OPEN BOOK, Views & Reviews, No. 45
Copyright (c) 1999 Biblical Horizons
April, 1999
Few novelists seem as innocent of the temptation to punditry as Jane Austen. Though living through a period that witnessed the birth of an independent United States, the French Revolution and the Terror, the Napoleonic wars and the rise of revolutionary romanticism, and the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution, she focuses on a few middling gentry families in rural England. Hints of the wider world sometimes impinge on Austen’s peaceful outposts — Wickham, a soldier, plays a prominent role in Pride and Prejudice, and there are occasional passing references to the British colonies and the slave trade. For the most part, her characters go about their farming and their business, their follies and their romances, their dances and their games of backgammon and whist, as if nothing has changed.
Well-read as she and her family were, it is impossible that Austen was ignorant of the transformations taking place around her. How, then, does one account for their almost total absence from her novels? One possibility is that she was fighting a rear guard action by offering quaint and nostalgic glimpses of a simpler, happier time and place. Like Mr. Woodhouse in Emma, perhaps she found change so disagreeable that she had to pretend it had not happened. Austen’s twentieth-century readers (and, even more, viewers) may feel the twinge of a lost world, but Austen herself betrays no such sentiment. It is difficult to imagine a less nostalgic writer than Austen; she was too sharp-witted, too much the satirist of manners, for that. Her world amused her, but she was keenly aware of the pettiness of many inhabitants of her world and she did not shrink from showing their true colors.
More credibly, it has been suggested that Austen consciously chose to limit the scope of her concerns for artistic reasons. Her letters indicate that she was conscious of where her gifts did and did not lie; she playfully but firmly rebuffed one attempt to coax her to write a romance, claiming that she could not do it without dissolving into laughter, even if her life depended on it. Behind this aesthetic decision is a "philosophical" stance that can be described as vaguely nominalist. Particulars, Austen sensed, are all we can talk about with any degree of accuracy; about universals we can say very little. In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney’s discourse on the theory of the picturesque ends in silence, but not before a long detour: "Delighted with [Catherine Morland’s] progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Henry suffered the subject to decline, and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and the withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, the inclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence." The larger the scope of discourse, the less opportunity Austen saw for delineation and fine discrimination, and the more everything blurs into the undifferentiated "smoothness" that Austen (with many of her characters) detested. Precisely this "nominalism," and the minute attention to details of character and relation that comes with it, makes Austen’s work a continuing source not only of delight but of moral instruction and, in the best sense, of punditry. For Austen, character and culture are incarnated especially in particulars of manners and language. By attending to how she manipulates these, we see her busy evaluating what one Austen scholar calls the "revolution behind the revolutions."
Manners in Austen’s novels constitute a code, a set of Augustinian signa data (given signs) that communicate within a particular society. Chiefly, manners communicate either a willingness or unwillingness to enter into conversation, to open a relationship, and this willingness is frequently determined by considerations of class. When he first appears in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy — tall, handsome, with �10,000 a year — makes a favorable impression. But this initial favor is soon lost when "his manners gave a disgust," revealing him to be a proud man of "most forbidding, disagreeable countenance." Darcy’s proud manner is sharpened by contrast with his best friend, Bingley, who quickly greets his new neighbors and is "lively and unreserved," full of "amiable qualities." On the far side of Darcy is his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whose manner is designed solely to make others feel their inferiority. Manners are embedded in a social structure and trace its contours, so that a profound shift in manners is a social and cultural revolution.
Signs can communicate, but signs can also conceal. Thus, manners require interpretation, and Austen’s novels often take the form of hermeneutical dramas. And, like all cultural codes, manners can be manipulated for personal gain. Wickham, a soldier with whom Elizabeth flirts for a time, has an easy and open manner, and Elizabeth is quickly — too quickly, she later decides — taken into his confidence, so that she immediately accepts his accusations against Darcy. After Darcy discloses the truth at great length, Elizabeth recognizes that Wickham’s "agreeable" manners were only a counterfeit of true "amiability." Later, Wickham uses his charm to seduce Elizabeth’s younger sister Lydia into a foolish elopement. With Wickham, there is a direct line from a dishonest deployment of the code to an act of high treachery, and earlier discernment of his abuse of manners would have prevented a severe family crisis.
