Day 75 Joshua 22-24

            The tribes living east of the Jordan river are finally dismissed to go back home.  They build a giant altar just on their side of the border which stirs up a lot of concern back in Israel proper.  Knowing that God will punish the whole nation of Israelites for the idolatry of a few tribes, the rest of the Israelites are ready to go to war with the tribes of Benjamin, Gad and the quarter-tribe of Manasseh.

            When they show up with a giant army, the two and a quarter tribes living there explain that they didn’t erect this altar to any foreign God, but as a testament pointing at the tabernacle back west of the river.  They actually built their altar specifically so the other tribes wouldn’t be able to roll in after a couple generations and claim that they weren’t worshiping the Lord out here.

            Once everything is straightened out and nobody feels the need to annihilate anyone else anymore, they all have a big party in stead.  Happy ending.

            Joshua reaffirms the covenant between God and the people and, in front of all the elders. leaders, judges and officials of all the tribes of Israel, he bound them to all follow the Lord and not worship foreign gods or compromise their culture or religion with their neighbors.  God will not tolerate any nonsense when it comes to foreign gods and foreign worship.

            A while after this speech, Joshua dies.  A while after Joshua dies, Eleazer, the head priest dies.  Since the high priest died, I presume that means there was a free for all in the cities of refuge.  You have to stay inside the boundaries of a city of refuge if you accidently kill someone and want to avoid their people from killing you back, but you are allowed to leave when the head priest dies.  If you can’t ever leave the city, it’s got to be hard to make a living, which must be why a big part of your tithe is supposed to go toward supporting the cities of refuge.  Still though, I’ll bet living in a city of refuge was probably not a very pleasant existence.

            Eleazer is buried in the land of Ephraim, which is strange since he’s a Levite and not an Ephraimite.  That’s fine though, maybe Levites are all buried in other lands since Levite land was divvied up differently than everyone else’s.  Joshua is buried in Shechem, in some land that he bought there.  Now this is a pretty minor point, but my text says that that land became a part of the inheritance of Joshua’s line, but land that is bought is supposed to return to the original owner in a year of jubilee every 50 years.  At least the land is staying in the tribe of Ephraim, but it’s weird that this land is bought permanently.

            I guess no rules are broken though because the book of Joshua ends by claiming that the law was upheld all through the time of Joshua and the time of the elders that outlived him who had seen the miracles God performed in these times.

            I feel like this wouldn’t have been pointed out to us how well everyone followed the rules in this era unless it was in contrast to the era we’re going to read about in the next book.

Day 74 Joshua 19-21

            All the land is divided up among the tribes with cities set aside for the Levites and for cities of refuge.  One city of refuge is Kadesh in Galilee in the land belonging to the tribe of Naphtali.  Jesus is from Galilee so it’s possible we’re going to hear more about this city later.

Day 73 Joshua 16-18

            The half tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh are not allotted very much land for all of their people and there are Canaanites living in their part of Israel to boot.  The Canaanites are only allowed to do forced labor there, which I guess must be good enough to fulfill the law against having treaties with the native people.

            Joshua tells the tribes that they can have all the land they want up in the forested areas.  They just have to drive out the people living there first.  They gripe about it, but end up doing just that, even though the people living there have chariots and iron weapons.  Why a people living in forested lands would invest a lot in chariots is an interesting question, but the half tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh seemed to regard them as powerful combatants so it must have worked out well for them.

            The other tribes have still yet to clear out their lands completely either.  Joshua orders the remaining land surveyed and he casts lots in the presence of the Lord to determine the lands allotted to the clans in the tribes left over.

Day 72 Joshua 12-15

            Joshua led the army to defeat 31 kings in all, but when he was old, God told him there was still lots to conquer.  For the time being though, they went ahead and started dividing up the land by tribe for the inheritances.  Gad and Reuben and half of the half tribe of Manasseh set up east of the Jordan river and the other nine tribes and the other quarter tribe of Manasseh took the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea, although the tribe of Levi didn’t get the same kind of plot of land, but cities spread throughout Canaan.

            Caleb shows up again at 85 years old and just as strong and spry as the day Moses first sent him to scout out the promised land according to him.  He was promised a bunch of land for his faith so Joshua gives him Hebron.

            I’m glad to see Caleb get something good.  I thought it was weird that we kept hearing in Numbers about how great Joshua and Caleb were and how much faith they had, but then only Joshua got to lead the camp afterword and we never heard about Caleb again.  I guess he is a Kenizite though, which it looks like makes him not actually an Israelite.  He mentions something about his fellow Israelites though so he’s clearly part of the nation.  He doesn’t seem to have a tribe attached to his name now even though back in Numbers, he scouted out Canaan as a representative of the tribe of Judah, so I have no idea what the politics are here.

Day 71 Joshua 9-11

            The Gibeonites trick Joshua and the leaders of the camp into making a treaty with them by claiming to be from far away.  They heard about all the amazing things God has done for the Israelites and knew they couldn’t defeat them, or even survive them, so they resorted to subterfuge.  The Israelites are commanded not to make a treaty with anyone in Canaan, but they believed the Gibeonite envoy and didn’t check in with God before signing a treaty.  A little while later they came up to the Gibeonite cities and found out that they had just sworn an oath not to harm them.

