One thing that always seems to get overlooked also is, who were the Canaanites and what were they doing?
They burned their babies to their gods, and couples would get pregnant if they were going to build a new house. when the babies were born they would burn them slowly so they would shrink to a size to fit in a jar and place that jar in one of the walls of the new house to bring good luck, and one of the laws in Canaanite society said that if the woman showed any sign of emotion that they would have to repeat the process.
Any visitors were raped, stripped and beaten. they were then left to wander the streets to slowly starve to death while the citizenry watched with amusement. And if anyone tried to help the stranger the process was repeated to that person.
Some of these strangers were given bricks of Gold and silver with their names inscribed on the bricks, and nobody would sell them food or water even with all the money the stranger had. After the stranger died they would dance around the victim in ceremony to one of their gods, And retrieve the bricks.
The firstborn were often sacrificed to Molech, a giant hollow bronze image in which a fire was built. Parents would place their children in its red hot hands and the babies would roll down into the fire. The sacrifice was invalid if the mother showed grief. She was supposed to dance and sing. The Israelites later copied this practice in a valley near Jerusalem called Gehenna. Hundreds of jars containing infant bones have been found there.
Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity represented as an upright, bullheaded idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death. The victims were not only infants; children as old as four were sacrificed. As the flame burning the child surrounded the body, the limbs would shrivel up and the mouth would appear to grin as if laughing, until it was shrunk enough to slip into the cauldron.
There was a great deal of sexual sin among the Canaanites. They believed that cultic prostitution was important to encourage their gods, Baal and Ashtoreth to mate so that the land would be fertile and rain would come. VD was probably rampant. Many young people forced into prostitution were abused to the point of death. Even the surrounding pagan nations were appalled by Canaanite religious practices.
And what they practiced with animals, we do not need to go into detail with that.
From Sodom to Jericho was 440 plus years. The canaanites had ample time to repent, and I cannot find one verses in the bible that God has trapped all Canaanites in with no way out, anyone who repented had every opportunity to LEAVE and settle somewhere else. The people who choose not to repent were left.
In my opinion this list is probably the softer side of the Canaanites. Our imaginations probably can't comprehend what made them really wicked.
9 See the Papyrus Chester Beatty III recto (BM10683) from about 1175 BC as referenced in Lise Manniche, Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt (London: Routledge, 1987), 100.
10 Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (New York: Routledge, 1994), 57.
11Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 33.
12 John Gray, The Legacy of Canaan (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1965), 101–2.
They burned their babies to their gods, and couples would get pregnant if they were going to build a new house. when the babies were born they would burn them slowly so they would shrink to a size to fit in a jar and place that jar in one of the walls of the new house to bring good luck, and one of the laws in Canaanite society said that if the woman showed any sign of emotion that they would have to repeat the process.
Any visitors were raped, stripped and beaten. they were then left to wander the streets to slowly starve to death while the citizenry watched with amusement. And if anyone tried to help the stranger the process was repeated to that person.
Some of these strangers were given bricks of Gold and silver with their names inscribed on the bricks, and nobody would sell them food or water even with all the money the stranger had. After the stranger died they would dance around the victim in ceremony to one of their gods, And retrieve the bricks.
The firstborn were often sacrificed to Molech, a giant hollow bronze image in which a fire was built. Parents would place their children in its red hot hands and the babies would roll down into the fire. The sacrifice was invalid if the mother showed grief. She was supposed to dance and sing. The Israelites later copied this practice in a valley near Jerusalem called Gehenna. Hundreds of jars containing infant bones have been found there.
Molech was a Canaanite underworld deity represented as an upright, bullheaded idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed that would be burned to death. The victims were not only infants; children as old as four were sacrificed. As the flame burning the child surrounded the body, the limbs would shrivel up and the mouth would appear to grin as if laughing, until it was shrunk enough to slip into the cauldron.
There was a great deal of sexual sin among the Canaanites. They believed that cultic prostitution was important to encourage their gods, Baal and Ashtoreth to mate so that the land would be fertile and rain would come. VD was probably rampant. Many young people forced into prostitution were abused to the point of death. Even the surrounding pagan nations were appalled by Canaanite religious practices.
And what they practiced with animals, we do not need to go into detail with that.
From Sodom to Jericho was 440 plus years. The canaanites had ample time to repent, and I cannot find one verses in the bible that God has trapped all Canaanites in with no way out, anyone who repented had every opportunity to LEAVE and settle somewhere else. The people who choose not to repent were left.
In my opinion this list is probably the softer side of the Canaanites. Our imaginations probably can't comprehend what made them really wicked.
9 See the Papyrus Chester Beatty III recto (BM10683) from about 1175 BC as referenced in Lise Manniche, Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt (London: Routledge, 1987), 100.
10 Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature (New York: Routledge, 1994), 57.
11Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in the Biblical World: A Historical Perspective, trans. Kirsi Stjerna (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 33.
12 John Gray, The Legacy of Canaan (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1965), 101–2.