Language provides another medium in which character is encoded. Austen is not, however, simply concerned with what her characters say; as much as semantics, syntax is character. Her narrative voice sets the syntactical standard — crisp, classical, unadorned prose — and characters who deviate are dishonest or idiotic or both. The Bennetts’ first knowledge of their cousin Mr. Collins comes through a letter, full of inappropriate apologies, convoluted sentences, stale metaphors, and obsequious references to his patron (Lady Catherine). Elizabeth immediately questions whether he can be a sensible man: "There is something very pompous in his style." Bookish Mary Bennett, however, thinks well both of Collins’s sentiments and his style: "The idea of the olive branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I think it is well expressed." In a few lines, Austen’s economical genius has not only revealed that Collins is a buffoon but, by recording the Bennetts’ responses to his letter, has sharpened our understanding of both Elizabeth and Mary. Lydia Bennett provides another example. Ignoring Elizabeth’s protests, she describes her wedding to Wickham: "We were married, you know, at St. Clement’s, because Wickham’s lodgings were in that parish. And it was settled that we should all go there by eleven o’clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to go together; and the others were to meet us at the church. . . . And so we breakfasted at ten as usual. . . ." Yada, yada, yada. Like her sentences, Lydia’s life is just one breathless thing after another. Elizabeth is right to wonder how a young woman who speaks this way can hope to find a shred of permanent happiness in marriage.
Though complaining that Austen ignores passion and "what throbs fast and full, though hidden," Charlotte Bront� conceded that "she does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well." What Bront� could not see through her Gothic haze is that Austen’s close attention to the surface provides an entry to issues of great moment, not only personal but cultural. Were Austen living and writing today, she would no doubt be shocked at the smarminess of contemporary public discussion, but she would also recognize a sign of severe cultural ruin in the inability of people to speak two sentences together without a heavy peppering of "you knows," "justs," "likes," or "kewls." Crime statistics would alarm her, but she would have much more to say about our un-code of manners that refuses to recognize hierarchy of any sort, that oscillates between chumminess and rudeness, that insinuates viciousness and dishonesty into everyday social contacts. By focusing our attention on these sorts of cultural signa, Austen alerts us to some of the unrecognized habits that make it so exceedingly difficult for us to continue the conversation that is contemporary society.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 116
Copyright (c) 1999 Biblical Horizons
April, 1999
There were five cities at the center of the Canaanite culture in the circle of the Jordan, a place like the Garden of Eden, like the land of Egypt, before it became the Dead Sea at the destruction of the cities (Genesis 13:10). Genesis 14:2 tells us their names: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela (or Zoar). God destroyed four of these cities, but spared Zoar, where evidently the corruption of the Canaanites had not yet matured to its fullness (Genesis 15:16).
Five cities: One spared while the other four are destroyed.
As our essay on Lot notes, Lot in the land of Sodom and Zoar parallels Abraham in the land of Gerar. Gerar was Philistine, a branch of the Egyptians according to Genesis 10:13-14. The exoduses of Abraham and Isaac from Philistine Gerar (Genesis 20-21; 26) parallel the earlier exodus of Abraham from Egypt (Genesis 12), and anticipate the later exodus from Egypt under Moses. Later there were five Philistine cities also: Ekron, Ashkelon, Amnon, Gaza, and Gath. The exodus of Israel from Philistine rule in the days of the Judges and early Kings parallels the exodus from Egypt under Moses. In this case also, four cities were eventually destroyed and one was saved (Zephaniah 2:4). The city of Gath was saved because it allied itself with David, and evidently became a converted city-state (1 Samuel 27; 2 Samuel 15:18).
Five cities: One spared while the other four are destroyed.
The five Amorite cities that briefly appeared at the beginning of the story, "became" the five Philistine cities that plagued Israel for centuries in the middle of the story; five cities in an area like Egypt "became" five cities that were cultural extensions of Egypt. But that is not the end of the story. Isaiah prophesies the future, the end of the story:
In that day five cities in the land of Egypt will be speaking the lip of Canaan and swearing to Yahweh of Armies; the one will be called the City of Destruction. In that day there will be an altar to Yahweh in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to Yahweh near its border — Isaiah 19:18-19.
