Can you please tell me Biblical reasons why God chose and promised Canaan?

Apart from God’s free will to do so, could it also be because of a Strategic location towards Mediterranean North Africa and South Europe, because of Cultural and Political influences of the Ancient World or other reasons?

Appreciate your insight on this.

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César Proença

there is no will nor running by which we can prepare the way for our salvation, it is wholly of the Divine Mercy Jean Calvin Institutes II . V. 17

Reformed Churches in The Netherlands (liberated) http://www.gkv.nl/main.asp?intTreeviewID=954

Igreja Reformada em Massamá Portugal http://www.igrejareformada.pt

One compelling reason can be made when we distinguish Egypt (bondage and slavery) and Canaan (freedom and service).

Egypt has/had the Nile River which practically guaranteed a harvest with its banks overflowing every year (hence the famines in Genesis causing the movement of God's covenant people to Egypt for food).

Canaan's agriculture, on the other hand, was largely dependent upon the rains that would hit the eastern mountains dropping moisture on to the western slopes and spreading throughout the land.

So in Egypt God's people could be relatively well fed even if they are in slavery. In Canaan God's people would have to entirely rely upon His sovereign hand to bring them rain, hence droughts as a punishment for disobedience and the latter rain and its attendant blessings (harvest) as a sign of God's favor. Droughts were a means for the people to be drawn away from their dependence on idols; rains as a means of pointing them to the LORD who provides.

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Rev. Daniel Kok
Pastor of Grace Reformed Church (URCNA)
Leduc, Alberta CANADA

"What sort of pledge and how great is this of love towards us! Christ lives for us not for himself!"
John Calvin, Commentary on the Hebrews (7:25)

There is a kind of strategic geography to Canaan, but the Bible (to my knowledge) doesn't emphasize that fact. How would people in the days of its writing know such facts anyway? We don't really need to know why God chose that strip of land above other options. It is sufficient to understand it suited his purposes admirably. The rest is history, as we watch him use it.

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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