There will be more to treat below (ch. 13 and following) about this. Now, from this place [only], these [things] are to be observed. First, that that land is across the Jordan toward the West. For to Joshua — then existing across the Jordan toward the East — it is said by the Lord: “Cross this Jordan into the land.” But when it is added that not Joshua only, but the whole people also, cross into it, this is conveniently to be taken so that only those are signified to whom, by Moses, no possessions had yet been given in that Transjordan part of the camp; and of these also those to whom Moses had commanded the crossing (of whom a little after, v. 12 [the two-and-a-half tribes]). Second, that the same land is to be occupied — and thenceforth possessed — by the Israelites by right, and by a most just title. For, whereas various causes and rights are taught by Theologians and Jurists, by which it is lawful justly to take some thing already otherwise possessed by another, and (if need be) to vindicate [it] by arms, and to possess [it once] vindicated — of all [these], none [is] more consonant with right reason, nor with justice and equity, than when the true, perfect, and absolute Lord of that thing, knowingly and prudently, gives it to someone. But is not GOD the true, perfect, and absolute Lord of all things? Is it not [in] Ps. 23 [24]: “His is the earth, and the fullness thereof — the world, and all who dwell in it”? Does He not hold the bounds of all vineyards, fields, and dominions most perfectly in His single hand, and therefore, to whomever He wills, most justly, by His own judgment, either take [them] away or bestow [them]? Here indeed He bids Joshua cross into the land “which I,” He says, “will give to the sons of Israel” — or, as [it is] more significantly in the Hebrew and the Septuagint (and perhaps once was in our translator, before two middle little letters were removed), “which I give.” For great [is] the force subject to that “I”: from which it also came about that the Israelites, by good right, possessed the gold, silver, clothing, and other things which they took from the Egyptians (Exod. 12). Some indeed of the ancients assert — St. Augustine (sermon 105 On the Seasons), St. Epiphanius (bk. 1, heresy 9, which is the Samaritan [heresy]; [and] heresy 66), [and] the Doctor of St. Ephrem, Jacob of Edessa (in Anastasius, bk. 1 On Paradise), and, of the more recent, Guillaume Postel (in [his] Cosmography), and several others — [that] this land was once possessed by Shem [Semo], then by his posterity; [and that], they being violently driven out, it was occupied and infested by the posterity of Canaan. And therefore that, to the Israelites — who were of Shem’s stock — [it was owed] as it were a pristine inheritance, due by most just right. But whether this be true, Masius shows it can be doubted, because this violent expulsion is nowhere charged to the Canaanites. Yet a so-slender little reasoning ought not to spread darkness over the authority of so many and so great ancients. For grant [that] that expulsion is not charged [in Scripture] by the Israelites — was it therefore not [a fact]? It is certain from Gen. 15 [that], on account of [their] completed iniquities, the Amorites [were] to be expelled hence — and yet, where [is it said] by the Israelites [that] this, to those same [Amorites, was] ever—
(col. 267)
—ever objected? It is certain, too, that by God’s gift the Israelites themselves were made the true lords of that same region — and yet, when was this [expulsion] ever charged against them by [the Canaanites]? Unless, perhaps, once, at Judges 11:24. But this opinion is drawn from the grave tradition of our forefathers, who were both in the East (as is clear from the cited Edessene [Jacob of Edessa]) and in the West (as St. Augustine reports in the cited place). “Our forefathers hand down,” he says, “that when the sons of Noah divided the whole earth among themselves, this land — which is called the Canaanites’ — in the division of the world fell to the possession of Noah’s elder son, that is, of Shem, and he possessed it for no small time. But afterwards the Canaanite peoples, increasing from that same son who had been cursed by his father, came to those places, and, their brothers (that is, the sons of Shem) being expelled by violence, possessed their land after a barbarous fashion. And because blessed Abraham is read to have been of the stock of Shem, his sons — that is, the Israelite people — did not take over a foreign land with the Lord handing it to them, but their own, which they recovered — [the land] which their fathers had lost through violence.” Cassian, Collation 5, ch. 24: “How much the Old Tradition teaches — that these same lands of the Canaanites, into which the sons of Israel are led, had once been allotted to the sons of Shem in the division of the world, [and] that the posterity of Ham afterwards possessed [them] by force and might, through the iniquity of [their] persuasion.”
But another reason is offered by the same St. Augustine: namely that the sins of the Canaanites had been most grievous, and therefore by God’s most just judgment they could most rightly be stripped of that land of theirs — to which is to be joined [the point] that it could most rightly, likewise, be given afterwards by God to others: either if [given] to some in a certain measure, for the sake of a promised reward, or [because of] any right whatsoever that was owed; or if He willed to choose [any people] from anywhere by His own free judgment and to settle [them] in it — just as He settled the Israelites themselves, both for the deed of their Fathers Abraham, Isaac, [and] Jacob promised [to them] (and to these also He promised [it], partly so that He might affect their faith and piety with some earthly reward too, Gen. 22:16), partly — and indeed first of all — because it so pleased His own divine will. But let us read St. Augustine [himself]: “Because the Canaanites” — he says — “besides that sin, [namely] that they had invaded another’s possession, were committing many nefarious and unheard-of crimes (as, when the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, He is read to have said, ‘For the iniquities of the Amorites are not yet complete’); and the Lord was waiting, either that they might be converted and do penance, or, if indeed they refused to be converted, [that] — heaping crimes on crimes, and filling up the measure of sinning — they might sustain a most just sentence of God. Because, therefore, He found them doubly guilty under divine censure — for that they had invaded others’ lands, and afterwards had committed unheard-of villainies and crimes — they are punished by a just judgment, and to the Israelite people the possession of the ancients is restored.”