Genesis 15:16 – ‘The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit’

This entry is part 8 of 114 in the series: Tough texts
- Genesis 1:26 – Why a plural name for God?
- Genesis 3 – traditional and revisionist readings
- Genesis 3:16b – ‘Your desire shall be for your husband’
- Genesis 5 – the ages of the antedeluvians
- Genesis 6:1f – ‘The sons of God’
- Genesis 6-8 – A worldwide flood?
- Genesis 12:3 – ‘I will bless those who bless you’
- Genesis 15:16 – ‘The sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit’
- Genesis 22 – “Abraham, kill your son”
- Exodus – Who hardened Pharaoh’s heart?
- Exodus 12:37 – How many Israelites left Egypt?
- Leviticus 19:18 “Love your neighbour as yourself”
- Deuteronomy 23:6 – ‘Never be kind to a Moabite’?
- Joshua 6 – the fall of Jericho
- Joshua 10 – Joshua’s ‘long day’
- Judges 19:11-28 – The priest and the concubine
- 1 Samuel 16:14 – ‘An evil spirit from the Lord’
- 2 Samuel 1:26 – ‘More special than the love of women’
- 2 Sam 24:1, 1 Chron 21:1 – Who incited David?
- 1 Kings 20:30 – ‘The wall collapsed on 27,000 of them’
- Psalm 105:15 – ‘Touch not my anointed’
- Psalm 137:8f – ‘Happy is he who dashes your infants against the rocks’
- Isaiah 7:14/Matthew 1:23 – “The virgin will conceive”
- Daniel 7:13 – ‘Coming with the clouds of heaven’
- Jonah – history or fiction?
- Mt 1:1-17 and Lk 3:23-38 – the genealogies of Jesus
- Matthew 2:1 – ‘Magi from the east’
- Matthew 2:2 – The star of Bethlehem
- Matthew 2:8f – Can God speak through astrology?
- Matthew 2:23 – ‘Jesus would be called a Nazarene’
- Matthew 5:21f – Did Jesus reject the Old Testament?
- Matthew 7:16,20 – ‘You will recognise them by their fruit’
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:3 – Who asked Jesus to help?
- Matthew 8:5/Luke 7:7 – son? servant? male lover?
- Matthew 8:22/Luke 9:60 – ‘Let the dead bury their dead’?
- Matthew 8:28 – Gadara or Gerasa?
- Matthew 10:23 – ‘Before the Son of Man comes’
- Matthew 10:28 – ‘destroy’: annihilation or everlasting punishment?
- Matthew 10:34 – ‘Not peace, but a sword’?
- Matthew 11:12 – Forceful entry, or violent opposition, to the kingdom?
- Mt 12:30/Mk 9:40/Lk 11:23 – For, or against?
- Matthew 12:40 – Three days and three nights
- The Parable of the Sower – return from exile?
- Mt 15:21-28/Mk 7:24-30 – Jesus and the Canaanite woman
- Mt 16:28/Mk 9:1/Lk 9:27 – “Some standing here will see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom”
- Matthew 18:10 – What about ‘guardian angels’?
- Matthew 18:20 – ‘Where two or three are gathered…’
- Matthew 16:18 – Peter the rock?
- Matthew 21:7 – One animal or two?
- Mt 24:34/Mk 13:30 – ‘This generation will not pass away’
- Matthew 25:40 – ‘These brothers of mine’
- Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34 – Jesus’ cry of dereliction
- Matthew 27:52f – Many bodies raised?
- Mark 1:41 – ‘Compassion’, or ‘anger/indignation’?
- Mark 2:25f – ‘When Abiathar was high priest’
- Mark 3:29; Luke 12:10 – The unpardonable sin
- Mark 4:31 – ‘The smallest of all the seeds’?
- Mark 6:45 – ‘To Bethsaida’
- Mark 12:41-44/Luke 21:1-4 – ‘The widow’s mite’
- Luke 2:1f – Quirinius and ‘the first registration’
- Luke 2 – Was Joseph from Nazareth, or Bethlehem?
