Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 10-11.

The Israelites only entered into an alliance with the Gibeonites because of deception on the part of the Gibeonites.  Nevertheless, when the Gibeonites were attacked and called on the Israelites for aid, the Israelite army conducted a forced march at night to relieve the siege on Gibeon.  The Israelites honored their commitment even though they were tricked into making that commitment.  Joshua could have just marched the army to Gibeon at normal pace.  He did not have to rush to their defense with a forced march.  The Israelites gained advantages because they did so, but there were great risks.  If the Gibeonite messengers who brought word of the attack had understated the size of the attacking army, or made any of numerous other misrepresentations of the situation, Joshua could have found his army in a vulnerable situation when they arrived tired after a night’s forced march with an enemy who was fresh.

When I read this passage I always feel a little bad for the five kings who hid in a cave.  It sounds very scary to experience what they experienced, and it is.  However, my sympathy for them diminished this year as I read it and pictured the stories of Sadam Hussein’s capture after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  If you do not remember, he was on the run for s few weeks after the fall of his government until he was pulled from a hole in the ground where he was hiding.  I will not go into a lot of details, but the reason he was hiding in a non-descript hole was because he had terrorized his people for many years while he was in power.  That meant that there was no one he could trust once he was removed from power.  It seems to me that perhaps these five kings were in a similar situation.

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