Keep em coming and I will just knock em out of the park!
10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are.
12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
In
Leviticus 26, God lists various punishments which will come if the Israelites disobey his commands. The chapter lists four forms of punishment for disobedience, and that if the Israelites continue to disobey, the final punishment will be God giving full vent to his hostility, and “then you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters” (
Leviticus 26:29).
Deuteronomy 28 repeats this warning in similar language, describing how God will allow enemies to lay siege to the Israelite cities and the behavior that the Israelites will descend into. Interestingly, this seems to phrase the warning with more emphasis on how the people will be shocked at how barbaric they become, where “the most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion” (
Deuteronomy 28:54).
The law allowed for Hebrew men and women to sell themselves into slavery to another Hebrew. They could only serve for six years, however. In the seventh year, they were to be set free (
Exodus 21:2). This arrangement amounted to what we might call indentured servanthood. And the slaves were to be treated well: “Do not make them work as slaves. They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you” (
Leviticus 25:39–40). The law also specified that, “when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed. Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress. Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you” (
Deuteronomy 15:13–14). The freed slave had the option of staying with his master and becoming a “servant for life” (
Exodus 21:5–6).
The Canaanite nations were punished because of their extreme wickedness. God did not cast out the Canaanites for being a particular race or ethnic group. God did not send the Israelites into the land of Canaan to destroy a number of
righteous nations. On the contrary, the Canaanite nations were horribly depraved. They practiced “abominable customs” (Leviticus 18:30) and did “detestable things” (Deuteronomy 18:9, NASB). They practiced idolatry, witchcraft, soothsaying, and sorcery. They attempted to cast spells upon people and call up the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10-11).
Their “cultic practice was barbarous and thoroughly licentious” (Unger, 1954, p. 175). Their “deities…had no moral character whatever,” which “must have brought out the worst traits in their devotees and entailed many of the most demoralizing practices of the time,” including sensuous nudity, orgiastic nature-worship, snake worship, and even child sacrifice (Unger, p. 175; cf. Albright, 1940, p. 214). As Moses wrote, the inhabitants of Canaan would “burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:30). The Canaanite nations were anything but “innocent.” In truth, “[t]hese Canaanite cults were utterly immoral, decadent, and corrupt, dangerously contaminating and thoroughly justifying the divine command to destroy their devotees” (Unger, 1988). They were so nefarious that God said they defiled the land and the land could stomach them no longer—“the land vomited out its inhabitants” (Leviticus 18:25).