Nehemiah 9:22 Commentary and Bible Study

The promised land is now possessed, and there is a measure of triumph. God has enabled them to possess it, and kept the promise given long before to Abraham. It had needed to wait until Canaan was ripe for judgment: ‘But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full … In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: ¹⁹ The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, ²⁰ And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaims, ²¹ And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites’ (Genesis 15:16-21). God who is sovereign over all the nations of the world takes from one and gives to another as he pleases. The Canaanites were judged for their wickedness, and God’s sovereign hand in this was seen in the fall of Jericho by supernatural means. God will judge this world, and he will use his people in that judgment, and the involvement of Israel in the defeat of the seven nations is a type of this. Everything was provided for Israel, and you see there the goodness of God in encouraging them in the conquest, in the provision of the promised land, when his judgement came upon the evil Canaanites, the inhabitants of that land. They were made a multitude as the stars of heaven and they were brought into the promised land – Joshua's conquest – with all the blessing of God, even though they were rebellious and disobedient.