Joshua

Good ole Joshua. Famous for leading the Israelites into the promised land after Moses dies on Mount Nebo and for leading that march around Jericho. Yet this book contains more than just that and if you reads carefully and critically one will likely to be not a little disturbed.

I find the new year to be a time of rejuvenated energy toward making new goals and habits. This year I am endeavoring to read two books of the Bible each month. Seemed doable. For January I read Genesis and 1 Corinthians, for February I started to read Joshua and Matthew. I just finished Joshua a week or so ago and am now trying to finish Matthew so that I can start on my March books before this month hits its end.

Since college I have been aware that there is genocide in the Bible, but it hadn't hit me quite so hard as when I read great portions of Joshua all at once. It's one thing always to be encouraging his people to "be strong and courageous" and to trust in God, but it's another to slaughter entire towns and cities, men, women, children, and animals included. The book does admit that not every Canaanite and Hittite and Jebusite was slaughtered for the Gibeonites trick the Israelites into a treaty, thus saving their lives, even if relegated to "hewers of wood and drawers of water." (9:27) Also some Anakim remained "only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod." (11:22) So the program of extermination was not totally successful. Still, it is more than a mite troubling that this program of extermination was ordained by God in the first place.



That brings me to a pivotal question: since Joshua is in the canon do we take it as reflecting something of God's character? How does this jibe with the God who became incarnate to reconcile THE WORLD to himself? Why slaughter all but the Israelites one minute and then die for everyone (remaining Anakim and Gibeonites included) the next? And what do we as Christians do with this book? What do I do with it when portions of Joshua appear in the lectionary? I don't want simply to avoid talking about the unsavory parts of the Bible, but nor do I endorse genocide, of anyone, for any reason.

If this were a true review of Joshua I would not give it a high rating, for the following reasons:

1. Genocide
2. Long boring lists of town allotments
3. Repetition
4. Complete lack of self-critique on the part of Joshua and the Israelites
5. What appears to be a completely biased and unmerciful God



What I do like about it is

1. Rahab - you go girl!
2. Shofar!
3. The messengers from God say that God is neither on Josh's side nor against
4. God does the major fighting and the Israelites just clean up, so it is clear where real power lies
5. The sun stands still



So I have mixed feelings about this book and I can't guarantee that when I preach about it I won't talk about the horror of finding this in our Bible. Maybe having it here is a reminder that we have done atrocious things in our past and that we have used God to justify it.