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

When Joshua realized that he would soon die, he gathered the people of Israel in order to give a final address to them and renew their commitment to God.  Just as Moses had done in his final address, Joshua recapped the history of the people of Israel, reminding them that the people of Edom were their relatives (I am unsure of how this relates to the rest of Joshua’s address, but thought it seemed noteworthy).  Joshua focused this recap on all that God had done for them.  He reminded them that their conquest of the land did not result from their military prowess, but rather from God’s providence.  Perhaps as important as anything else in this part of Joshua’s address was his reminder that they were not to ally with the people of the land, nor intermarry with them, nor join in the worship of their gods.  I may be reading my own beliefs into this, but Joshua seems to imply that any of these people who wished to join Israel and worship the God of Israel were welcome to do so, but this must be a one-way street: no compromise, no meeting them in the middle.

Having finished his recap of the history of God blessing the people of Israel, Joshua brings up an issue which comes up again and again throughout the Old Testament (and truth to be told even today).  The people of Israel still carried with them gods their ancestors had worshiped back in the land of Ur, and others gods from Egypt and elsewhere.  Joshua told them that it was time to decide once and for all time whom they would serve.  Really, this is a decision which the Church in America must make today.  Will we serve the gods of the people among whom we live? The gods which call on us to sacrifice our children, either through abortion, or genital mutilation.  Or will we serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Each of us needs to answer this question for ourselves, just as Joshua did here.  I pray that each of you reading this will answer as Joshua did, “But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

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

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

Reading today’s blog I had a new thought about why the Levites were allotted cities and towns from among the other tribes, or, at least, part of what that meant.  All of the other tribes needed to go out and conquer the lands which were allotted to them.  However, the Levites cities and towns from within the land conquered by the other tribes.  So, the Levites could spend their time focusing on determining God’s will for Israel and helping the members of the other tribes worship God.  Which brings up the other reason that the Levites did not have a separate territory of their own.  The Levites were scattered among the other tribes in order to provide each tribe with people to teach them God’s Law and maintain the worship of God.

The other portion of this passage describes the return home of the warriors from the tribes which settled east of the Jordan River.  We learn an important lesson about asking people to explain their actions when we think they have done wrong.  When the eastern tribes returned home they built a large. impressive altar before crossing the Jordan.  The other tribes thought they were building themselves an alternative place of worship from that used by the rest of Israel.  So, the western tribes gathered to go to war against the eastern tribes.  However, before they began to march, they sent a delegation to the eastern tribes to confront them.  The eastern tribes immediately responded that the western tribes were correct, that it would be wrong for them to conduct their worship and feasts at a separate place from the rest of Israel.  They further explained that they had not built the altar for that purpose.  Rather the altar was built as a memorial to future generation reminding them that the tribes east of the Jordan were every bit as much a part of Israel as the western tribes.  Left unspoken, because everyone in the discussion would understand it, was the fact that if they had built any kind of memorial other than an altar, future generations would have made it an object of worship.

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

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

Many modern scholars argue that the conquest described in the Book of Joshua never happened because there is no archeological evidence for it, and that the existing archeological evidence seems to contradict it.  First, I want to point out that the dates given in the Bible are ambiguous enough (I have touched on the ambiguity of translating Hebrew) that determining the dates for the conquest cannot be done with reliability (that does not mean that it can’t be done, just that we should not put too much credence when dates arrived at from the Bible do not match up with dates arrived at from other dating methods).  Today’s passage gives us a reason to think that the events in the Book of Joshua actually happened (even if they may appear differently to our eyes than the description given here).   At several points earlier in this book and in the books preceding it, we were told that Joshua and Eleazar would sit down with representatives of the tribes and divide the land up by lot immediately after the Israelites had conquered all of the land (or, at least, all of the land which they had sufficient numbers to settle).  However, here we discover that late in Joshua’s life, seven of the tribes had not yet had any land allocated to them.  In fact, this passage indicates that the land which would be theirs had not even been conquered yet. What is presented here is not how one would describe the conquest of the land if one were making it up solely to justify control over 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 15-17.