            The people were kind of pissed at their leaders, but no one would violate the oath they made to God not to harm the Gibeonites.  Joshua made them wood cutters and water carriers, which I guess made an unpleasant lower class for them to occupy, but it’s better then the alternative.  A little later some other allied nations come and attack the Gibeonites, but Joshua actually brings the army to their aid and wipes out the other army.  In the process he stops the sun and moon in the sky for a day.

            They conquer all of southern Canaan down into the Negev.

            No other treaty problems came up as God hardened all the other tribes to fight the Israelites.  The only places in Canaan left with non-Israelites still alive in them were Gaza, Gath, which we think is kind of by Jerusalem and Ashdod, which is just a little north of modern-day Gaza along the coast.

Day 70 Joshua 5-8

            When Joshua first comes to approach Jericho he sees a man with a drawn sword standing in front of him.  Joshua asks him if he’s on the side of Israel or their enemies and the man says  “Neither, I’m the commander of the armies of the Lord.”  I think it’s interesting the distinction made by this guy, I assume he’s an angel or something.  He’s basically telling Joshua “Look, I’m not a part of your army, I’m not here to serve your side, but as long as you play your cards right, you can be part of my side.”

            The army marches around Jericho six times in six days blowing trumpets just like they’re told to do.  On the seventh day they march around the city seven times and when they blow their trumpets the walls collapse and the Israelite army is able to slaughter everyone inside.  God says that all the plunder of this city belongs to Him so they have to round all of it up and put it in the Lord’s treasury.

            Later, Joshua sends a small force of a couple thousand men to conquer a little city called Ai, but they’re routed and come running back defeated.  Joshua comes to God to ask why this happened and finds out that some guy kept a bunch of God’s treasure.

            Once they find this guy, Achan, and stone him and his entire family to death, God takes them back to Ai and hands the city over to the Israelites.

            Before all this though, Joshua makes camp just inside Canaan and has everybody circumcised.  They have to stay there and heal for  couple days before moving on, but fortunately the rumors about that trick with the Jordan river are spreading quickly and everyone is afraid to attack the camp during this time because of the Israelite God.  Apparently they haven’t been keeping everybody circumcised while they wandered the desert, which is surprising considering what a big deal it is to God for everyone to be circumcised.  He almost killed Moses over it that one time.

            God decrees that Jericho is never to be rebuilt, which it actually has been.  Jericho is there today, but it’s in Palestine so I guess you could say that it’s cursed because I’m sure it sucks to live there.

Day 69 Joshua 1-4

            Joshua sends some men to go spy on Jericho before they begin the invasion there.  He mentions their land stretching from the great rive to the Mediteranian.  I feel like there’s some confusion between whether Israel is supposed to go from the Euphratese to the sea or just from the Jordan to the sea.  These guys kind of alternate between which area God promised them.  Streathcing from the Jordan to the Mediteranian makes a lot more sense because they run sort of parallel, and it makes a piece of land that seems about the right size for a nation of only 600,000 people.  The Euphratese is all the way up in Persia, and hits the Arabian Sea farther north than what is supposed to be the northern border of Israel.  Also, it runs at a 45 degree angle to the bank of the Mediteranian.

            Whatever the eventual borders may be, the spies don’t do a very good job and the king of Jericho finds out about them and sets out to kill them.  Fortunately, the men have started their reconessance of Jericho at the house of a prostitue named Rahab and she fears the Lord and wants to ally herself with the men.  I’ll say that again, the men decide to start their reconessance of the defenses of Jericho at the house of the prostitute Rahab.

            The text doesn’t rally explore that so I guess we’re just pretending that that’s perfectly reasonable.

            Rahab says she will help them and sends the king on a wild goose chase into the wilderness looking for them, but, in exchange, she wants protection for her and her family.  The spies tell her to tie a scarlet rope to her window and they will make sure she and her family are kept safe.

            A piece of scarlet yarn is also a key ingredient of the purification potions brewed in Exodus to cure skin diseases and kill mold.

            Meanwhile, Joshua is working on getting an entire nation across a big river in flood stage.  The Jordan is the major river in the area and a large part of Jericho’s defenses, especially at this time of year when it is just about impossible to get a large group of people across it in any orderly or safe fashion.  Fortunately, this sort of thing is God’s specialty.  Some Levites with the ark go and stand in the middle of the Jordan and as soon as their sandals touch the water, the flow of the river stops.  The Israelites walk across on dry land.

            Once everybody’s across, Joshua tells some men to go grab twelve stones out of the river and set them up on shore.  They will be a monument to what the Lord has done so when their sons come by here years down the road they’ll see them and ask why those river stones are stood up on the bank and their fathers can say “Well, let me tell you about how awesome God is and what He did for us here.”

            I heard a great talk once about how this passage should be our model for evangelism, that our lives are standing stones.  Evangelism and missions are a huge part of the church I go to, as well they should be.  This is the most important thing in the world after all.  But I think as American Christian we can easily lose sight of the content of our message.  When we just scream holy holy holy and throw a bible tract at someone, we’re not really showing them what we’re talking about.  I mean we’re just talking.  Npw that kind of ministry has a place I’m sure, but, especially in America, most people’s problem with the church isn’t that the haven’t heard of Jesus.  Now if we simply follow Jesus to the best of our ability and help the poor, treat each other fairly and glorify God with our actions and words, then people will seek us out and ask “wow, why are you so great?” and then you say “Well, let me tell you about how awesome God is and what He did for us.”