WORDS CAN BE MISDEFINED IN THE CHURCH

ISRAEL BECOME CANAAN

"He is a trafficker."—Hosea 12:7

            These are again the words of Jehovah. Chapter eleven, to the end of the first verse of chapter twelve was wholly the speech of Jehovah. Then, in the present reading, in verses two to six, the prophet is speaking. His words constitute an interpolation, by no means out of harmony with the general tenor of the revelation, but one in which he speaks of the history of these people. He goes back to the birth of Jacob, refers to it, and then refers to his experience at Peniel, when he became Israel, the night when he contended with God and gained a victory, not by strength, but by weakness, when with sobs and tears and cries pouring out of his soul, he prevailed, after which his name was no more to be Yawkob, heel-snatcher, but Israel, a man ruled by God.

            Then at verse seven the Speaker is once more Jehovah. The prophet resumes his role as the mouth­piece of Jehovah, and breaks in with the words: "He is a trafficker, the balances of deceit are in his hands: he loves to oppress."

            The words of Jehovah break in upon the prophet's words, upon his interpretation of the past, especially his reference to the night in which this man became Israel. The prophet was thinking of the night by the Jabbok, when Jacob became Israel, and as he refers to it, Jehovah breaks in: "He is a trafficker.”

            Our Versions vary in translation here. The King James Version renders it: "He is a merchant," with a marginal reading, "Or, Canaan." The English Revision renders it: "He is a trafficker," with a marginal reading, "Or, a Canaanite. Heb. Candan." The American Standard Version renders it: "He is a trafficker," with a marginal reading, "Or, a Canaan­ite. Heb. Canaan." Thus the Revisers, English and American, agree. The difference between the older rendering and the newer is merely one of attitude towards the idea. The old translators dignified it by using the word "merchant." Our translators em­ployed a word which may mean the same thing, but has in it an ugly suggestion—"trafficker."

            Look again at the Translations. In each of them we find the words, "He is." Now, I admit that there are times when translators are compelled to introduce some words, not actually found in the text, by reason of the idiom of a language. This is what they have done here. There is no "He is " in the Hebrew. As a matter of fact, there is only one word, "Canaan." This is suggested in each marginal reading. It is an abrupt and contemptuous word.

            Now that may be a somewhat startling thing to say, because we very often make Canaan refer to heaven. We sing about Canaan's happy land, and all sorts of other stupid things. Our idea has been that the wilderness represents this world, and Canaan represents heaven; and so we sing: "Could I but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er,

Not Jordan's flood, nor death's cold stream, Should fright me from the shore."

            The idea is utterly unscriptural. The wilderness is not a type of what our life on earth should be. Canaan is not a type of heaven. If Canaan is a type of heaven, then the first work we shall have to do when we reach heaven is to drive out the Hivites and the Jebusites and the Perizzites! That is not heaven. Yet, with that false idea of Canaan as a heavenly land, the land that lies beyond, we are in danger of missing the suggestiveness of the word as used by Jehovah here. Therefore let us examine the matter carefully.

            The prophet had listened in wonder to the love-song of Jehovah, "When Israel was a child then I loved him . . . called My Son out of Egypt," and had turned aside to the birth of Jacob, when he was a heel-snatcher; and then had remembered the moment when he ceased to be a heel-snatcher, and became Israel; and he gloried in the idea of Israel. Then God suddenly broke across his meditations, and said "Canaan."

            Now we may insert a verb, but when we translate the noun "merchant" or "trafficker," we are missing something. Let it stand as "Canaan." That word stands all the way through the Old Testament litera­ture with one significance, and it is that of complete contrast with what is suggested by the word "Israel." The two words constitute the most striking an­tithesis.

