“’You have heard that it was said, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy” (Lev. 19:18; Deut. 23:3-6). But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’” (Matthew 5:43–45 NASB)

We can learn from Abraham, the father of our faith in God, how to put these words of Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) into action in the Torah reading חַיֵּי שָׂרָה Chayey Sarah (“life of Sarah,” Gen. 23:1–25:18). Even as God’s hundreds of years of merciful patience with Canaan’s reprehensible behavior were ticking down, Abraham was praying for the nations’ safety and paying them a large sum for property in the area.

The first topic I want to cover is to compare the conversation that Eliezer had with Rivkah (Rebekah) with a similar conversation Messiah had during his earthly ministry.

Abraham goes to the “sons of Heth” to purchase a burial site for Sarah. Although the “sons of Heth” were descendants of the Hittites, and they were politically dominant but they were not the only ethnic group in Canaan. There were many other groups living in Canaan, such as the Amorites. 

Unforgivable sin?

Most of these tribes were so culturally abhorrent to God that God told Abraham back in Genesis 15 that He in about 400 years, he would wipe out the Amorites and these other Canaanite groups. They were so unteachable and incorrigible that He had to wipe them out of the Promised Land.

Some of these groups were exterminated but most of them were pushed out and they fled elsewhere. However, there were some that the children of Israel refused to push out, disobeying God’s explicit command and they suffered greatly as a result.

As as believers in the Messiah Yeshua, we wonder “How can you possibly say this into great? Is there a sin too great for God to forgive?” This isn’t about forgiveness.

What God has said is that the culture of the Amorites and other Canaanite groups was so foul and the cultures were so severe that they could not be molded and changed. They were too severe and set in their ways to be forgiven.

These groups had institutionalized injustice to such an extent that they couldn’t be fixed. He destroyed them before they got even worse. I don’t even want to guess how much worse they could have become if God hadn’t intervened.

Torah doesn’t record all of the Canaanite’s reprehensible deeds, and that’s God’s wisdom that those deeds weren’t recorded because humans tend to repeat history. We would duplicate what they had done because of our natural curiosity.

Leviticus 20 gives more than enough information to understand why the Canaanites were so horrible that they had to be wiped out. We get enough of a glimpse into the nature of these people that we can understand why Abraham told his servant, “Do not choose a wife among these people for my son Isaac.” Abraham was not pleased with how the Canaanites conducted themselves.

“You are therefore to keep all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them, so that the land to which I am bringing you to live will not spew you out. ‘Moreover, you shall not follow the customs of the nation which I will drive out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I have abhorred them. ‘Hence I have said to you, “You are to possess their land, and I Myself will give it to you to possess it, a land flowing with milk and honey.” I am the LORD your God,