Old Testament · History
Into the land, Jericho falls, the land is divided, and Israel chooses whom it will serve.
The land promised to Abraham finally entered, in a book that is one long argument that God keeps his word. Jericho falls, the sun stands still, and territory is divided by lot among the tribes. What readers usually do not expect is how candid it is about incompleteness: the same book that says God gave them all the land also lists, town by town, the places they could not take. It is also the book that troubles modern readers most, and honestly so, since the command to destroy the Canaanite cities is not softened here and no amount of context makes it comfortable. Worth noticing: the two people singled out for faith are a foreign prostitute who hides the spies and a foreign city that tricks its way into a treaty, while the Israelite who fails is a man who took what he was told not to.
If you remember one thing
The book insists that not one word of God's promise failed. It is equally honest that Israel did not finish the job, which is the hinge into Judges.
“But as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh.”
Joshua 24:15
Joshua 6 to 11
The conquest accounts. Readers differ on how to hold these together with the character of God revealed elsewhere, and on how much the language of total destruction is the standard hyperbole of ancient war reporting.
Joshua 7
Achan's whole household dies for his theft, which raises the question of corporate responsibility that runs through the Old Testament.
Named here rather than skipped. Where Christians read a passage differently, we say so instead of choosing for you.
Everyone here has a write-up, drawn from the same records that explain the names while you read the text.
Jacob's favored son, sold into slavery by his brothers, imprisoned on a false accusation, and raised to second in Egypt because he could read dreams. When his brothers finally stood before him he said the line the whole story turns on: you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
Moses' assistant and one of the two spies who came back from Canaan saying it could be taken. He led the crossing of the Jordan and the conquest, and at the end of his life made the whole nation choose openly whom they would serve.
The other spy who urged Israel to go up at once. Forty-five years later, at eighty-five, he asked for the hill country with the fortified cities in it, on the grounds that he was as strong as the day Moses sent him out.
A prostitute in Jericho who hid Israel's spies and asked for mercy for her household, and got it. Matthew names her in the genealogy of Jesus, and both Hebrews and James hold her up as an example of living faith.
A diviner from the Euphrates hired to curse Israel, who could only say what God gave him to say, including one of the clearest messianic lines in the Torah. The Bible's later verdict on him is harsh: Numbers, Peter, Jude, and Revelation all treat him as the pattern of a religious professional who sells his gift.
He kept a robe, silver, and gold from Jericho when everything had been devoted to destruction, and hid them under his tent. Israel's next battle, against a tiny town, failed because of it, and the search narrowed tribe by tribe until it reached him.
Aaron's third and fourth sons, who inherited the priesthood after the older two, Nadab and Abihu, were killed offering unauthorized fire. Eleazar succeeded Aaron as high priest and stood with Joshua to divide the land.
Eleazar's son, who ended a plague at Peor by driving a spear through an Israelite man and a Midianite woman, and was granted a covenant of lasting priesthood. A second Phinehas, son of Eli, was a corrupt priest who died carrying the ark into battle.
Manasseh's son and the clan descended from him, who took Gilead east of the Jordan. In the Song of Deborah, Machir stands in for the whole tribe. A separate Machir of Lo-debar sheltered Mephibosheth and later supplied David during Absalom's revolt.
A quiz for Joshua is on the workbench. In the meantime, the games for the judges, the kings, and the prophets are open.
