Editor’s note – We are republishing Zack Duncan’s survey of Israel’s long drift into idolatry because the pattern he traces is not safely locked in the past. The urge to treat God as a force to be managed – appeased for blessings, bargained with for control – is the oldest counterfeit of faith, and it still whispers to the Church today. Duncan walks the centuries from the Jordan to the Babylonian exile and lets the repetition do its quiet, sobering work. Read it first as history. Then read it again as a warning, because the high places were never only a Canaanite problem. We are nearer to them than we like to admit, and the God who kept calling Israel home is still calling.
A Final Charge Before the Jordan
The year is likely ~1407-1406 BC and the Israelites are waiting to cross the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land¹²
Before they do, they get a final pep talk from Moses.
The man who had long acted as God’s human representative to the Hebrews makes it clear that they are to bring an entirely new religious paradigm into the land.
Time is up for the fertility gods of Canaan.
Destroy completely all the places on the high mountains, on the hills and under every spreading tree, where the nations you are dispossessing worship their gods. 3 Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones and burn their Asherah poles in the fire; cut down the idols of their gods and wipe out their names from those places. 4 You must not worship the Lord your God in their way. [Deuteronomy 12: 2-3]
Just like their contemporaries in Babylon and Egypt, the Canaanites believed their gods were intimately involved in the fertility of land and womb, and needed to be appeased for blessings to come.
It’s why they sought the gods in the high places.³ Why they engaged in sacred rituals thought to bestow fertility. Why they even participated in sex involving the gods.
This is how the religious paradigm had worked in the land of Canaan: properly honoring and seeking the gods was what earned favor for the people.
But Moses reminds the people of Israel that Yahweh worked with a different paradigm.
A God of Grace Not Of Merit
Yahweh desires a humble and just people who are willing to trust Him.
Moses makes it clear that the Israelites were chosen because of grace. It’s not because of any merit of their own.
7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. [Deuteronomy 7: 7-8]
God says He simply loves these former slaves, and will use them to bring judgment on the gods and people of Canaan.
Because those inhabitants of Canaan model what it looks like to live a religious life apart from Yahweh.
Editor’s note – This is the hinge of the whole account. Every counterfeit religion Israel borrowed ran on merit: perform the ritual, earn the blessing, control the outcome. Yahweh refuses that economy entirely. He chose a small and powerless people for no reason they could boast in, and He saves us the very same way. That is offensive to the part of us that wants to keep the receipt and prove we earned our place. Grace leaves us nothing to hold over God, and nothing to hold over each other.
Spiritual Warfare Context in Canaan
For the first three hundred years of the Church, Christians like Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and more believed that one of the catalysts of the Great Flood was rebellious fallen angels who had helped lead humanity into corruption.
These Christians believed those celestial rebels had produced hybrid offspring with humans. Those powerful spiritual hybrids were known as Nephilim, the fallen ones, who had oppressed humanity.
They are mentioned in Genesis 6 in context of God bringing judgement through the Flood and next show up when the Israelites are spying out the Promised Land.
The majority of the Israelite spies are full of fear because the land was full of a people known as the Anakim, descendants of the Nephilim.
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them." [Numbers 13: 31-33]
Back then, fear of the Anakim / Nephilim was what had caused the Israelites to rebel and refuse to trust Yahweh and enter Canaan.
It was a lack of faith that led to the 40 years of desert wandering as they learned to more deeply trust God. Now, as they listen to the pep talk from Moses, they are back in the same place.
They are facing the same Anakim. They are still grasshoppers. But they have grown in trusting the Lord God to provide during the time of trial and testing.
Here is what Moses says now:
Hear, Israel: You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. 2 The people are strong and tall - Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: "Who can stand up against the Anakites?" 3 But be assured today that the Lord your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the Lord has promised you. [Deuteronomy 9: 1-3]
He goes on to remind the Israelites that they have not earned the Lord’s favor through any of their religious performance.
God hasn’t chosens them for their righteousness. But He will nonetheless use the Israelites to judge the wickedness and corruption of the Canaanites.
4 After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, "The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness." No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you. 5 It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. [Deuteronomy 9: 4-5]
Moses makes it clear that the Lord should be at the center of life for the Israelite people.
And by rightly ordering their lives in submission to Him, they are to be a people concerned with justice for the foreigner and the less fortunate.
16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. 20 Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. [Deuteronomy 10: 16-20]
They are to serve the Lord God alone.
Occultism is forbidden. Religious syncretism is outlawed. All paths seeking spiritual favor that don’t run through Yahweh won’t be tolerated.
Editor’s note – Notice what changed between the two trips to the edge of Canaan, and what did not. The giants were still there. Israel was still small. Forty years had not made the Anakim any shorter or the walls any lower. What had grown was trust. Faith is rarely the absence of a real threat; it is the decision to believe God is bigger than the threat you can plainly see. The grasshoppers who finally crossed the river were the same size as the ones who had refused. They simply remembered who went ahead of them.
Did the Israelites Listen?