I have never understood why the blurb about Caleb taking possession of his portion is in the middle of the description of the allocation of land to the Tribe of Judah instead of immediately following the part where Caleb asks for his allocation in yesterday’s passage.  For that matter, I am unsure why the bit about Caleb’s daughter asking him for springs in addition to the other land he gave to her and her husband is included.  That being said, it is a good lesson to us that it never hurts to ask for what you would like to have.

In the description of the land allotted to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh the passage tells us that some of the Canaanites living there were too strong for them to drive out.  The passage tells us that some of the Canaanites were still living among the Israelites “to this day”.  In other words, Canaanites were still living among the Israelites when this book was first written down.  This gives us some insight into the population of the land when the kingdom of Israel first formed and provides some context for understanding what was going on during the Book of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel.  We see that despite God’s instructions otherwise, the Israelites lived alongside those who practiced different religious practices for probably the entire existence of the Ancient Kingdom of Israel.

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

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

Having conquered the largest military forces in the land, Joshua began the process of allocating the land to the various tribes. God reminded him to include the land which He had promised to Israel which they had yet to conquer in the allotments being given out.  I believe this was included here as a reminder to those reading the passage that just because great men of God such as Joshua have passed on that does not mean there is not more work to be done serving God.  It also provides a transition to tell the story about Caleb claiming his share of the land.

One thing I find interesting is the contrast between God telling Joshua at the beginning of Chapter 13 “You are now very old,” and Caleb declaring that at eighty-five years of age he was just as strong as when he spied out the land over 40 years earlier.  Everything we read about Joshua and Caleb suggests that they wee contemporaries.  Yet Joshua was ready to wind down his life while Caleb was ready for another round of the fight.  Let us learn from Joshua and Caleb.  They were the same age, but neither felt obligated to live their life according to what the other felt up for.  No matter what your age, live your life according the what God has planned for you.

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.

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

Following their victory over Jericho the Israelites became cocky.  As described in yesterday’s passage, they scouted out the city of Ai and initially sent a small force to conquer it.  Then in today’s passage, emissaries from the Gibeonites came to them to make a treaty. The Israelites interrogated the emissaries and carefully examined their equipment and supplies.  They reached the conclusion that the Gibeonites were from a distant land and swore oaths with them.  While their failure in the first assault against Ai was complicated by the sin of Achan, in both cases the leaders made the same mistake.  They acted upon their own judgement without first consulting God.  They felt that the circumstances were such that they did not need to consult God.  They knew His will and thought they knew the facts that applied.  In both cases they had done their due diligence and thought that was sufficient.  Consulting God is not a substitute for doing our due diligence, but we should ask God for His guidance as we do our due diligence.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 1-4.

The passage begins with God’s message to Joshua as he took over leadership upon Moses’ death.  Three times God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous.  After the final time, God also tells him not to be afraid or discouraged.  We should take this message to heart.  Just as God promised to be with Joshua, He has promised to be with us.  If we keep God’s Word in our hearts and meditate on it day and night, we will have confidence that God is with us.  God’s message was not just for Joshua.  He tells us also to be strong and courageous.  God will be with us, so we need not be afraid or discouraged.  As long as we follow God’s direction, whatever we do will be successful.  Maybe not the way we define success, but God’s purpose will be served, even if that which we thought was the end goal does not come to be.

The passage continues with the story of Rahab and the spies in Jericho.  Most of the time we focus on how Rahab was promised that she and her family would be protected from the destruction about to be visited on Jericho, or on how Rahab is one of King David’s ancestors.  Those are both great examples of how an outsider was welcomed in among God’s people through their faith.  However, my attention was caught by something today.  The spies insisted that their oath of protection to Rahab was only binding if she did not tell anyone what they were doing.  In the past, I always read that as not revealing them so that they could escape.  But that makes no sense, if they failed to escape, they could not pass the word to the Israelite army to not harm Rahab or her family.  So, that cannot be what they meant.  Clearly, the spies had either done something, or discovered something, which would allow the Israelites to conquer Jericho more easily.  Which suggests that Rahab’s cooperation was about more than gaining protection from the inevitable fall of Jericho, that perhaps Rahab preferred to become a foreigner among the Israelites to remaining a prostitute among her own people.

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