10:6 the gods of Syria. In rejecting once again the true God of creation and providence, Jehovah (or Yahweh), the children of Israel followed the various nature gods of the Canaanites, Syrians, Phoenicians, Moabites, Ammonites and Philistines. These “gods” were all essentially personifications of forces and systems of nature, denying true creation in the beginning by a transcendent Creator–in other words, evolutionary pantheism. As a result, God used the Philistines in the west and the Ammonites in the east to chastise them.