Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
These are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel. This was the special design of these nations being left, and it evinces the direct influence of the Theocracy under which the Israelites were placed. These nations were left for a double purpose; in the first instance, to be instrumental, by their inroads, in promoting the moral and spiritual discipline of the Israelites, and also to subserve the design of making them acquainted with war, in order that the young, more especially, who were total strangers to it, might learn the use of weapons and the art of wielding them. Thus, as Graves has well remarked, 'the Providence of God observed in this, as in every other supernatural dispensation, a due analogy to the regular course of nature and the moral agency of man. An effect of leaving some remnants of the Canaanites, perfectly analogous to the course of nature, is here distinctly assigned as a reason why God permitted it' ('Lectures on the Pentateuch,'
ii., p. 131).