The "lip" of Canaan is the religious confession of Canaan, not the language of Canaan. "Lip" always means religious confession, though a confession spoken aloud in some language. The idea is not that the Egyptians will speak Hebrew, but that they will confess the religion of the Hebrews, which occupies the land of Canaan. Perhaps "Canaan" is used instead of "Judah" or "Israel" to allude back to the five original cities.
One city is called City of Destruction. By changing the Hebrew letter heth to the letter he, which looks and sounds like it (a heavy aitch sound versus a light aitch sound), one of the Dead Sea Scrolls changes City of Destruction to City of Sun, a positive rather than a negative idea. This alteration is favored by many modern expositors of Isaiah, but I think our present study is against it. The City of the Sun is Egyptian Heliopolis, and it is more likely that the original Hebrew was making a pregnant pun: The City of the Sun (heres) becomes the City of Destruction (hheres).
Older commentators assumed that six cities are in view: five saved and one destroyed. Since Egypt has many cities, they argued, the prophecy is giving us a proportion: for every wicked city there will be five faithful cities. Again, I think our thematic study moves against this view.
I submit that we have five cities. All five employ the religion of Yahweh and swear allegiance to Him, but one gives only feigned allegiance. One city is hypocritical.
The pattern is what persuades me. Through Isaiah, God alludes to the previous two sets of five cities. The first set, in the Jordan Valley, was like the land of Egypt. The second set, the Philistines, were extensions of Egypt. Now we have five cities in Egypt herself, the symbolic cities of prophecy, representing the whole of Egypt (and through her, the whole world).
And prophetically, Isaiah gives us the last word. The course of history will be inverted when the Kingdom fully comes.
Five cities: Four saved while only one is destroyed.
OPEN BOOK, Views & Reviews, No. 45
Copyright (c) 1999 Biblical Horizons
April, 1999
Suppose that the theistic evolutionists are right, and that the Big Bang Hypothesis is correct. In that case, God originally created a Primeval Atom, which then exploded and congealed to form the present universe. Now, if you had arrived on the scene one quintillionth of a second after God created the Primeval Atom, just before it burst, could you tell how old it was? You might well say that it was infinitely old. You see, the Primeval Atom would have had the "appearance of age," even though it had just been created.
Well, it might have an "appearance of age." It all depends on what you expect when you look at it. Do you assume when you look at a piece of quartz that it has been around for a long time? Yes. Do you assume when you look at a wide-screen television set in an electronics specialty shop that it has been around for a long time? No. Why? Because you know in advance that such a device has only recently begun to be marketed.
So then, whether you think something has an appearance of age has to do with your assumptions, your presuppositions. When the servants at the wedding feast of Cana served the wine that Jesus created from water, they assumed that it had been made from harvested grapes. Surely the dregs in the bottom of the jars "proved" that this wine had been made from grapes, for there was the grape residue, plain for everyone to see. But they were wrong.
If we could go back to the moment of creation, with our present background knowledge and assumptions, we would think that the newly-created universe was old. There would be things about it that would make it look old to us. But the only reason this would be true for us it that when we look at the same kinds of things today (solitary atoms, for instance), we know that they are in fact old. The object itself cannot tell us its age.
Once we understand this, the creation of the world and of the garden of Eden with an appearance of age ceases to be problematic. If we accept what the Bible says about cosmic chronology, the entire universe was made by God around 4000 bc. Many things were made whole instantly by God, such as grown plants, grown animals, and grown human beings. Conservative Christians are used to thinking about God’s creating fully-grown living things. We call this the doctrine of mature creation. Since we’ve gotten used to that idea, it does not seem strange to us.
There are, however, some other aspects of a mature creation that conservative Christians usually don’t think about. And the reason these questions tend to be avoided is that, in spite of ourselves, we continue to think like modern people. If someone says that God planted dinosaur bones in the earth when He created it, we think that is ridiculous or extreme. A fully grown Adam, yes; but dinosaur bones? Surely not!
It’s not quite that easy, however, and the pur-pose of this essay is to force our noses into some things we’d rather not have to think about. Only when we think about uncomfortable things can we grow and mature in our thinking. So, if you don’t want to have to think such uncomfortable thoughts, you’d better stop reading now.