            Let us then consider this matter, first in the story of these peoples, and in its revelation of abiding principles. To treat the word Canaan as a synonym for a merchant is understandable, but it is wrong. I admit that the word Canaan had acquired that meaning, and was often used in that way. But that is not the meaning of the Hebrew word in itself. It was, as I have said, acquired, just as the word Chaldean acquired the suggestiveness of astrology, simply because astrology flourished in Chaldea. All the Chaldeans were not astrologers, and Chaldean never strictly meant astrologer. Dr. Kyle points out with great lucidity that Canaan acquired the sense of merchant‑

man as Chaldean acquired the sense of astrologer. Canaan never really meant merchant-man, as Chaldean never really meant astrologer. The Hebrew word literally means "humiliated."

            In the Bible literature Canaan emerges in Genesis, chapters nine and ten, in the story of Ham. From there throughout Biblical history the intention of the word harmonizes with its use at that point. It is a word always used to describe a people humiliated on account of depravity.      Canaan means quite literally, subjugated, humiliated; but it always means the humiliation of depravity, pollution. Therefore in the Biblical literature Canaan is always the synonym for corruption, the degradation of a people which results from their pollution, which in turn results from the fact that they have lost contact with God.

            Now turn to Israel, and consider its relation to Canaan in the Divine Economy. What did God mean when He put Israel in Canaan? That raises a question which brings us into the realm of a difficulty in the minds of many who declare that they do not believe that God was the Author of war against the Canaan­ites. For myself, I may at once say that if I did not believe God would make war against what is revealed concerning Canaan, I could not believe in God at all! The reason for the attitude of God towards these Canaanites is explicitly stated in the Book of Leviticus: "Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out from before you; and the land is defiled; therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land vomits out her inhabitants. Ye therefore shall keep My statutes and Mine ordinances, and shall not do any of these abomina­tions; neither the home-born, nor the stranger that sojourns among you (for all these abomina­tions have the men of the land done, that were before you, and the land is defiled)."

            If anyone desires fuller details concerning the conditions of these people, let him take up the study of archaeology. The revelation is appalling. Israel was raised up, and sent into that land to cleanse a plague spot, which was blasting the whole world by its influence. Jehovah is a Man of war, against every­thing that blights and blasts humanity. When humanity will not listen to the gentle wooing of His love, then, with the skill of the surgeon, He cuts the cancer out. That is not love, which stands by any individual sufferer from some terrible malady which is curable by excision, and quotes poetry and attempts to soothe the sufferer. God is not a God of such methods. He sent Israel into Canaan to cut the cancer out, to free the region from the degraded, depraved people, whose abominations are revealed in the tablets we are finding today, corroborating the Divine story.

            He put them there also in order to plant in that little land, central to the whole earth, a center of health, to dry up the poisoned streams, that there might issue forth the streams of purity and grace to bless the whole world.

            Strategically, Palestine is the geographical center of this globe. Think of the continents of the earth circling round it. There was a time when the Medi­terranean Sea was the center of everything; and then the center moved to the Atlantic Ocean. It is now leaving the Atlantic Ocean, and moving out to the Pacific Ocean. The great problems of today are centered there. I believe that the movement will sweep over the intervening lands and come back to the same land someday.

            Be all that as it may, Canaan then was corrupt, rotten through and through; and the Divine move­ment was that of cleansing out a corrupt people, and placing there a people separate, clean, pure. God put them there, to cut out a plague spot, and to create a center of health for all the nations.

            Now listen to the text. God said of that people—Canaan!—Israel was created to make Canaan Israel. The time had come when Canaan had made Israel Canaan. The Divine purpose was that Israel, a people God-governed, should go into the Canaan of degeneracy and subjugation to everything impure, that humiliated and depraved country, not in its own estimation, but in its moral condition, and turn it into a God-ruled place and people—Israel. The years had run on, and instead of Israel making Canaan Israel, Canaan had made Israel into Canaan. The ejaculation of a name was therefore the most terrific indictment. "Canaan!" said God. The prophet remembering the birth of Jacob, the prophet remembering the night by the Jabbok, the prophet remembering how the man became Israel and his soul thinking of the issue; then he stopped; and God broke in, and said "Canaan!"

