Tag: Joshua

The Bible in a Year – 17 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

17 March. Joshua chapters 22-24

Chapter 24 completes the allocation of land to the tribes, the distinction being that this is the “two and a half” tribes east of the Jordan, who because they were not actually in the Promised Land seem to have been regarded as not quite part of the family.  Their action in setting up an altar by way of marking their common heritage with the other tribes was quickly misinterpreted by the others as idolatry, and they immediately wanted to go to war against them.  Fortunately, Phineas (a priest rather than a tribal leader, since the offence was a religious one) who was sent to lead a delegation intended to issue an ultimatum, listened to and believed their account of the matter, and war was averted.  Too often in human history such brinkmanship goes the wrong way and disaster follows.  Whether within the family or in international relations, Churchill’s wise words deserve repeating: “it is better to jaw-jaw than to war-war”.

 

The last two chapters of the book are Joshua’s exhortations to the people before his death, similar to (but much shorter than) the record of Moses’ final speeches to his people in Deuteronomy. He speaks twice: first to the leaders, with an emphasis on passing on the Mosaic teachings and avoiding diluting the faith by intermarriage; and then to the rest of the people with an emphasis on not worshipping or even owning any idols.  As elsewhere in the Bible, a stone was erected as a witness to their act of re-commitment.

 

The Bible in a Year – 14-16 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14-16 March. Joshua chapters 12 – 21

I have taken three days readings together here, since it takes a full ten chapters (admittedly some of them quite short) to recount the division of the land between the tribes.  And I will admit to having speed-read much of this, as much of it reads like the gazetteer at the back of a road atlas.  What I did find helpful was a map that I found on Wikimedia Commons  showing the areas given to each tribe:

12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Just one particular point occurred to me: as well as the tribal areas and a list of their towns and villages, Joshua makes provision for some towns and their pasture lands to be occupied by the priestly Levites who had no territory of their own as such.  The Levites therefore were spread out across all the tribal areas, and their cities included Kedesh, Hebron, Shechem, Golan, Bezer and Ramoth-in-Gilead, which were the six cities of refuge (for those accused of capital offences, to protect them from vengeance until proper justice could be done).

 

The Levites, then, had no inheritance, but received the tithes of the people. They also had the privilege of being spread out in the community, and with a particular presence where people came for refuge.  There are several resonances there with the tradition of the parish priest in Catholic or Anglican tradition.

 

The priest (at least in the Catholic church) is expected to be celibate, and therefore without descendants. He (or she, in the case of the Anglican church in many countries) is expected to minister out in the community and not only to his or her own ‘flock’ in church. Priests are expected to move around several times during their training and subsequent ministry, and become familiar with all sections of society.  And they are to have a particular concern for the vulnerable: the secrecy of the confessional is traditionally sacrosanct (although in recent times a secular concern for safeguarding has obliged a priest to disclose pastoral secrets in certain circumstances).   The priest’s reward is not financial, and his or her lie will be long and demanding.  But their satisfaction will be in seeing lives transformed and people meeting with God through their sacramental and pastoral ministry.  The main difference between then and now is that priesthood is seen as an individual calling rather than a tribal duty.

 

The Bible in a Year – 13 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

13 March. Joshua chapters 9-11

These chapters tell in summary form what must have been a long campaign (the commentary I am following suggests seven years) of defeating the indigenous peoples of Canaan.  The massive Israelite army swept across the terrified country, capturing one town after another, killing all their inhabitants, with only the ‘kings’ (tribal leaders) singled out as individuals, and either burning or looting the towns.

 

Such a campaign of terror is not unique in human history – think of the Mongolian hordes that swept across Asia, or the Vandals, Goths and Huns who terrorised Europe at various times and whose names live on with different and diluted meanings. Or of course Daesh/Islamic State who have captured several areas of Syria and Iraq in recent years and are only now being driven back, with heavy loss of civilian lives.  What makes Joshua’s reign of terror different is that it was (according to the account we have received) carrying out the will of God.  But isn’t that what Daesh say they are doing?  Were Joshua and his army any better than them?

 

In one way, yes. They made a treaty with the Gibeonites or Hivites.  That was not part of God’s plan, as the Hivites had been on the divine hit list.  But unlike the other tribes whose ‘hearts were hardened’ to resist Joshua’s forces, they acknowledged the power of the God of Israel and responded to the threat by suing for peace.  Admittedly it was done by deception, but from their point of view it was successful and they avoided destruction.  Instead they were made to undertake forced labour as woodcutters and water carriers.    Joshua, to his credit, refused to destroy them when he found out about the deception.  A treaty made in God’s name was not to be broken, whatever happened.  And so when the Hivites themselves came under threat, Joshua had to come to their aid.

 

Treaties are in the news at present.  Most obviously here in Britain with the country about to unilaterally break the Treaty of Rome by leaving the EU. But also with NATO coming under strain, both internally as Turkey and the Netherlands are in a diplomatic row, and externally as Russia threatens member states in the Baltic region.

 

We don’t know from the perspective of 2017 how any of these situations will turn out.  In 30 years time, say, Islamist terrorism and Russian aggression may be history, or they may have led to an irreversible attack on civilisation as we know it.  Britain may have rejoined the EU or at least be in a good trading position with it, or we may be an island nation as insignificant and “out in the cold” (metaphorically if not literally) as Iceland. What we can say though, is that a nation that holds to values of fidelity, openness to strangers and being willing to live at peace with those who do us no harm, is closer to doing God’s will than one that destroys other cultures ‘in the name of God’.

