The Land Belonged to the Children of Shem

For, as an ancient tradition tells us, these same lands of the Canaanites into which the children of Israel were brought had once been allotted to the children of Shem when the world was divided up. Afterward the descendants of Ham wickedly invaded them by force and violence and took possession of them. In this the righteous judgment of God is shown: he drove out of the land of others those who had wrongfully seized it, and restored to those others the ancient property of their fathers, which had been assigned to their ancestors when the world was divided. And we can see perfectly well that this figure holds good in our own case. For by nature God’s will assigned the possession of our heart not to vices but to virtues. After the fall of Adam these were driven out of their own country by the sins that grew up, that is, by the Canaanites. And so when, by God’s grace and by our own efforts and labor, they are restored to it again, we may hold that they have not occupied someone else’s territory, but rather have recovered their own country. [a]