=New conquests.=--In these early raids some tribes, led by the men of Judah, went southwest and captured a few towns in the mountains west of the Dead Sea. Others, led by the strong tribe of Ephraim, went northwest. Throughout their later history, these were always the two leading tribes, Judah in the south, and Ephraim in the north. After the victories of the fighting men, the women and children and flocks would follow. We can imagine these rough warriors, with their untrained boys and girls, swarming into the houses of these little towns and villages. Most of them had never been inside a house before; and they would be eager to look at the furniture and to know the uses of the many strange things: for example, the jar of lye for cleaning, the perfumes on the stand, the earthen vessels for water and milk, the lamps, the baskets made of twigs, the pots for boiling broth, the oven for baking, in the door yard, and the wine press on the hillside where the grapes were trodden at the time of grape harvest. =The right and wrong of conquest.=--One may ask, what right had the Hebrews to attack and kill these people and seize their homes? Ideal Christian standards develop slowly. In these days of which we speak such standards had hardly been thought of. All weak nations were at the mercy of their stronger neighbors, and no one ever questioned the morality of it. It is good to know, moreover, that conquest, after all, was not the chief method by which the Hebrews made themselves masters of Canaan. After they had established themselves, here and there, in certain towns, and certain sections of the country, they gradually made friends with their Canaanite neighbors whom they had not been able to conquer at the beginning. In time their children intermarried with the children of the Canaanites until at last there came to be one nation, which was known as the Hebrews, or the Children of Israel. STUDY TOPICS 1. Read any one of the following sections: Numbers 11. 13-14, 20, 21; Deuteronomy 34; Joshua 1. 6. 2. Draw a map showing in a general way the movements of the Hebrews described in this chapter. 3. Look up in the Bible dictionary, "Manna," "Spies," "Kadesh," "Jericho." 4. Compare the conquest of Canaan with the treatment of the American Indians by white settlers. 5. How should the natives of Africa be treated in the opening up of Africa to civilization? CHAPTER VII LEARNING TO BE FARMERS