Did Adam have a navel? Well, if he was a full and complete man, we should assume that he did; yet his tied-off umbilical cord would have been a mystery to him until the birth of Cain. Examining Cain’s navel, Adam would have to have reasoned that God gave him his own navel at his creation so that he looked like a grown man, having an appearance of age, but that in fact his own navel was not an evidence that he had had a human mother.
Similarly: Did the trees made on the third day, and the ones planted in the Garden, have rings? Well, if they were true trees, they did. Yet those rings were simply put there by God. Those particular rings did not indicate any previous development on the part of the trees, any more than the grape molecules in Jesus’ wine indicated any previous development. Or if they did indicate sta-ges of development, those stages happened very rapidly, over only a few minutes or hours.
So far so good, but what about dead stuff? Did the soil have decaying organic matter in it? Well, if it was real soil, the kind that plants can grow in, it must have had. Yet the decaying matter in that original soil was simply put there by God. Soil is a living thing, and it lives through decaying matter. When Adam dug into the ground, he found pieces of dead vegetation.
This brings us to the question of "fossils" and "fossil fuels," like oil and coal. Mature creationists have no problem believing that God created birds and fish and animals and plants as living things, but we often quail at the thought that God also created "dead" birds and fish and animals and plants in the ground. But as we have just seen, there is every reason to believe that God created decaying organic matter in the soil. If this point is granted, and I don’t see how it can be gainsaid, then in principle there is no problem with God’s having put fossils in the ground as well. Such fossils are, in principle, no more deceptive on God’s part than anything else created with the appearance of age.
Am I saying that I think God put fossil bones of dinosaurs in the ground when He made the living dinosaurs on the fifth day and sixth days? No, I am not. But I am saying that in principle there is no reason to reject such a notion out of hand.
Now, there are those who argue that the vast oil, coal, and limestone deposits in the ground cannot all have come from animals, plants, and shellfish that lived before the great flood. If this is true — and I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion — it is not problematic. It just means that God invested the ground with these things when He made it, as resources for humanity to use later on, the same way He placed gold and iron in the ground.
When I took astronomy in college (long ago), we were taught that heavy elements (beyond hydrogen and helium), such as gold and iron, could only be generated by a supernova, an exploding star. Exploding stars had produced all the elements from lithium to uranium. I don’t know if this is still the position of physicists, but if it is, then when God made the ground out of these heavy elements, the ground itself had an appearance of age. Thus, the gold and iron in the ground is no different in principle from oil, coal, and limestone in the ground.
There is no reason for Christians to deny that all such things have an appearance of age. As with everything else God created, the ground and its features are designed as ways for us to learn. If Jesus does not end history for another million years, and humanity winds up living among the stars, then we shall have opportunities to watch these implied processes at work. Adam watched little plants grow up to become trees, and then he understood what the rings in the original trees meant. He watched Cain grow up to become a fully grown man, and then he understood what his own creation as a fully grown man meant. Humanity may eventually watch supernovae produce heavy elements, animals decay to form oil, and shellfish compress to become limestone, and similarly learn what the original creation implied. It is only that the span of time is longer for these kinds of things to develop.
Thus, we learn that what God did instantaneously in the beginning, He continues to do gradually and developmentally in the course of history, with human beings as His co-workers. God’s Spirit, the eternally active Motion of God, acted with Divine velocity during creation week. Then the Spirit entered human beings, and now He works in the creation at the tempo of human life; not just at the tempo of individual human lives, but also at the tempo of the whole course of human history until the Final Day. The creation of the world with a full "appearance of age" takes nothing away from science; rather, it provides the foundation for science. Science is studying ongoing processes that unfold what God initially did in six days.
In conclusion, I am not saying that God planted coal, oil, shellfish limestone, or animal bones in the ground. I don’t know, and am inclined to think these things (especially the bones) were all produced by the great flood. But if He did, we can see that it is not problematic for our faith, and we can also see a reason why He did.
(I am indebted the Revs. Mark Horne and Jeffrey Meyers for some of the arguments presented in this essay. I claim the credit for all infelicities, however.)
