By capturing the city of Jericho , and, eventually, the rest of the land of Canaan , Joshua shows that his leadership is different from that of Moses. Indeed, his new role reflects the new reality that the Israelites encounter in their new homeland: In the desert, where their needs were provided for by God in a steady flow of miracles, a purely spiritual leader was sufficient.
Now, with their destiny in their own hands, the Jews need a more practical, physically capable leader. Of course, the book of Joshua emphasizes the role that God played in the leader's victories. In the account of one battle in Joshua 10 , for example, the Torah reports that as evening approached, the Jews were winning and wanted to finish the battle, so that their enemy would have no chance to regroup. Thus, God caused the sun to stand still, allowing the Jews to finish the battle and avoid having to fight another one.
The battle of Jericho , the Israelites' first, is won by surrounding the walls of the city and walking around them, causing them to miraculously collapse. Once in the city, they kill all of the inhabitants but the family of Rahab, the harlot who housed the spies that scouted out the city in Joshua 1.
According to midrash , Joshua eventually married Rahab, and the prophets Jeremiah and Hulda were their descendents; however, there is no actual report in the book of Joshua of the leader marrying anyone, or having any family life whatsoever. From Jericho, the nation proceeds to Ai, and then to the rest of Canaan. According to midrash , however, the forcible conquest and bloody battles reported in the rest of the book are only part of the story.
Press ESC to cancel. Esther Fleming August 8, Table of Contents. Previous Article What is the most recyclable product? Next Article Can the Khyber Pass be used for travel? We've examined how the book of Joshua deals with Israel's tribal inheritances by reviewing the initial boundaries of their inheritance and the specific allotments to particular tribes. Now, let's turn to the third major step in our lesson: Israel's national unity.
Time and again through the centuries the tribes of Israel divided and turned against each other. And our author knew that Israel could not move forward in expanding God's kingdom unless the tribes stood together as one people. To address this issue, our author closed this division of his book with a time when severe conflict threatened the national unity of Israel in Joshua's day. As we've seen a number of times, the book of Joshua repeatedly draws attention to a major, natural divide that existed between the tribes of Israel in Transjordan and Cisjordan.
This geographical division was problematic in Joshua's day because it nearly led to a war between the tribes on either side of the Jordan. So, as our author closed the second division on Israel's tribal inheritances, he recalled how Joshua led the tribes in Transjordan and Cisjordan to remain united.
These events illustrated how his original audience should resolve similar tensions in their own day. We'll follow our same pattern as we explore Israel's national unity by looking first at the structure and content of this section, and then at its original meaning.
Consider first the structure and content of this chapter. The account of Israel's national unity in chapter 22 is a rather straightforward narrative that unfolds in five main steps. It begins in verses with the dramatic problem of the construction of an altar by the tribes of Transjordan.
After Israel's victories in Cisjordan, Joshua sent the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh back to their inheritances east of the Jordan. He warned them to remain faithful to God. As they travelled, the Transjordan tribes built a large, imposing altar near the Jordan River. When the tribes of Cisjordan heard about this, they assumed the altar had been erected as a substitute for the Lord's altar at the Tabernacle of Moses.
The tension of the narrative increases in verses with the rise of the threat of war. Fearful that the altar erected by the Transjordan tribes would bring God's anger on all of Israel, the Cisjordan tribes made plans to attack. But, in an attempt to avoid war, they first sent a delegation of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, and ten chief men to confront the tribes of Transjordan. The lengthy turning point of our story, in verses , reports the confrontation between this delegation and the Transjordan tribes.
The delegation warned that the newly-constructed altar violated God's command to sacrifice only at the Tabernacle. But the leaders from Transjordan passionately explained that they had not built their altar for sacrifice. Rather, it was a symbol of their unity with the other tribes because they feared that the other tribes would reject them from the nation. In response, the delegation rejoiced because the Transjordan tribes had not been unfaithful to the Lord.
The falling action of the narrative appears in verses 32, 33 with the cessation of the threat of war. The delegation reported on what they had learned, and the tribes in Cisjordan praised God and immediately stopped speaking of war. Then the final resolution of the dramatic tension of the story appears in verse 34 with the naming of the altar.
The Transjordan tribes demonstrated their intentions by naming their altar at the Jordan, "Witness. With the basic structure and content of this narrative about Israel's national unity in mind, we should make a few comments on its original meaning. It isn't difficult to see why our author closed this division of his book with the narrative of chapter This story explains how the tribes were able to maintain their unity, even in the face of tremendous potential for conflict.
The tribes of Cisjordan rightly prepared to punish the tribes of Transjordan for what they thought was flagrant rebellion against God.
But they wisely investigated the situation and gladly rejoiced in their national unity in the worship of God. These events charted a course for the original audience to follow whenever similar conflicts arose among the tribes of Israel. We can see that our author designed his narrative about national unity to guide future generations by noting the same five themes we've seen many times in his book. In the first place, the theme of divine authority appears in the construction of an altar.
In , we learn that it was Joshua, God's ordained leader, who called for the tribes of Transjordan to return to their allotted lands. And more than this, in the rise of the threat of war we see in verse 13 that the divinely-ordained authority, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar the priest led the delegation from Cisjordan. Our author drew attention to Joshua and Phinehas to shape his audience's outlooks on this story.