In the short term, yes. Longer term, no.
Joshua, the successor to Moses, leads the Israelites on the initial conquest of the Promised Land after the final speech from Moses. The process took about seven years.
After the conquest, Joshua died at the age of 110. And the Bible reports that the current generation of Israelites were faithful to all of Yahweh’s commands.⁴
But the following generation was less familiar with all the miraculous deeds that Yahweh had done.
After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. [Judges 2:10]
Scripture says that they intermarried with the local people, rejecting God’s prohibition to remain as a people set apart.
Perhaps they wondered if Yahweh, their God who had brought them through the desert, was just as capable and powerful in the fertile land of Canaan.
Whatever the reason, the Israelites turned away from God and served the Canaanite deities. Sometimes in conjunction with Yahweh, sometimes to the exclusion of Yahweh.
The book of Judges follows the Conquest in the Biblical chronology and tells the sad story of their faithlessness.
5 The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. 7 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. [Judges 3: 5-7]
It would not be the last time that Israel would abandon God.
The rest of Israel’s history would prove to run in alternating cycles of falling away and the prophets calling the Israelites back to God.
One such example corroborated by ancient archeology is in the 10th century BC. It deals with the earliest personally named Pharaoh in the Bible.
Editor’s note – Notice how quickly it unravels – one faithful generation, and then a generation that had never known the Lord or seen what He had done for Israel. Faith is never inherited automatically. What one generation witnesses firsthand, the next must be deliberately taught, and the generation after that must be taught again. Nothing about this is hypothetical for us. A family or a church is always one untaught, unremembering generation away from forgetting God altogether – and the forgetting rarely feels like rebellion at first. It feels like drift.
More Spiritual Infidelity: 10th Century BC
After the times of the Canaanite conquest and the subsequent period of the Judges, Israel ultimately lived under a united monarchy of all 12 tribes during the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon.
Rehoboam followed Solomon and there was almost an immediate rupture that led to the divided kingdom. Ten tribes of Israel split off to form Israel in the north while the Kingdom of Judah remained under Rehoboam in the South.
During the reign of Rehoboam (~931-913 BC), there was invasion from Pharaoh Shishak / Shosenq I and Egypt in 926 or 925 BC.⁵
The Bible says that spiritual infidelity was the precipitating cause.
22 Judah did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done. 23 They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. 24 There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. [1 Kings 14: 22-24]
They engage in everything that Moses had warned against.
And as a result the Bible says that Jerusalem was plundered. The Kingdom of Judah suffered a sharp loss in status, wealth, and military power as it was turned into an Egyptian vassal state.
The Bubastite Portal at the Karnak temple complex records a successful military campaign in Judah for Shishak.⁶⁷
It lines up with the Biblical chronology as reported in 1 Kings.
25 In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem. 26 He carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace. He took everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made. [1 Kings 14: 25-26]
Following this time of humbling, Egyptian power in the Promised Land fades. And the Bible records that there is spiritual renewal in the land.
Under King Asa (Rehoboam’s grandson) the idols to foreign gods are destroyed, the altars are removed, and the people are charged to seek God with all of their heart.⁸
But once again, the rededication to Yahweh doesn’t last.
Falling Away in the 7th Century BC
The reign of King Josiah was roughly 300 years after Shishak’s subjugation of Judah (640-609 BC).
He was the 16th king of Judah and he ruled during a time of the same story repeating in Canaan.⁹
The Baals and the Asherahs were once again proliferating through the land.
Yahweh calls the prophet Jeremiah to bring a message of repentance to the people of Israel to turn from their spiritual infidelity with the Canaanite fertility deities.
6 During the reign of King Josiah, the Lord said to me, "Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there. [Jeremiah 3:6]
The lack of fidelity is a grave betrayal of the God who brought the Israelites out of slavery and charged them to serve Him alone.
Yahweh is grieved but is still willing to reconcile.
...'Return, faithless Israel,' declares the Lord,
'I will frown on you no longer,
for I am faithful,' declares the Lord,
'I will not be angry forever.
13 Only acknowledge your guilt -
you have rebelled against the Lord your God,
you have scattered your favors to foreign gods
under every spreading tree,
and have not obeyed me,'
declares the Lord. [Jeremiah 3: 11-12]
This time, God’s chosen people do not repent and turn back to Him.
Instead, they are conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Babylonian empire and all of Jerusalem is destroyed. The Israelites are taken into to exile in Babylon.¹⁰
They will miraculously eventually return to the land after about 70 years in captivity, just as the prophet Jeremiah had predicted.¹¹¹²
The catalyst is the Medo-Persian Empire supplanting the Neo-Babylonians as the primary imperial power. Their leader, Cyrus the Great, allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
God is Still Willing to Reconcile
Yahweh, speaking through Jeremiah, uses covenantal language to describe Himself as a spouse willing to return to His people who have abandoned Him.
