In the time of Solomon, when the kingdom had attained its highest glory and greatest power. all the remnants of these nations were made tributary, and bond-service was exacted from them (1 Kings ix :2o).
The Girgashites seem to have been either wholly destroyed or absorbed in other tribes. We find no mention of them subsequent to the book of Joshua. and the opinion that the Gergesenes, or Gadarenes, in the time of our Lord, were their descendants, has very little evidence to support it (Rosenmiil ler, Scholia in Gen. x:16; Reland, Palcestma, i:27, P. The Anakites were completely destroyed by Joshua, except in three cities, Gaza, Gath. and Ashdod (Josh. xi :21-23) ; and the powerful na tion of the Amalekites, many times defeated and continually harassing the Israelites, were at last totally destroyed by the tribe of Simeon (1 Chron. iv:43). Even after the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, there were survivors of five of the Canaanitish nations, with whom alli ances had been made by the Jews, contrary to the commands which had been given them. Some of the Canaanites, according to ancient tradi tion, left the land of Canaan on the approach of Joshua, and emigrated to the coast of Africa. Pro copius (De Bello Vandalico, ii :to) relates that there were in Numidia, at Tigisis (Tingis), two columns on which were inscribed, in Phoenician characters, We are those who fled from the face of Joshua, the robber, the son of Naue. (Bochart, Peleg, 1:24; Michaelis, Laws of Moses, art. 31, vol. 1, p. 176, Smith's Transl.; Winer's Real worterbuch, arts. 'Canaaniter' and `Joshua.') (4) Objections to the Inspired Record. The manner in which the Israelites became possessed of the Promised Land has been so frequently brought as an objection to the inspired character of the Old Testament, and indeed is so far re moved from the ordinary providential government of God, that it will be proper, in closing this ac count, to notice the difficulty which has been felt, and to advert to some of the hypotheses by which it is sought to be removed. Many have asserted, in order to alleviate the difficulty, that an allot ment of the world was made by Noah to his three sons, and that by this allotment the Land of Promise fell to the share of Shem—that the de scendants of Ham were therefore usurpers and interlopers, and that on this ground the Israelites, as the descendants of Shem, had the right to dis possess them. This explanation is as old as Epiphanius, who thus answered the objection of the Manichans. Others justify the war on the ground that the Canaanites were the first aggress ors—a justification which applies only to the ter ritory on the other side of the Jordan. Michaelis asserts that the Israelites had a right to the land of Canaan, as the common pasture land of their herdsmen, in consequence of the undisturbed pos session and appropriation of it from the time of Abraham till the departure of Jacob into Egypt— that this claim had never been relinquished, and was well known to the Canaanites, and that there fore the Israelites only took possession of that which belonged to them. The same hypothesis is
maintained by Jahn (Hebrew Commonwealth, ch. ii. sec. x. Stowe's Transl.). In the Fragments ap pended to Taylor's edition of Calmet's Dictionary (vol. iv, pp. 95, 96), another ground of justification is sought in the supposed identity of race of the Egyptian dynasty under which the Israelites were oppressed, with the tribes that overran Canaan— so that the destruction of the latter was merely an act of retributive justice for the injuries which their compatriots in Egypt had inflicted on• the Israelites. To all these and similar attempts to justify, on the ground of legal right, the forcible occupation of the land by the Israelites, and the extermination (at least to a great extent) of the existing occupants, it is to be objected, that no such reason as any of these is hinted at in the sacred record. The right to carry on a war of ex termination is there rested simply on the divine command to do so. That the Israelites were a' strumeuts in God's hand is a lesson not only con tinually impressed on their minds by the teaching of Moses, but enforced by their defeat whenever they relied on their own strength. That there may have been grounds of justification, on the plea of human or legal right, ought not indeed to be denied, but it is quite clear, from the numerous attempts to find what these grounds were, that they are not stated in the Old Testament ; and to seek for them as though they were necessary to the justification of the Israelites, seems to be an abandonment of the high ground on which alone their justification can be safely rested. In a word, the justification of the Israelites is to be sought in this alone, that they were clearly commissioned by God to accomplish this work of judgment, thus, at once, giving public testimony to, and receiving an awful impression of, His power and authority, so as in some measure to check the outrageous idolatry into which almost the whole world had sunk. (Sec CRUELTIES.) (5) The Mixed Tribes of Canaan. Hor muzd Rassam, the eminent archeologist, in a communication to the Victoria institute of Great Britain gives a valuable account of the original people of Canaan which is condensed as follows: The mixed tribes of Canaan, among whom Abraham wandered, and whose cities the spies from the desert found to be "walled up to heaven;" who had idols and idol-altars, which Israel destroyed, are represented in the Old Testa ment as belonging to another race, not Semitic, but akin to some of the inhabitants of Chaldea and Phoenicia.