Exodus 23: Driving the Canaanites out represents cleansing of sin and error

Mention has often been made of the true, spiritual meaning of the Children of Israel being commanded to drive out the Canaanite and the Perizzite from the land of Canaan; and thus enter in to possess it. The correspondences Canaanite and Perizzite can actually mean good and truth respectively; but since these peoples fell from good and truth, the correspondence generally gets used in the reversed position and thus means sin and error. The use of the two terms alone as though they were nations and peoples but expressive of spiritual qualities stands as a symbol for all the sins and errors which we are to drive out of our lives inside and out in order to be allowed into the Heavenly Canaan.

The book of Revelation uses a very similar arrangement when it refers to our Lord's being crucified "in that great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" (Revelation 11:8); in that case, we may say more generally that He was crucified by sin and error and more specifically by self-love and the excuses that are made for it. The verse mentions not only our Lord's having been crucified there; but the dead bodies of the two witnesses who were slain on account of evil people detesting their identification of that evil and the excuses being made for it. 

The two witnesses, as has been explained, are among other things two faculties within us where love and wisdom or conversely sin and error dwell: the heart and mind, especially doing good for goodness' sake and loving the truth for the sake of the truth. It is these vessels, the heart and mind and platter and cup, which must be cleansed, like the Canaanite and Perizzite being driven from the land, so that we can genuinely love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our minds and all our souls. If, for instance, there are still "Amorites", "Hittites", "Perizzites", "Canaanites", "Hivites" and "Jebusites" dwelling in the land, then to the extent that they continue to do so we cannot genuinely love the Lord with all our hearts, minds and souls. 

One will briefly remind people that the people of the world send gifts to one another once the two witnesses have been slain because the correspondence "gift" there refers to their wanting to do evil, yes, and to believe in falsity, yes; but particularly to do even good things to be rewarded for them and believe and say even true things for a selfish motivation. 

When the dreadful teaching that people must love for its own sake, and do good for its own sake, and value the truths which facilitate such love and good for their own sake has been "slain", then evil and false people rejoice and send gifts to one another; for the terrible monster of expecting them to love without selfish and ulterior motivations has been driven from them and they can sin-and-error their little hearts out in peace!

We now return to the driving out of the inhabitants of the land. Let us look at the passage in Exodus which explains this matter with particular clarity: 

"20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.

22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.

23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.

24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images" (Exodus 23:20-24).

The "Angel" here is representative of Jesus Christ, the Divine Human; like all the mentions of the "Angel of the Lord" in particularly exalted and special sense, such as the appearance before Samson's parents Manoah and his wife of the same. The "Angel" is God upon whom we can look and live; He is the stand-in symbol for Jesus Christ before that human and approachable focal point of our hearing and doing the Word has been revealed and made the mouse pointers and bullseyes of our spiritual lives.

That is why much to-do is made about Samson's parents having been able to look upon Him and live! We can look upon the Divine Human rather more easily than we can look at a vast force that creates countless galaxies as something it is possible to befriend.

To return to our passage from Exodus, notice the distinct precedence that obeying this Angel has if the inhabitants of the land are to be driven out. Obviously this makes most sense if those inhabitants are the very evils and falsehoods which obedience to the Lord's commandments is supposed to address! 

We will briefly switch over to Jeremiah and underline this point clearly:

"9 Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.

10 See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant" (Jeremiah 1:9-10).

The reason why the Word is put in His mouth is obviously not to inform the inhabitants of Earth that they will now be receiving their instructions from Jeremiah, as should be clear enough! Rather, the Word is about driving sin and error out of our lives; and it is thus "set... over the nations and over the kingdoms". And here one wants you to note particularly that instead of saying sin and error with the correspondential expression nations and peoples the Lord has engaged in predicate substitution in which a synonym of peoples -- kingdoms -- has been used instead.

He might have said that the Word was set over the roots and the branches; and He might have said that the Word was set over the nations and the branches. For these are roughly accurate uses of predicate substitution to express love and wisdom or conversely as here sin and error.

But there was a further reason why we skipped over to Jeremiah. There is mention made of rooting out, pulling down, destroying, and throwing down; that building and planting may occur. This is because you had better wash the platter and the cup before you serve food and drink in them! And you had better drive out the Canaanite and Perizzite, and the other nations and peoples which are sins and errors, if you expect to be able to build your own house and plant your own crops in peace; the key word here being peace. 

We now return again to our passage from Exodus. We see that if we obey the Lord, then He will go before us and perform the driving out of the sins and errors Himself (Exodus 23:22). This is because, as we know, it is the Lord who delivers the victory! But emphasis is made on our obedience because power is given to us as if of ourselves to try to obey and thence, little by little to obey in truth. Because the Lord Himself sees us genuinely trying to lift a great weight with our little hands, He comes into play and does the rest. But we cannot just sit there; He flows into effort. Engaging in effort does not mean we are claiming to be righteous; it means we are sincerely striving. And there is a world of difference between those two things.

Now, we know from the inspired historical record that the Children of Israel did not simply drive the nations, the evils, out of the land of Canaan overnight. There were many separate stages, and frankly the process did not complete very well. But this very gradualism brings us to its expression in our passage:

"29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.

30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land" (Exodus 23:29-30).

This subset of the passage indicates that we are going each of us gradually to regenerate; it is not something that happens in a moment but something which occurs protractedly with many fits and starts and with much turmoil it may be and pain; distress such as is represented in the episode of the ark of the Lord's being returned from the Philistines to Israel by the lowing of the cattle pulling the cart. 

We are told at the conclusion of our passage that we are not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land which are rather to be driven out: 

"32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee" (Exodus 23:32-33).

The covenant here represents what the New Church calls the Heavenly marriage of conjunction or the infernal adultery of disjunction; that is, the marriage of good and truth or the adultery of sin and error. Here the "them" with which we are not to covenant represents sins and the "gods" with which we are not to covenant represent errors. That is why it is particularly said that making a covenant with them would "make thee sin against me"; and why it is as particularly stated, "for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee". For excuses to sin, spiritual falsehoods, are called "gods" in the Word when this correspondence is in the reversed position; and since excuses to sin are snares which lead into being trapped by sin, so is the language thus used by our Lord. 

One hopes that the breakdown of this passage as being about sin and error makes much more sense than that the Creator of the universe merely wants us to believe in and approve of some extended ethnic cleansing exercise at the dawn of recorded history!