Deuteronomy 20:16-17 But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded…
The cultural and scientific experts and atheists have a field day with these verses. “God is a mean old vicious ogre who is committed to genocide. What kind of God is He? I don’t want anything to do with this kind of God.” And on and on and on…
The problem with God is He has the audacity to tell the human race that He is in charge. Culture and law are on His terms, not humanity’s. There is one way to do things, His way. God is authority. God will say “NO!” And God will define the consequences and execute accordingly. The peoples above were not interested in God’s law or worshipping the Hebrew God.
Exodus 20:3 You shall have no other gods before Me.
Proverbs 10:16 The wages of the righteous is life, the income of the wicked, punishment.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Who are we kidding? To this day, those who do not believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could care less.
The Canaanite genome was sequenced from five buried bodies near the town of Sidon, Lebanon. This is the same ancient Sidon from the Bible. Canaan also happens to be the father of Sidon.
Genesis 10:15 Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth…
Sidon is located on the middle coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Genesis 10:19a And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza…
Per the American Journal of Human Genetics, modern day Lebanese share 93% of their DNA with the ancient Canaanites. The 5 bodies were estimated to be buried approximately 3,700 years ago. If the dating of these 5 bodies is correct, this would place the Israelites in captivity in Egypt. The DNA was compared to 99 modern day Lebanese citizens. The timeline fits.
In a stunning turn of events, Scientists were wrong in their assumptions and expectations in comparisons of the two groups!
The following is an excerpt from National Geographic: While the researchers were surprised at the level of genetic continuity between ancient Canaanites and modern Lebanese after some 4,000 years of war, migration, and conquest in the area, they caution against drawing too many conclusions on ancient history based solely on genetic data.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/canaanite-bible-ancient-dna-lebanon-genetics-archaeology/
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-canaanite-lebanese-genetics-20170727-story.html
With the DNA findings, scientific/cultural experts and atheists were quick to point out, “These disproves the Bible! The Canaanites were wiped out in the Bible. And they are still here in modern day Lebanon.”
A couple problems here… One, these “experts” have not read the Bible. Two, ancient Israel was disobedient to God’s command in Deuteronomy 20:16-17. Scripture bears witness to Israel’s disobedience to cleanse the land. Israel used the Canaanites as slave labor. After 400 years of bondage in Egypt, it was time for another group of people to work for Israel.
Joshua 17:12-13 Yet the people of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities, but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. Now when the people of Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out.
Judges 1:27-28 restates the above passages from Joshua.
The Canaanites of the Bible were real people. And they are significant genetic relatives to modern day citizens near Sidon, Lebanon.
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