Week 4 Exodus 3
When the Lord met Moses in the wilderness and told him to return to Egypt to free Israel he also told him: I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
The reason I stopped reading at that point was because I remembered that the Lord had promised Abraham: to your offspring I give…the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.
The lists aren’t duplicates but there’s plenty of overlap. Both name the Canaanites Hittites Amorites Perizzites & Jebusites. I’m not too worried about the discrepancy since we’re talking about the same geographic region.
When Abraham first arrived in Canaan the Canaanite tribes lived there. But the Lord promised him that that exact land was for Israel. Not yet. But eventually all the tribes would be displaced (although eventually took a long time coming).
So there was a land tenure system in place with a land-owner and land-users. The Lord owned the land. The local tribes used it.
The tribes got to occupy the land for centuries (long enough that they figured it was theirs). But the land-owner had plans to eventually shift the right of land-use to Israel.
Note: quotes from Exodus 3:17 & Genesis 15:18-21 (ESV). I posted on the tribes on January 3 & 4 2025: ‘an unexplained curse’ and ‘a nasty development’