- Luke 2:7 – ‘No room at the inn’
- Luke 2:8 – Shepherds: a despised class?
- Luke 2:39 – No room for a flight into Egypt?
- Luke 4:16-19 – An incomplete quotation?
- Luke 7:2 – ‘Highly valued servant’ or ‘gay lover’?
- Luke 14:26 – Hate your family?
- Luke 22:36 – ‘Sell your cloak and buy a sword’
- John 1:1 – ‘The Word was God’
- John 2:6 – symbol or history?
- John 2:12 – Did Mary bear other children?
- When did Jesus cleanse the Temple?
- John 3:16f – What is meant by ‘the world’?
- John 4:44 – ‘His own country’
- John 7:40-44 – Did John know about Jesus’ birthplace?
- John 7:53-8:11 – The woman caught in adultery
- John 14:6 – “No one comes to the Father except through me”
- John 14:12 – ‘Greater deeds’
- John 20:21 – “Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you.”
- John 21:11 – One hundred and fifty three fish
- Acts 5:1-11 – Ananias and Sapphira
- Acts 5:34-37 – a (minor) historical inaccuracy?
- Romans 1:5 – ‘The obedience of faith’
- Romans 1:18 – Wrath: personal or impersonal?
- Rom 3:22; Gal 2:16 – faith in, or faithfulness of Christ?
- Romans 5:18 – ‘Life for all?’
- Rom 7:24 – Who is the ‘wretched man’?
- Romans 10:4 – ‘Christ is the end of the law’
- Romans 11:26a – ‘And so all Israel will be saved’
- Romans 16:7 – ‘Junia…well known to the apostles’
- 1 Corinthians 14:34 – ‘Women should be silent in the churches’
- 1 Corinthians 15:28 – ‘The Son himself will be subjected to [God]’
- 1 Corinthians 15:29 – ‘Baptized for the dead’
- 1 Corinthians 15:44 – ‘Raised a spiritual body’
- 2 Corinthians 5:21 – ‘God made Christ to be sin for us’
- Galatians 3:17 – How much later?
- Galatians 3:28 – ‘Neither male nor female’
- Galatians 6:2 – ‘The law of Christ’
- Galatians 6:16 – The Israel of God
- Ephesians 1:10 – ‘The fullness of the times’
- Philippians 2:10 – ‘The name that is above every name’
- 1 Cor 11:3/Eph 5:23 – ‘Kephale’: ‘head’? ‘source’? ‘foremost’?
- Colossians 1:19f – Universal reconciliation?
- 1 Thessalonians 2:14f – ‘The Jews, who killed Jesus’
- 1 Timothy 2:4 – ‘God wants all people to be saved’
- 1 Timothy 2:11f – ‘I do not allow woman to teach or exercise authority over a man’
- 1 Timothy 4:10 – ‘The Saviour of all people’
- Hebrews 6:4-6 – Who are these people?
- Hebrews 12:1 – Who are these witnesses?
- 1 Peter 3:18-20 – Christ and the spirits in prison
- 2 Peter 3:9 – ‘The Lord wishes all to come to repentance’
- Jude 7 – ‘Unnatural desire’
- Revelation 7:4 – The 144,000
- Revelation 14:11 – ‘No rest day or night’
Gen 15:13 Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a foreign country. They will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. 15:14 But I will execute judgment on the nation that they will serve. Afterward they will come out with many possessions. 15:15 But as for you, you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 15:16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.”
Why would be so long before Abrahams’ descendants would enter the promised land?
The answer given in v16 is that ‘the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its limit.’
The designation ‘Amorites’ can stand for one or (as here) all ten (Gen 15:19–21) of the people groups of Canaan. The extent of their sin is testified in Lev 18:24–25; 20:22–24; Deut 9:4f; 18:12; cf. 1 Kgs 14:24; 21:26; 2 Kgs 21:11; Amos 2:9.