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 116
Copyright (c) 1999 Biblical Horizons
April, 1999
Meditations by James B. Jordan
Genesis 19, the destruction of Sodom and the rescue of Lot, is part two of a story that begins in Genesis 18. These two chapters happen in one 24-hour period: noon and evening in Mamre, and midnight and daybreak in Sodom.
God and two angels visit Abraham in the heat of the day. Abraham greets them, feeds them, shelters them. After a time the two witnesses move downhill to Sodom; compare Aaron and Moses going to Egypt, and Revelation 11:3 & 8. Lot greets them, feeds them, shelters them.
At midday, Abraham is told he will be given a son. At midnight, Lot offers to destroy his daughters to protect his visitors. Sacrifice is in the air already; eventually Abraham will have to sacrifice his son. But Lot’s daughters are protected at midnight, just as Abraham received his promise at midday.
Yahweh and his two angels depart, and Abraham accompanies them toward Sodom. After the two witnesses head down to Sodom, Abraham remains on his mountain and negotiates with God for Lot’s life. Abraham learns that while God may chastise the righteous along with the wicked, He never destroys the righteous with the wicked; rather, He delivers the righteous.
Abraham and Lot are a contrasting pair, like Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and Judah. Lot was Abraham’s nephew, the son of brother Haran who was sixty years older than Abraham. Thus, Lot may have been older than Abraham, or at least about the same age. (For the chronology, see Acts 7:4 with Genesis 11:32; Abraham was 75 when his father was 205, but father Terah gave birth to Haran at age 70; and thus to Abraham at age 130.)
Each of these pairs is different. Isaac is the redeemed son who carries the seed line; Ishmael is the redeemed son who stands for gentile Godfearers. Jacob is Godly; Esau is ungodly. Judah falls into sin with the daughters of men and has two sons who trade places; Joseph resists that sin and also has two sons who trade places; but both rule in Israel (Genesis 38, 39, 48, 49). In the case of Lot and Abraham: Both are called out of Ur, enter Canaan, go into Egypt, are delivered from Egypt, and are brought into Canaan (Genesis 12-13a). But Abraham is the one to whom the promise is made; Lot is to remain allied with Abraham. Lot and his people chafe under this, behaving like Canaanites and Perizzites (13:7), and Lot separates from Abraham.
God makes it clear to Lot that he should remain with Abraham. When Lot is captured, the more powerful Abraham rescues him (Genesis 14). But Lot does not learn.
Now Lot has an opportunity. The angelic witnesses tell him to go to The Mountain (19:17). This is where Abraham was as he looked down on Sodom (19:28). But Lot does not want to go there. He rejects this final opportunity to realign himself with Abraham, with sad consequences.
Lot wanted the City before its time. Abraham looked for a future city, and was content to dwell in tents (Hebrews 11:9-10). Lot did not want to wait. Lot moved to Sodom, and then, after the crisis, to Zoar. But he did not stay there. Fearful, he moved to the mountains, the wrong mountains (Genesis 19:30), and lived in a cave, returning to dust as God had told Adam all men would. Those who demand the happiness of the City before God is ready, wind up losing everything.
Lot wanted Egypt. He had been there with Abraham, and had been delivered with Abraham (Genesis 12). But he chafed to live with Abraham, and turned his eyes to a place like Egypt. Genesis 13:10 says that Sodom was like Egypt.
Lot’s life parallels Abraham’s. Lot has a wife and several daughters. He loses his married daughters to Sodom (19:14), and his unmarried ones to incest later on. Abraham has sons. Abraham’s sons might have married Lot’s daughters, but that could not be, because Lot had left Abraham. Instead, Abraham went to a more distant relative to get a wife for Isaac.
And anyway, Lot sired his daughters a generation before Abraham had his sons. Isaac might have married a granddaughter of Lot, though. Ishmael also had children well before Isaac did, and Esau well before Jacob. Indeed, Abraham’s younger Nahor had twelve sons at the time Abraham was told to sacrifice his one and only (22:20). Abraham learned to wait until the time was right. The last became first.
So, Abraham waited patiently in the hills, while Lot enjoyed family, children, and prestige in the city (19:1, he was an elder in the gate). But the first became last.
