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

I never quite know what to make of the battles described in today’s passage.  First pass casual reading leaves one with the impression that the battle against the five southern kings took place in a single, extended, day and all five cities were razed on that day.  Similarly, the battle and razing of the northern cities seems like a single day battle.  However, if you read a little more carefully you see that only the battle against the five southern kings is described as being in a single day, and that is only the battle to relieve Gibeon.  Once Joshua and the Israelites had defeated the armies which attacked Gideon, they moved on to raze the cities from which those armies had come.  The passage does not really give us any clues as to how long that took, except that it was fast enough that the northern kings did not have time to muster before Israel had completed razing the cities and returning to Gilgal on the plains of Jericho.  A quick casual read also leaves one with the impression that when the Israelites had finished defeating these two armies (or groups of armies) that they had completely conquered the land.  Yet later in the Book of Joshua it describes further battles of conquest to gain control of the land, and even in the Book of Judges there are areas which the Israelites do not yet control until the time of David.  However, if you take your time and read more carefully, you realize that the conquest of the southern kings was only over the Amorites living in that area.  And you have a similar limited conquest over the northern region.  So, while at the end of these two wars the Israelites have eliminated everyone who could be an organized threat to them in the area, large amounts of land are still controlled by non-Israelites in the land.

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

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

A casual reading of this passage leads one to believe that by the end of it the Israelites had more or less destroyed all of the people inhabiting the land.  However, a closer reading tells a different story.  For example, the king of Jerusalem created the alliance which attacked Gibeon.  Yet, Jerusalem is not one of the cities described as being conquered and destroyed as part of the campaign which followed Joshua’s successful defense of Gibeon.  Jarmuth, another city which was part of that alliance, is also not mentioned as being conquered and destroyed.  Then in the summary of Joshua’s battles the passage tells us that the Israelites wiped out all of the Anakites in the hill country of both Judah and the northern part of the land, but that some remained in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod, cities which would later become centers of Philistine dominance (the Philistines were not yet on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea at the time of Joshua).   The other thing which hints to us that we are supposed to understand that not all of the people living in the land when the Israelites arrived is when it tells us that only the Gibeonites entered into a treaty with the Israelites.  If the Gibeonites had been the only people living in the land whose presence predated the Israelites there would have been no reason to mention this.  So, while Joshua destroyed the emerging nations in the land (we see the same southern and northern political divide emerge in the split kingdom), he did not completely eradicate the people living in the land.

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

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.

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 10-11.

This passage describes how the Israelites under Joshua were successful against the overwhelming forces of both the southern kings and the northern kings of the land of Canaan.  The fact that the peoples who lived in the land before the Israelites divided into southern and northern alliances provides us with a sort of foreshadowing of the later division of the Kingdom of Israel into a northern and southern kingdom.  However, I want to spend a moment noting the reasons for Joshua’s success in the major battles of both of these wars.  His success resulted from following God’s guidance and from acting before his opponents expected him to.  In the southern war, Joshua marched the army of Israel overnight to the battle and attacked upon arrival, taking the army of the southern kings completely by surprise.  In the northern war, he appears to have employed a similar tactic.  While they did not appear to march overnight, nevertheless they caught the northern army off guard.  My guess from the wording is that the Israelites attacked as soon as they arrived at the battlefield, rather than setting up camp and taking time to rest before entering battle as the other side expected.