where Abraham had first received the promise (Genesis 12:6–7), where Jacob had buried foreign gods (Genesis 35:4) — Joshua gathered all the tribes for a covenant renewal ceremony:

The covenant at Shechem followed a well-known ancient Near Eastern treaty pattern: a historical prologue recounting what the suzerain has done for the vassal (Joshua 24:2–13), stipulations (vv. 14–24), witnesses (v. 22 — “ye are witnesses against yourselves”), and a memorial stone (v. 27).

Joshua was pulling directly from Moses’ instruction at the end of Deuteronomy, where the terms and conditions of the Law are laid out in full. In Deuteronomy 27–30, Moses outlines the blessings that follow obedience and the consequences that follow rebellion — and then frames the entire covenant in language that deliberately echoes Eden: “I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil … therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:15, 19). The vocabulary is identical to Genesis 2–3: good and evil (טוֹב וָרָע), life and death. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil presented Adam and Eve with the same fundamental choice — and the same consequences. Moses doesn’t name the tree, but he uses its language. Israel standing at the boundary of the promised land mirrors humanity standing before the tree: a choice placed before God’s people, with everything at stake. Joshua was not introducing something new at Shechem. He was calling Israel back to the choice Moses had already placed before them — the choice that has stood at the center of every covenant from Eden forward.

But Joshua’s most striking statement was his warning: “Ye cannot serve the LORD: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins” (Joshua 24:19). This was not pessimism — it was realism. Joshua knew what was coming. And the book of Judges proves him right.

The Theological Question

Why did God allow the incomplete conquest? Judges offers two answers, both operating simultaneously:

1. As a test of faithfulness — “To prove Israel by them, whether they would keep the way of the LORD” (Judges 2:22)
2. As military training — “That the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war” (Judges 3:2)

The nations left in the land were not an accident — they were a curriculum. Israel was meant to learn faithfulness through opposition. Instead, they learned assimilation through convenience.