            The principles revealed are so clear. The first and self-evident is that God's elections are always in the interests of humanity. That cannot be over­emphasized. It cannot too often be stated. It is one of the things that the intricacy of the human heart is constantly in danger of forgetting, and it is one of the things of which those who are the elect of God, His selected servants, are always in danger of losing sight. And yet the whole revelation of the Bible is the revelation of that fact. Let me repeat the words of my statement. God's elections are always in the interests of humanity. God's elections are always in order to inclusion, and never to exclusion. If He elects, it is not that He may exclude others, but that He may elect those through whom the others shall soon be included. If we take Bible history, we can write over and of it, "God so loved the world." If He chooses Abraham, He says to Abraham, "I will bless thee, and make thee a blessing; I will make of thee a great nation, in order that all nations shall be blessed in thee." If He creates the nation of Israel, He does it in order that Israel shall be the center from which light shall flash out to the other nations, that they may no longer walk in the darkness, in order that streams of health morally may proceed through­out the world. Elections are always in the interests of the world. Softly and reverently, not to put this Name into comparison, but to recognize it as higher than all possibility of comparison. Jesus was the Elect, the Anointed, the Chosen, and the Messiah. Why? "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The Church is not an end; it is a means to an end. The Church is not a nation of spiritual privilege, which God has created that He may lavish His love upon it, while He lets the rest of the world drift to darkness and dis­order. The Church is the instrument through which He would reach the world.

            To recognize this principle is to understand the sudden, majestic, and terrific word with which God broke across the words of the prophet, and said "Canaan!" It is the severest indictment possible.

            The second principle is involved in the first. If God's elections are always in the interests of humanity, it follows that the chosen instrument must be true to the Divine purpose, and to the Divine standards. It cannot compromise with evil, and fulfill its Divine commission. If Israel be contaminated by Canaan, Israel cannot influence Canaan towards its own ideals, or the God Who governs them. The chosen instru­ment must forevermore be true to the Divine purpose for which it was created, and to the Divine standards by which it is called to live.

            Therefore, finally, it is seen that the enterprise of God in the world must always be one of conflict during the period of process, till Israel changes Canaan, or Canaan changes Israel. Either the Church will influence the world, by attracting her to her Lord, declaring His evangel, proclaiming His ethic; either the Church is encroaching upon the territory of the world, and bringing it under the rule of God; or else the world is affecting the Church, weakening her, robbing her of her testimony and power. There is always a conflict. The terrible thing is, that as God said of His ancient people on this occasion—“Canaan” may be that He has to say the same thing some­times of His Church—the World! I fear it must be admitted that there are places and Churches where it would be very difficult for a man to find the differ­ence between the Church and the world. The line of demarcation has been almost blotted out in many cases. The things that distinguished the Church from the world in her early stages, when she had to stand up against the dark pagan world, upon which deep lust and loathing fell, are largely lost. The very genius of her life is such as to bring her into unceasing conflict with the powers of darkness. The absence of that conflict today is ominous, It seems to me that of many God must be saying, I made a Church to bless the world, and the Church is hardly dis­tinguishable from the world.

            The application of this meditation to the Church is clearly found in one paragraph in the New Testa­ment. In the earlier period of the Christian enterprise, when the man apprehended by Jesus on the Damascene road, Paul, was engaged as the pioneer missionary and messenger of the Cross, he lighted upon the city of Corinth, and he planted the Church there; and presently as he passed on, another came, Apollos, and he watered. After a while, difficulties arose in the Church, and Paul wrote a letter to them to correct their carnalities, and then he wrote a second letter to them, and in that second letter is the paragraph which I have in mind, with which I want to close.            It is found in the sixth chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, from the eleventh verse to the eighteenth. Professor Johnstone Ross once said to me that the second letter to the Corinthians is "the letter of Paul's broken heart." Paul's heart was breaking over the condition of the Corinthian Church. What was the matter with it? Simply this, that the Church had caught the spirit of Corinth, and the evil things in Corinth had invaded the Corinthian Church.