Abraham’s wife was barren, sterile as salt. Lot’s wife was fruitful, but became salt at the very time Sarah became fruitful. The fates of the two wives are at the centers of Genesis 18 & 19, a contrasting pair. Sarah laughed initially, but trusted God afterward. Lot’s wife trusted the angels and left Sodom initially, but looked back afterward.
Abraham did already have one son, and he was rescued from oblivion by circumcision (Genesis 17). That circumcision is a prelude to the destruction of Sodom, as the circumcision of Moses’ son is a prelude to the destruction of Egypt (Exodus 4:24-26). The Israelites took unleavened bread with them out of Egypt and went to The Mountain; Lot also took unleavened bread (Genesis 19:3), but did not go to The Mountain. Some of the Israelites wanted to return to Egypt before coming to The Mountain; Lot returned to Zoar, the only one of the five cities of the Jordan that was not destroyed (Genesis 14:2; Deuteronomy 29:23).
Thus, Lot did not benefit from the greater circumcision he experienced, and neither did his offspring. Abraham’s sons were saved, both of them (21:17-21). Both of Lot’s daughters were lost to corruption.
Now Abraham is to have a second son, this time by his true wife. He leaves the promised land, befouled by the smoke of Sodom, and moves to Gerar. There his son is born (Genesis 20-21). At about this time Lot also has sons, but by his two daughters (Genesis 19:30-38). Marriage of brothers and sisters was not forbidden until Exodus 18, but marriage of parents and children was forbidden from the beginning (Genesis 2:24).
The contrast is not merely moral in the obvious way. The point of incest is to play God. God gives children; we don’t get them from ourselves — that is the message over and over in Genesis. Childbirth is profoundly hetero-sexual: man + woman + God. But when man plays God, assuming the role of God, he seeks to turn his line inward. He seeks to perpetuate himself by having children with his daughters. (See the film Chinatown and Gene Wolfe’s novel The Fifth Head of Cerberus for explorations of this theme.) Incest, like sodomy, excludes the "other," and behind the "other," excludes God.
Incest also excludes the future. Marriage with the "other," man and woman (who is so alien to man!) — and even more, man and a women from somewhere else, brings cross-pollenization and fruition. Marriage with the "same" (homosexuality, or cloning as in Wolfe’s novel) makes for sterility; or if with one’s daughter, makes for children who are intended to be a mere repetition of their father. Incest intends a wheel that spins off the ground, going nowhere, making no progress. 2500 years after Adam and Eve, God told us at Mount Sinai that even brother-sister marriage was too incestuous; formerly it had been necessary — after all, whom did Seth marry?
True, Lot was drunk, but his daughters were not. Like Ham with Noah, they invaded their father’s tent in his sleep and took advantage of his nakedness, bringing on their children the curse visited on Ham’s child Canaan (Genesis 9:21-27). Ammon and Moab became, as peoples, closed and culturally incestuous, not interested in the heavenly marriage to the Divine Other.
(As a note: Ham’s sin was not sexual, but consisted of mocking his father and inviting his brothers to seize the robe of authority, which they rejected by upholding the robe and re-covering their father. But what Lot’s daughters did to Lot was, in its way, equivalent.)
Meanwhile, Abraham has a son, a son given by the Divine Other, a son of God Himself as it were.
Now, Lot’s moved away from Abraham into a strange land was voluntary, while Abraham was forced to move away from the region around Sodom and into a strange land. Like Lot, Abraham had his child in this strange land. And like Lot, someone came to demand that he destroy his child. With Lot, it was the sodomites of Sodom; with Abraham, it was Yahweh! Lot was willing to offer his daughters to the men to protect his guests, but angels protected the girls. Abraham was willing to offer Isaac, but the Angel of Yahweh stayed his hand.
Abraham learned from this that only God is adequate to be our Father, as he offered up Isaac to Him. Lot might have learned the same thing, but he did not. Thus, Isaac moved on to be God’s son, and to carry the seed-line, down to Jesus and then to all the world. But Lot kept his delivered daughters for himself, and they became his daughters is a new, perverse sense; they did not become God’s daughters. Their seed-line became extensions of the Canaanites down through history, implacable foes of Yahweh’s kingdom. And Moab and Ammon exist no more.
