The inhabitants in our land . . .

One-Year Bible, February – Exodus 23:27-29 - “I will . . . throw into confusion every nation you encounter, . . . I will make your enemies turn their backs and run . . . . the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them our in a single year, . . .”

In his study, Journey of Souls (Llewellyn Worldwide, 1994), psychologist Michael Newton writes:  Even as victims, we are beneficiaries because it is how we stand
up to failure and duress which really marks the progress in life. Sometimes one of the most important lessons is to learn to just let go of the past (p230).

As Israel traveled to the land long ago promised to Abraham, they were to encounter its inhabitants. Were they to slay them, run them off immediately? No. They were warned not to intermarry with them or take up any of their religious and social practices, but otherwise it would be a slow process. The Books of Joshua and Judges reveal that it would be a process of many years, perhaps centuries.

Not everything we are to become or that we are to have in life comes to us immediately. In fact it is in the process of failure, of loss, of suffering, of tragedy, of setbacks that we have opportunities to grow into all that we are to become. In the 34th chapter of Exodus the issue of “the inhabitants” of the land recurs again. In the celebration of the Feast of Weeks, three times each year the young men are to appear before the Lord. The promise is that as this is done, God will slowly drive out the inhabitants who occupy the Promised Land.

Who are the “inhabitants”? We think of them as Israel’s enemies-the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites. But the text suggests that these enemies are symbolic representatives of something else. They are mentioned after the reiteration of the Ten Words that set them apart and make them different, from the other nations. The Ten Words do not necessarily make them better, but they do make them better representatives of what YHWH (Jehovah, Yahweh, Adonai, the Lord) wants to accomplish in the world through them and in them. The warning about their religious and social practices is a word to Israel regarding its own proclivities. The enemies are not external but internal.

We have inhabitants “in our land” which are challenges to the lessons for growth and development. We have “issues” and “challenges” to the life lessons that our souls need, not intellectually but experientially, in order for us to become the full human beings of promise. The “journey” of our souls will never be complete until they arrive at “the promised land;” and the Promised Land is achieved only by negotiating all of the “inhabitants” that we carry with us on the journey of life. They are the people and things that we make our Gods, they are the desire we have for what others have, they are the wish that we were born to different parents, had different choices in life, were different people either mentally, physically or both. The inhabitants are the innate desires we have to be someone else, to have someone else who can complete us, to compete and win against someone else. They are the blame that we hurl at God and others.

In Shakespeare’s "Julius Caesar," Cassius comments to Brutus, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves . . . " And we, like ancient Israel are left with a remedy: “A righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers us from them all. The Lord redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him (Psalm 34:19,22). The process of redeeming our souls, of preparing us for the future world, is an arduous and long task, but the power to drive out the “inhabitants” is in us.