The Hermeneutics Of Possession (when “god Gave Us The Land”)

To the Israelites, this is the fulfillment of a divine promise. But that narrative relies on looking at the story from only one side.

What did these events look like to the people already living in the land?

This analysis treats the biblical account strictly as a narrative text to examine its internal logic. The question is not whether these events occurred historically, but rather: If we accept the biblical narrative on its own terms, what do these actions look like from the perspective of the original inhabitants?

1. Canaan Was Already Fully Inhabited

The land was not an empty wilderness waiting to be defined. The biblical text itself acknowledges that it was already Canaan long before any Israelite arrived:

• Genesis 12:5 confirms Abraham entered the "land of Canaan."
• Genesis 13:7 notes that the Canaanites and Perizzites were already living there.

• Genesis 23:2 places Abraham in Canaan at the time of Sarah’s death.

The narrative explicitly names the established nations occupying the territory: the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Amorites, and Girgashites.

There is an absolute moral difference between two distinct claims:

• "God gave our ancestors an empty piece of land."

• "God promised our ancestors a land already owned and occupied by other nations, whom we must violently dispossess."

The biblical text describes the second scenario.