Commentary - Joshua 16:10

Bird's-eye view

This single verse, tucked away at the end of the allotment for the tribe of Ephraim, serves as a critical and ominous foreshadowing of Israel's future. On the surface, it is a simple historical note about a military failure. But in the logic of the covenant, it is a seed of apostasy. The command to drive out the Canaanites was not optional, nor was it primarily a matter of national security. It was a command rooted in holiness; God was cleansing the land of its idolatrous inhabitants to make it a holy habitation for His people. Ephraim's failure was not a simple oversight but a calculated compromise. They exchanged full obedience for a pragmatic, short-term benefit: forced labor. This verse, along with a handful of similar statements in Joshua and Judges, is the key that unlocks the tragic history that follows. The Canaanites who were put to tribute would soon become the snares and thorns that God had warned them about, leading Israel into idolatry, immorality, and ultimately, judgment and exile.

The sin here is a classic example of what we might call the logic of the leaven. A little bit of compromise, a little bit of disobedience, seems manageable at first. It even appears profitable. But sin is never static; it is always cancerous, always expansionistic. By allowing the Canaanites to remain, Ephraim was not just tolerating a foreign people; they were tolerating foreign gods. This verse is a stark monument to the truth that partial obedience is, in the final analysis, total disobedience.

Outline

Context In Joshua

Joshua 16 comes in the middle of the book's second major section, the division of the land (Josh. 13-21). The grand, sweeping victories of the initial conquest (Josh. 6-12) are largely complete. Now comes the hard, grinding work of possessing the allotments tribe by tribe. The Lord had done His part; He had broken the back of the Canaanite confederations and given the land to Israel. The responsibility now fell to each tribe to finish the job, to mop up the remaining pockets of resistance and cleanse their inheritance. This verse, concerning the powerful tribe of Ephraim (Joshua's own tribe), is one of several similar and tragic notices of failure (see Josh. 13:13; 15:63; 17:12-13; Judg. 1:21, 27-33). These verses function as dark clouds on the horizon of what should have been a bright new day for Israel. They show that even before the generation of Joshua had passed away, the seeds of the apostasy so graphically detailed in the book of Judges were already being sown.

Key Issues

The Folly of Merciful Tyranny

There is a peculiar kind of sin that presents itself as both practical and merciful, when in fact it is neither. This is what we see in Ephraim's decision regarding the Canaanites of Gezer. The command of God was total dispossession (Deut. 7:1-2). This was not ethnic cleansing, but rather a holy judgment executed by God through His people against cultures that had filled up the measure of their iniquity (Gen. 15:16). God's command was a severe mercy, cutting out a cancerous evil before it could metastasize.

Ephraim, however, thought they knew better. Perhaps they thought the command too harsh. Perhaps they were simply weary of fighting. Or, most likely, they saw an economic opportunity. Why destroy a potential workforce? So they disobeyed God's command to drive them out, and instead subjected them to forced labor. They substituted God's clear word for their own cost/benefit analysis. They showed a "mercy" that God had not authorized, and in doing so, they became tyrants, making the Canaanites their slaves. This act of disobedient mercy and pragmatic tyranny set a precedent that would eventually lead to Israel's own enslavement. When we think our plans are more clever than God's commands, we are always, without exception, playing the fool.

Verse by Verse Commentary

10 But they did not dispossess the Canaanites who lived in Gezer,

The verse opens with a blunt negation. Here is what they were supposed to do, and here is what they did not do. The verb "dispossess" or "drive out" is the central command of the conquest. It was not enough to defeat the Canaanite armies in pitched battle; the people and their idolatrous influence had to be removed from the land God was consecrating for Himself. This failure was not due to a lack of ability. Ephraim was one of the strongest tribes, and they were certainly capable of taking a single city like Gezer. Later, we learn that Pharaoh had no trouble capturing and burning it (1 Kings 9:16). No, this was a failure of will, a failure of faith. They did not believe that God's command was best, and so they refused to carry it out completely. Partial obedience is a particularly insidious form of disobedience because it allows us to congratulate ourselves for the 90 percent we did, while conveniently ignoring the 10 percent that nullifies the whole enterprise.

so the Canaanites live in the midst of Ephraim to this day,

The consequence is stated as a simple fact. Because of this disobedience, a foreign and corrupting element remained embedded within the tribe. The phrase "to this day" indicates that this was a long-standing, settled state of affairs by the time the book was written. The Canaanites were not a distant threat on the border; they were "in the midst" of Ephraim. This is a picture of tolerated sin. It is the unmortified lust, the cherished bitterness, the secret idolatry that a Christian allows to live "in the midst" of his heart. It is the worldly philosophy that a church allows to take up residence "in the midst" of its teaching. The result is a compromised identity and a constant source of spiritual pollution. The people of God were to be separate, holy, and distinct. By allowing the Canaanites to remain, Ephraim created a permanent state of spiritual syncretism.

and they became forced laborers.

Here is the justification, the shrewd rationalization for their disobedience. This was not a simple oversight; it was a policy decision. They looked at the Canaanites and did not see a spiritual threat to be removed, but rather an economic asset to be exploited. "Why throw away a perfectly good source of free labor?" They put them "under tribute" or made them "forced laborers." In their minds, they had turned a military problem into an economic windfall. They had subjected the Canaanites, so what was the harm? But the harm was this: they had bartered away their covenant faithfulness for material gain. They thought they were mastering the Canaanites, but in reality, the Canaanites' gods would soon master them. God had commanded removal, not subjugation. By choosing the latter, they were setting a snare for their own feet, a snare that would entrap their children and their children's children for centuries to come (Judg. 2:3).

Application

The lesson of Gezer is a perennial one for the people of God. We are all tempted to manage our sin instead of killing it. God's command to us in the new covenant is just as absolute as His command to Ephraim: we are to mortify the deeds of the body, to make no provision for the flesh, to put to death what is earthly in us (Rom. 8:13; Col. 3:5). We are to drive the Canaanites out of the promised land of our hearts.

But how often do we do what Ephraim did? We find a particular sin, a lust, a habit of gossip, a root of bitterness, a love of money, and instead of killing it outright, we decide to "manage" it. We try to put it to tribute. We tell ourselves, "I can keep this under control. I can harness this energy for some other purpose. It's not really hurting anyone." We make it our forced laborer. We think we are being practical and clever, but we are being fools. That tolerated sin becomes a Canaanite in our midst. It remains, it corrupts, and it waits for a moment of weakness to rise up and enslave us. The application is therefore straightforward: show no mercy to your sin. Do not negotiate with it. Do not put it to tribute. By the power of the Spirit, drive it out completely. The only good Canaanite is a dead Canaanite. Our victory is not in managing our sin, but in seeing it crucified with Christ.