I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 23-24.

    Scattered throughout the Old Testament I see passages which acknowledge that the people of Israel will need to interact with those who do not worship God. Here Joshua tells the Israelites in his final address that there are still many people in the land who they have not yet conquered. Joshua told them not to worship their gods, not to even talk about their gods. I struggle with gaining meaning from passages like this. Throughout the Old Testament I find hints which suggest that God intended for the people of Israel to assimilate their neighbors, while at the same time avoiding being corrupted by them. My interpretation of this passage is that we need to avoid getting pulled into discussing issues framed from the perspective of our non-Christian neighbors.

    In the latter part of his address, Joshua tells the people that they need to choose what god(s) or God they will serve. Here he makes a powerful statement which often distracts us from the heart of his message (I will get back to that statement in a minute). Joshua’s primary message to the people of Israel was that they needed to pick one, and only one, religious and cultural tradition to follow. They could choose the gods and cultural mores of the Egyptians, or those of their ancestors beyond the Euphrates, or those of the people living in the land, or they could choose to follow God. They could choose any one of these, but if they did not choose one they would cease to be a people. This is true of any and every nation, they must choose one religion and the morals that go with it, or in short order they will cease to be a nation.
    Having told the people that they needed to agree on what religion they would follow, he told them that he would not follow their lead. Joshua proclaimed that no matter what choice the rest of the Israelites made, he and his family would choose the Lord. In many ways what Joshua did here is something we are called to do today. Our nation (here I am speaking of the United States, but this is true of many other nations as well) no longer agrees on a single set of basic moral principles. We need to remind our neighbors that they need to, as a group, choose what moral philosophy they want to follow. Then we need to tell that no matter what one they choose, we have chosen, and will continue to choose, to follow God and His moral code.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 21-22.

    When all of the tribes had claimed land to settle (or, at least, were satisfied with the land they had, there is at least one passage in Judges which suggest that the tribe of Dan did not acquire thier land until much later than this) the warriors from the tribes with land East of the Jordan were sent home by Joshua. They had been at war for about five years. Just before they crossed back over the Jordan they built a large and imposing altar, one which people could not help but notice. They did not build this altar as a place to make offerings. Rather they built it as a reminder to their descendants and to the descendants of the rest of the tribes of Israel that they were one people, who all worshiped one God. They built the altar as a memorial to the fact that they too were the chosen people of God. There is a lesson here for us that we too need to create reminders that we are all the children of God.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 18-20.

    After the tribes of Reuben, Gad, Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh had taken control of the land designated to them (at least to some degree), there were still seven tribes which had not taken any land. Joshua asked them to send out scouts into the remaining land so that he could divide it up among them. When they returned, it was discovered that there was some land within that given to the tribe of Judah which had not been claimed. That land was given to the tribe of Simeon. Which means that the tribe of Simeon was within what later became the Kingdom of Judah. This is yet another example of what I said yesterday about how reading these passages about how the land was divided up can provide us insight into things which happened later.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 15-17.

    I struggle to know what to make of today’s passage. It is primarily a list of the territory given to some of the tribes. This is useful information for later when we read about the Philistines in Ekron and Ashdod, cities which were part of the land given to the tribe of Judah. There is also the story of how Caleb offered his daughter in marriage to the man who led the attack against one of the towns in his territory(the story gives us no idea of her age at the time, but it seems likely that Caleb was no longer young when she was born). The final item of note is that the tribes of Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh were unable to completely drive the people out of the land they were given. Every time I read this I wonder if perhaps the Israelites should have conquered only the land they could fully control and then pushed the other people out over time as they expanded, rather than conquering as much of the total territory as they could leaving pockets of foreigners (foreign to the Israelites) which were too strong for them to overcome.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 12-14.

    The passage describes the Israelite conquest of Canaan and mentions that Joshua was an old man at this time (considering that he was, at the youngest, not much younger than 20 when he left Egypt, he would have been at least 60 by this point). However, the thing that always strikes me was Caleb asking for his land. First Caleb recounts that he was one of those who had scouted the land over 40 years earlier and reminds Joshua that he was one of those who at that time believed that Israel could conquer the land. Despite being 85 years old, Caleb was ready to take the land which had been promised him, land which was inhabited by the people of whom the Israelites had been so frightened 45 years older that they resisted entering the Promised Land at that time. He was confident that with God on his side he would be able to take possession of the land, even at 85 years of age. At 85 years of age, Caleb was still a fighter for the Lord, will I be? Will you be?

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 8-9.

    When they Gibeonites heard what the people of Israel had done to Jericho and Ai, they decided to try making a treaty with them. Knowing that the Israelites were determined to conquer the entire local territory, they made a plan to convince the Israelites that they lived a long distance from them. When the Gibeonite envoys arrived to make a treaty, the leaders of Israel did everything they could think of to determine if the Gibeonite story was true. However, they failed to take the one action which should have been their first. They failed to ask God for guidance in deciding whether or not to make a treaty with the Gibeonites. We sometimes make the same mistake when we make decisions. We look at the pros and cons of the decision and if the pros outweigh the cons we go for it. We even take into account whether it appears to be God’s will. However, that is not enough. We need to seek God’s guidance on these decisions. I am not going to try to tell you how to go about seeking God’s guidance, the way to do that varies from person to person and from situation to situation. However, I am going to tell you it is vitally important to do so. I know that I do not always do so and often regret those decisions where I did not.