The history of God's chosen people, to whom Messiah would be born, can be divided up into several parts. The pre-history involves the call of Abraham, the birth of Isaac and Jacob or Israel. The Jews are descended from his twelve sons. Their history as a nation really begins with their slavery in Egypt and their tremendous redemption under Moses who led them through the wilderness. It was Joshua, however, who led them into the Promised Land. Moses stands for the Law, which saves no-one. Rather, we need a Joshua (Jesus) for that.
Once they had entered the Promised Land God's people needed to conquer it. It was his purpose that this should be done slowly as the number of Jews was still relatively small. The land was assigned to the different tribes and they worked at destroying the Canaanites who possessed the land. To many today this commanded genocide sounds like the way Europeans took America and Australia by destroying the aboriginal peoples. Much of what went on then is indefensible but as for the Canaanite genocide (carried out rather poorly) two of God's purposes came together at this time - his desire to see his people settled in their own land and to see the Canaanites judged for their utterly wicked way of life.
In this period Israel had no king. They were led by various judges or saviours. All of these saviours were inadequate in one way or another so progress was slow and patchy until their king, David, came to the throne. There were holy people in the time of the Judges (see the Book of Ruth) but many wicked things happened too (see Judges, the closing chapters) when everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
This period teaches us that the Christian life involves fighting to overcome evil in our lives. Complete victory will only come through our King, the Son of David.