            Now in his second letter he said: "Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinthians, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straightened in us, but ye are straightened in your own affections. Now for recompense in like kind (I speak as unto my children), be ye also enlarged. Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? Or what communion hath light with darkness?

            "And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? For we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

            It is interesting to note that in these words Paul quoted sentences from Isaiah and Hosea, the prophets contemporary to Judah and Israel. Examine that paragraph. It opens with a negative injunction. It closes with a positive injunction. What is the negative injunction? "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers.” What is the closing injunc­tion? "Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch no unclean thing."

            Between these injunctions we find the apostolic arguments for obedience. Notice these pulsating questions. "What? What? What? What?” Four times over. Each introduces a contrast.             Observe the contrasts—righteousness, iniquity; light, darkness; Christ, Belial; believer, unbeliever; temple of God, idols.

            On one side he ranges the things for which the Church stands : Righteousness, Light, Christ, a believer, the Temple of God. On the other he names the things which are opposed to the Church, and which the Church is sent into the world to correct: Iniquity, Darkness, Belial, Unbelief, and Idolatry. Paul is showing the antagonism between these things. In doing so, carefully observe the words he used. Every one of them is well chosen and carefully chosen. What fellowship between righteousness and iniquity; what communion between light and darkness; what concord between Christ and Belial; between a believer and an unbeliever what portion; between the temple of God and idols, what agreement.

            What are these words, fellowship, communion, concord, portion, agreement, massed between these opposing things? The first is fellowship, and the word means sharing. What sharing can there be? What is there in iniquity that righteousness wants? What is there in righteousness that iniquity desires? They cannot share. His next word is the word com­munion. It means to have things in common. What is there in common between light and darkness? There is nothing in common. They contradict each other eternally. Listen to the next. What concord between Christ and Belial? Concord is a fine word with a Latin origin. The Greek word might be trans­literated symphony. What symphony can there be between Christ and Belial? A symphony is a sounding together in harmony. What sounding together can there be between Christ and Belial? Between a believer and an unbeliever he asks what portion can there be? The word portion means a lot, province, inheritance. How can they live together? And then at last what agreement, which means common senti­ment, what common sentiment can there be between the temple of God and idols?

            Paul did not answer the questions he asked. Reason gives the answer as the questions are asked. This being so, it is at once recognized that there is no disaster greater than that an hour should come when God has to say to His Israel, "Canaan!" Those who were sent to cut the cancer out and establish a center of health have caught the disease, have lost the power to heal and help humanity. Canaan is a terrible word when so used.

            And that terrible word was spoken in Love. This is the love of God. What sickly, sentimental, stupid things we sometimes crystallize into apparently axiomatic affirmations. As, for instance, when we say, Love is blind. Love is never blind. Make no mistake. Love has keenest vision. There is a boy going wrong, and everybody can see it; they know he is going wrong. And someone says everyone sees it but his mother. She is blind. Again, make no mistake. His mother saw it long before you did. Eyes washed with tears always see most clearly, but "Love endureth all things, hopeth all things, believeth all things; love never faileth." Love always sees. But that is not love which excuses the thing that is blasting the loved one. Love will make no terms with the things that blast humanity. It is because God is Love that He sees clearly the failure, makes no terms with it, and calls things by their right names. While the prophet, uttering the very message of God, was meditating the wonderful thing that Jacob became Israel, God says in effect, it is true; but he has become Canaan. God's judgments are the judgments of truth and righteousness.

            Our chief concern should be, that we who are the Israel of God, the people God-governed, should never become Canaan, a people humiliated by evil. We must make no terms with evil, no compromise with the things that are opposed to our Christ, no trafficking across the border line with Belial. We are to stand true and clean and pure and strong, in order that we may be a center of healing and of blessing for the world.