Calvin argues that God had given the land to the Amorites, and would not dispossess them of it without good cause. Calvin also refers to God’s patience in allowing the Amorites full opportunity for repentance, noting Paul’s teaching that ‘they who indulge themselves in sin, while the goodness and clemency of God invite them to repentance, heap up for themselves a treasure of wrath, (Rom 2:4).’ Calvin adds the pastoral comment that God’s delay in judgement gives us no excuse for lethargy.
Wiersbe stresses that God was giving the Canaanite nations opportunity to repent (cf. 2 Peter 3:8–9; Matt. 23:32).
Mathews (NAC) agrees that the delay in judging the Amorities represents God’s forbearance. God is more ready to forgive than to condemn, and his judgement, when it finally comes, is not capricious (cf. Gen 18:20-25).
For Kidner, Joshua’s invasion (and, by implication, the other Old Testament wars) is to be seen as an act of justice, rather than of aggression. God’s people must wait, even though waiting would cost them many years of hardship.
Leupold adopts a similar approach, noting that although we have not yet seen direct evidence of Canaanite iniquity, instances would soon appear, beginning with Sodom.
Kaiser (HSB) notes that the Amalekites deliberately targeted the struggling Israelites, picking off the weak and elderly and brutally murdering them (Deut 25:17f). In attacking Israel, they were attempting to discredit Israel’s God. If, as some think, Haman was an Amalekite, then his proclamation that all Jews throughout the Persian Empire should be killed on a certain day (Esth 3:8-11) is evidence of the Amalkites’ unrelenting hostility towards the Jews throughout OT times.
Hartley notes that when a nation heaps up sin upon sin, God often judges such a nation by using another nation to drive out its inhabitants. Many years later, God used the Assyrian army as the means of punishing Israel for their continued sin (Isa 10:5-19).
Waltke & Fredricks see here a pattern that is repeated elsewhere. God judges nations only when they have become completely saturated with sin (Lev. 18:24–28; 20:23). So it was with the Flood Gen. 6:5, 12) and with Sodom and Gomorrah. The same would apply even to God’s people themselves (Deut. 28:36–37; 2 Kings 24:14; 25:7).
Wenham adopts a similar approach, but with little discussion or explanation.
Brueggemann reflects on the issue of ‘waiting’, but without addressing the question of the sin of the Amorites.
In his book Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence, Preston Sprinkle adopts an approach which is essentially the same as has been outlined above. He then asks if the Canaanites were given a real opportunity to repent. He answers in the affirmative, pointing to texts such as Ex 15:14–16; Josh 2:9–11; 5:1; 9:9 that show that God’s power (for example, in delivering his people from Egypt) had been broadcast far and wide among the Canaanite nations. A specific example who knew of the God of Israel and turned to him is Rahab, Josh 2:10f. Even thought the rest of the people of Jericho did not share her faith, they were given seven days (while the Israelites marched around their town) in which to repent.
The point is
‘that the seven-day march around the city could be viewed as another offer of grace by the God of Israel, an offer already taken up by Rahab yet rejected by the rest of Jericho’s inhabitants.’
An alternative view
In The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, John Walton contests the whole notion of a retributive interpretation of the conquest. He maintains that:
The Hebrew expression translated ‘not yet’ should be understood as meaning, not a transition from one state to another, but a continued state; ‘continues to be.’
The expression translated ‘(not) completed’ should be understood as meaning ‘(not) deferred’.
The word translated ‘sin’ refers more to the punishment of sin, rather than to the sin itself. In the present case, it would refer to God’s taking the land away from the Amorites and giving it, at a future date, to the Israelites. In other words, it refers to something that will happen to the Amorites, not to something they themselves are doing (or will do).
For Walton , the passage as a whole would read something like this:-
“Your descendants will be enslaved for 400 years in Egypt, but I will eventually punish Egypt and bring your descendants back to this land. You yourself will live a long life and will die at a ripe old age, and although I have decreed the destruction of the Amorites, that destruction won’t come upon the Amorites who are your friends and allies.”