We have an interesting piece of data to support this approach, in the account of the "destruction" of the Amorite country of Og (Num 21.31ff): After Moses had sent spies to Jazer, the Israelites captured its surrounding settlements and drove out the Amorites who were there. Notice that the Amorites in the villages (ie surrounding settlements in v.32 were 'driven out'; but the royal bloodline and national army were destroyed in v.35). oThat this punishment was more 'national' shows up in the frequent mention of the word "nation(s)" in the passages, and the displacement image in Ps 44.2 is explicit: With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers... oMigration was a fact and a way of life, and not that big of a deal in that time period--scholars classify the peoples into the "mobile" terminological groups: pastoral nomadism, semi-nomadism, transhumance nomadism, oWe can size the problem a little here as well. The average city size for walled cities in Palestine at the time was 1000-3000 folks, with many being less than 700 (ISBE: sv "City"). In Joshua 12, the victory list is given as 31 kings (generally petty kings of city-states) this would be around 70000 people (assuming they all stayed around--a very dubious assumption in light of the international fear of Israel at the time). But this 70000 is against a base of close to 2 million people! (Israel was approximately 1.6 million at the time, and these nations are said to be 'more numerous' than Israel in a ...

• published: 23 Jun 2009
• views: 261
• author: mdean1215