Joshua, Installment One

 

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It's Joshua's Turn

Looks like we're back to installments, at least for a while. Deuteronomy gave me false hope that I could polish off a book in one post, but that only worked because so much of Deuteronomy was a rehash of old material. Now we've turned things over to Moses' apprentice Joshua, who we really didn't hear much about in the earlier books, maybe because Moses wasn't interested in having any attention drawn away from himself, I don't know, but in any case it looks like there is going to be a fair amount of new goings-on so we're back to installments.

    I'm still going to try to keep things concise. Good luck to me on that one.

Speaking of keeping things concise, in Chapter One God gets right down to business as he hands Joshua the keys to the caravan.

2) "My servant Moses is dead. Now proceed to cross the Jordan."

6) "...for you shall put this people in possession of the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them."

    Something I think we should all keep in mind if God ever promises us anything is to find out just how many generations will need to come and go before he sees fit to make good on the promise. He doesn't seem to be one for immediate gratification, at least where other folks are concerned.

    Joshua goes to the officers' club tent and tells the captains and majors and whatnot to get ready for some real action. He also makes it clear as well water that what he says goes. Backtalk, or even hesitation will not be tolerated. The officers assure him,

18) "Whoever rebels against your orders and disobeys your words whatever you command, shall be put to death."

    So nothing has changed on the whole progression of disciplinary actions front.

Chapter Two has Joshua doing the old "send spies into the place you're about to attack" thing he learned from Moses. I'm not a military scholar, but I guess it's a solid strategy, used all the time even now. He sends two trusty fellows to go get a lay of the land in Jericho.

    The first place his two spies stop in order to get the lay of the land is at a prostitute's house. That's what it says. The prostitute's name is Rahab. She does the spies a solid by hiding them from soldiers the King of Jericho has sent around after he being warned that there might be spies in town. It seems the King and all the Jerichoians (Jerichoites?) are scared silly about the fearsome Israelites lurking across the border. Word of a Great Replacement Conspiracy designed to make the native born Jerichoinos, including the King, lose their place at the top of the Rights And Privileges Pyramid has the electorate all worked up.

    After successfully avoiding detection by hiding on the roof under stacks of flax, the spies decide that they've learned all they need to learn about the place and so they're happy to take Rahab's offer to lower them to the ground outside the city walls from one of her windows. They promise her that when they come back with the rest of the battalion everyone in her home will be spared from the scheduled slaughter. She just needs to tie a crimson rope outside the window to mark her home as a slaughter-free zone. 

Back at camp in Chapter Three. Joshua tells everyone they will know it is time to cross the River Jordan when they see the priests heading that way with the Ark of the Covenant. They should follow the ark, but stay two thousands cubits back. That's about three thousand feet, if we're talking the long arm cubit*.

    

    So we've got, what did we say, something like 2.4 million people who are to follow the priests across the river, but they must stay a minimum of ten football fields length distant from the priests and the ark. Cool.

    At this point, nobody seems to have given a thought to just how they're all going to get from one side of the river to the other. No mention has been made of any bridge building activities or commissions for local ferry businesses. We find out here that God is going to use this challenge to help Joshua establish himself as a leader worthy of the name. Reaching back into God's old Red Sea bag of miracles, Joshua and his ark bearing Levites stride up to the near bank of the river and the waters draw back.

    It must have been a pretty good sized chunk of dry riverbed, because the priests went halfway across and just hung around while the other 2.4 million hoofed it to the other side, all the while maintaining that two thousand cubit respectful distance. Seems to me at that distance the priests could hardly see the rest of the crowd, maybe just the dust their sandals kicked up. almost five million sandals are bound to kick up quite a cloud. I'm thinking the priests must have settled in and played gin rummy or something because getting all 2.4 million from one side to the other must have taken the better part of the afternoon.

Then, in Chapter Four, God gives out instructions about what he wants done with a dozen stones to mark the location of this miraculous crossing. I'm still just a bit confused as to whether the stones were stacked up in the middle of the riverbed where the priests loitered while they watched everyone else cross way over there, or if the stones were stacked on the river bank to mark where they emerged on the other side, or, more likely, that there were two stacks of a dozen stones, one in the river and one not. A third or fourth reading may clear things up, but that's not happening. If any of my Dear Readers here find yourselves vacationing near the River Jordan close by the town of Shittim and you happen to have your scuba gear with you, take a look and see if you can be the first to spot the stack of stones in the actual river that marks where the priests opened their camping chairs. (See Verse 9.)

    If you don't have your tanks and regulators handy maybe you can still look around in Gilgal for the stack that was put up on dry land. (See Verses 19-22.)

9) [Joshua set up twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the covenant had stood; and they are there to this day.]

19) and they camped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. 20) Those twelve stones, which they had taken out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal, 21) saying to the Israelites, "When your children ask their parents in time to come, 'What do these stones mean?' 22) then you shall let your children know, 'Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.'

We now come to Chapter Five. Let's bullet point this one.

• God tells Joshua that it's time for the next generation to get the flint knife treatment. So I guess it's been a decade or three since anyone thought to get the boy kiddos circumcised and now we've got a backlog of hundreds of thousands of foreskins to deal with.
• Camp stays in one place while the cosmetic surgery is done and the necessary recuperation time has elapsed.
• They celebrate their first Passover in the Promised Land.
• They have their first meal made from something other than manna.
• I know, this isn't consistent with all the talk about sacrifices and what you can and cannot eat after you kill a goat or ox or bunny rabbit, and there have been all sorts of references to the bounty of the fields in the previous two or three books, but we're told here that this is actually when the manna from heaven supply was cut off and they were able to add some variety to their diet.
• Joshua has a vision in which he meets a fellow with a sword. The fellow identifies himself as the commander of the army of the Lord. The commander tells Joshua to take off his shoes.
• He does.

Next time we'll see how Jericho's walls fell down and why it's important to give the good stuff to the church.

*There is also a short arm cubit, which is about twelve inches, give or take.

***A photo of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. Just because.