 

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 12 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

12 March. Joshua chapters 5-8

After crossing the river, the hard work of conquest begins.   Most of today’s reading is taken up with the account of the battles to conquer two cities – Jericho (achieved by psychological warfare, plus God’s miraculous flattening of the city walls, but without fighting), and Ai (conquered at the second attempt, following God’s instructions rather than the recommendations of the scouts).

 

But around these victories are accounts of actions of ritual significance – circumcision, Passover, and an appearance of an armed angel before the military campaign, and renewal of the covenant afterwards.  These remind us that Joshua is not just a book of military history, but the account of God claiming the holy land for his own people.  They themselves had to be holy in order to receive it, and so there had to be ceremonies of dedication to God (circumcision), remembrance of God’s previous victories (Passover being a re-enactment of the night before the Exodus), and receiving the law. The vision of an angel was given only to Joshua himself to encourage him as leader.

 

But one man’s sin in hiding booty for his own family was enough to lead to defeat of the whole army.  So the lesson is, that our plans alone, even if we believe them to be in line with Christian teaching, are not enough. We need to be personally close to God in the way we live, the principles we live by, and in our religious communities, if we are to achieve what he calls us to.

 

The Bible in a Year – 11 March

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

11 March.  Joshua chapters 1-4

Each of these chapters recounts a discrete incident in the story of the beginning of the occupation of Canaan.  Chapter 1 is where Joshua is given command of the nation, a great responsibility.  And even though he has the rare privilege of hearing God’s voice to him personally (as Moses did) still he has to be told four times (thrice by God and once by his own men) “be strong and [very] courageous”.  A leader of a nation, especially in times of war, does need these attributes, and yet a man who is strong, courageous and proud – even nonchalant, as President Trump was when he took office recently – does not make a good leader.   Strength and courage need to be balanced with humility and the ability to take counsel from others.  Such a leader was Joshua.

 

Next comes the story of the spies (or scouts).  Those we encountered in Exodus merely went over the mountain like the proverbial bear “to see what they could see”, and what they saw was tall people who terrified them.  That mistake put back God’s whole plan by 40 years.  This time, the two scouts actually make the acquaintance of a local person.  The fact that she was a prostitute, and one of the enemy at that, is no problem on this occasion.  Whether they availed themselves of her services or not, she is praised in the later books of Hebrews and James as being justified by the actions that enabled God’s plan to come about.  Whether she is the same Rahab named in Matthew’s gospel as the great-great-grandmother of King David is not clear, though she could have been.

 

The scouts actually heard what one of the enemy was saying, namely that her people had heard of the Israelite conquests elsewhere and God’s miracles for them, and were in dread of them. Thus the scouts were able to report back, after she had saved them from imminent danger, that the task ahead, though far from easy, would be less problematic than they may have feared.

 

The crossing of the Jordan was accomplished by faith and God’s miraculous provision in much the same way as the Exodus across the Sea of Reeds.  As with all Biblical miracles, it is not helpful to ask scientific questions too much (was the river dammed by a landslide upstream? Possibly, but we cannot know). But somehow all the people and their flocks managed to get safely across the river in the time of flood. The ark going ahead of them symbolised God’s presence, and that gave them the faith they needed.

 

Finally for today, the twelve stones (one for each tribe) were set up as a memorial of the event.  Memorials are a universal human trend.  Part of my job involves dealing with churches that are no longer needed for worship, and most of them will have many forms of memorial in them, from a formal foundation stone and a war memorial, to individual plaques or monuments to people who have played a leading role in the community at some time. There may also be objects given in memory of someone. The moveable items can be returned to the families who gave them, and other memorials can sometimes be relocated, but it is sad to see a church close and the memory of those who had built and endowed it fade from local history.  Joshua’s stones themselves are presumably long since lost during the last 3000 years, but the memory of the memorial lives on as long as the Bible is read.

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 16 February

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

16 February. Numbers chapters 11-14.

If these stories are taken to be in chronological order, then according to chapter 11, almost as soon as the tribes of Israel had started their march, some of them started complaining about a lack of decent food.  God provided quails to provide meat for them (though that does make me ask, what about the meat of all the bulls and sheep and birds that they were sacrificing on the altar?). The story has many elements in common with that in Exodus 16 so it may be a re-telling with embellishments, but of course God may just have worked the same miracle twice.  Either way though, what is interesting in this version, is that in between God’s promise of miraculous provision and its delivery is the coming of what later writers would call the Holy Spirit on the seventy elders who were to assist Moses, and they prophesied.  This looks like a foretaste of the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit came on thousands of people after Jesus’ ascension.  The lesson here appears that people have to be open to God working in their own lives, before he can make provision for others through them.

 

In chapter 13 the twelve “spies” were sent out.  Forget James Bond, these men would be better termed “scouts”. Two of them – Caleb and Joshua – were destined for greatness, and Caleb was confident after their scouting mission that with God’s help the Canaanites, big men though they were, could be defeated and the bountiful country settled. But the other scouts did not share his courage and persuaded the majority of the people that it was better to continue living in the desert alone than risk being subjugated by other nations.  Such decisions on the future of a people are never easy, and I imagine Moses must have felt much as Teresa May did after she took office as Prime Minister last year – disheartened that the majority of people had listened to misleading reports and voted against what she herself thought the better way.  But both leaders realised that it would not be in their interests to force the people down a route they did not wish to go.  I’m not going to push the comparison too far – the EU is not the Promised Land, Britain is no desert, and I’m not aware that God has cursed every Brexit voter to die before his plan can be accomplished.  The point is just that sometimes leaders have to accept that Plan B is the only realistic option.