A God of Strange Strategy

The feet of the judgements of the Lord are leaden, so that they may be delayed in their coming. The arms of the Lord are iron so that when they come they strike with deadly force. Our hearts are troubled when the justice of the Lord is meted out, but at the same time, they ache to know of its fulfilment. The sin in our lives is the source of this seeming conflict where we cry out for justice and then rebel when God displays His ability to deliver it. This command to slaughter the Canaanites was not given in order that room might be made for the Israelites. God’s eye looked back over the eight or nine centuries in which these children of Canaan had been strewing the short path of their national history with many and aggravated sins. They had been heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, therefore was it that God said, “The city shall be devoted.” Many years later the Divine voice is heard saying to the ten tribes, “They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness: now their own doings have beset them about; they are before My face.”