14 "Return, faithless people," declares the Lord, "for I am your husband. I will choose you - one from a town and two from a clan - and bring you to Zion. 15 Then I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding. 16 [Jeremiah 3: 14-16]
There’s the same language of God choosing His people that the Israelites heard before they entered Canaan. There is no place for them to feel superior based on their religious performance.
There’s a Messianic prophecy that foretells a future time when the old way of relating to Yahweh through animal sacrifice and the Levitical priesthood will pass away.
This Old Covenant will be replaced by a new Covenant governed by the direct Presence of God for all His people.
In those days, when your numbers have increased greatly in the land," declares the Lord, "people will no longer say, 'The ark of the covenant of the Lord.' It will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made. 17 At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the Lord, and all nations will gather in Jerusalem to honor the name of the Lord. No longer will they follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts. 18 In those days the people of Judah will join the people of Israel, and together they will come from a northern land to the land I gave your ancestors as an inheritance. [Jeremiah 3: 16-18]
Christians believe this prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus first came to earth. Some Christians believe it will be fulfilled again when He returns.
No one knows when that will be. But Jesus told His followers to prepare and to maintain loyalty to Him.
Editor’s note – Read the husband language carefully. The God Israel betrayed again and again does not respond the way wounded people usually respond. He does not write off the unfaithful spouse; He calls her home. That same covenant love is what carries through to the New Covenant Duncan points us toward – sealed not in Israel’s loyalty, which failed in every century, but in Christ’s, which never has. Our hope has never rested on our own record of faithfulness. It rests entirely on His. That is the only reason any of us has a way back.
Wrapping Up
The Canaanite religion sought to appease nature deities like Baal and the Asherah to ensure their personal blessings and bring a measure of control to life.
Unlike the Baals and Asherahs, Yahweh cannot be bought through sacrifice.¹³
Relationship with Him is ultimately based on grace. This doesn’t mean it’s easy, only that it can’t be earned. He chose the Israelites in the Old Testament for the sake of His love, and that’s still how He works today.
He offers His love freely for us to accept. He is waiting with open arms.
For all who will repent, turn to Him in faith, and surrender their lives to follow Him.
This article is part of a series on satan and fallen angels.
Part 1: Deceptive Origins: The Secret Hidden in the Garden
⇢ The Triple Entendre Nahash
⇢ The Occult in the Bible
Part 2: The Flood, Fallen Angels, and Nephilim
⇢ Cultic Ritual Sex in Babylon and Canaan
⇢ Spiritual Infidelity in the Promised Land
Sources and References
1: From What Is the Correct Time Frame for the Exodus and Conquest of the Promised Land? https://armstronginstitute.org/350-what-is-the-correct-time-frame-for-the-exodus-and-conquest-of-the-promised-land
[…1 Kings 6:1 reads: “And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord.” From here, it is simple math: 480 years earlier than 967 b.c.e. brings us to an Exodus date of circa 1447-1446 b.c.e. Subtract the 40 years of sojourn in the wilderness (i.e., Joshua 5:6), and that brings us to an entry into Canaan around 1407-1406 b.c.e.]
2: This date is based on an Early Date Exodus which lines up with the evidence for a Semitic people in Egypt and Amenhotep II as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. For more…Did the Exodus Actually Happen? https://medium.com/@zduncan/did-the-exodus-actually-happen-eb249bc67501
3: high place: https://www.britannica.com/topic/high-place
4: Joshua 24:31
5: Shishak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishak
6: Bubastite Portal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubastite_Portal
7: The Egyptian Empire Strikes Back: Evidence of Shishak’s Invasion of Judah: https://armstronginstitute.org/1149-the-egyptian-empire-strikes-back-evidence-of-shishaks-invasion-of-judah
8: 2 Chronicles 14-15
9: Josiah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah
10: Evidence of the 587/586 BCE Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem found in Mount Zion excavation: https://inside.charlotte.edu/news-features/2019-08-12/evidence-587586-bce-babylonian-conquest-jerusalem-found-mount-zion/
11: What was the Babylonian captivity/exile? https://www.gotquestions.org/Babylonian-captivity-exile.html
12: Jeremiah 25: 11-12
11 This whole country will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
12 "But when the seventy years are fulfilled, I will punish the king of Babylon and his nation, the land of the Babylonians, for their guilt," declares the Lord, "and will make it desolate forever. [Jeremiah 25: 11-12]
13: Read Isaiah 1
A Word from the Editor
The whole arc of this account bends toward an open door. Israel’s story is not finally about Israel’s failure; it is about a God who keeps returning to a people who keep leaving. He still does. If you have wandered into high places of your own – trusting in what you can manage instead of the God you cannot control – His invitation has not changed in three thousand years. Isaiah heard Him say, ‘Come now, let us settle the matter.’ The arms are still open. And the only road home is the one Israel kept forgetting and then rediscovering: repentance, honest faith, and the daily surrender of our lives to Him.
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: What stayed with me was the structure: you don't argue the point so much as let the centuries repeat until the reader feels the weight of it. The Jordan, Shishak, Josiah, the exile — the same failure, the same patient God.
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.