They were not to treat this as a record of irrelevant events in the past. Instead, the participation of divinely-ordained authorities called them to apply these events appropriately to uphold national unity in their own day. In the second place, the story of national unity in chapter 22 also touches on God's covenant. This theme comes to the foreground especially in the confrontation between the delegation from Cisjordan and the tribes of Transjordan.
As we read in verses 25, 27, the Transjordan tribes didn't want the other tribes to say, "You have no portion in the Lord. And, as passages like Joshua and illustrate, our author closely connected cheleq with the word "inheritance," or nachalah. As we've seen a number of times in this series, the term "inheritance" was commonly associated with God's covenants with Abraham and Moses.
So, the Transjordan tribes wanted to ensure that the tribes west of the Jordan treated them as full heirs of the covenant promises given to their ancestors. The author of Joshua drew attention to these matters to impress his call for national unity on his original audience. He insisted that his original audience must never lose sight of the fact that all the tribes of Israel — north, south, east and west — had a portion in the Promised Land that was rooted in God's covenant with Israel.
In the third place, our author's account of Israel's national unity also highlights the standard of Moses' law. In the opening step of the narrative, Joshua warned the tribes of Transjordan, in , "[B]e very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses … commanded you. And in verse 29, the tribes of Transjordan affirmed the standard of Moses' law when they exclaimed, "Far be it from us that we should rebel against the Lord. Our author's focus on the law of Moses raised a crucial qualification for the pursuit of national unity.
As important as it was for his audience to seek the unity of the nation, they were to do so only in accordance with the regulations of Moses' law.
In the fourth place, the narrative of national unity also draws attention to God's supernatural power. This theme appears especially in the confrontation between the delegation from Cisjordan and the tribes of Transjordan. In verse 17, the delegation warned of God's power to curse them by reminding the Transjordan tribes that "there came a plague upon the congregation of the Lord" when Israel sinned at Peor.
And by contrast, once Phinehas heard the Transjordan tribes' explanation, he acknowledged the supernatural blessing of God in verse 31, where he said, "Today we know that the Lord is in our midst. These references to God's supernatural curses and blessings reminded the original audience that the call to national unity in their day was no mere human affair.
As in the days of Joshua, they also would experience God's curses and blessings as they pursued, or failed to pursue, the goal of national unity.
In the fifth place, it shouldn't surprise us to find that this narrative on national unity also highlights the theme of all Israel. The tone is set in the first step of the story when Joshua referred to the Israelites on both sides of the Jordan as "brothers" in verses 3, 7 and 8.
In the confrontation, the delegation acknowledged, in verses 17, 20, that the sin of some in Israel could bring God's wrath against the whole congregation of Israel. And in verse 34, the entire narrative ends with a declaration of the unity of Israel's faith when the altar is named, "a witness between us that the Lord is God. The author of Joshua made it clear that the tensions between Israel's tribes in Joshua's day were resolved because of deep commitments to the unity of Israel's tribes.
And he did this to call his original audience to the same level of commitment to national unity in their day as well. So far in our lesson we've seen how our author's account of Israel's tribal inheritances deals with the initial boundaries of the land, the specific allotments of inheritances to the tribes of Israel, and the establishment of national unity among the tribes. Now we're in a position to turn to our last consideration in this lesson, the Christian application of this division of our book.
The many details of this division of the book of Joshua were designed to give very practical guidance to the original audience. Our author addressed how crucial it was for his audience to secure the initial inheritances their ancestors had received. He explained how they should value the specific allotments God had given to each tribe.
And he called on them to emulate how Israel maintained national unity in Joshua's day. But how do we apply these practical lessons about Israel's tribal inheritances to ourselves?
Simply put, we have to remember that what happened in Joshua's time was only one step toward the much greater fulfillment of God's inheritance for his people in Christ. We'll deal with Christian application of this division of Joshua in the light of how Christ fulfills Israel's tribal inheritances in the three phases of his kingdom: its inauguration in his first advent, its continuation throughout church history and its consummation at his second advent.
Consider first how we should apply Israel's tribal inheritances in light of the inauguration of Christ's kingdom. When Christ inaugurated his messianic kingdom in his first advent, Israel had spent hundreds of years scattered far from the Promised Land. Even those who had returned to Palestine lived under the tyranny of one Gentile nation after another. But the faithful in Israel never lost hope for regaining their inheritance in the Promised Land.
And they looked forward to the time when their inheritance would expand to include the entire world under the rule of their Messiah. God's promise of a land to Israel goes back to the Garden. God gave a commission to humankind in the Garden to subdue, not just the Garden, but the whole earth. And so, what we see in the gift of land is, again, this echo of the promise to take dominion over the whole earth, to spread the borders of God's kingdom.
And we start to get a glimpse of that in the Davidic kingship in Psalm 2 and Psalm 72 — "Ask of me and I will give you the nations" — or in Isaiah's vision that Israel's role was to be a blessing to all the nations, echoing the Abrahamic covenant that, "I will bless you, and through you I will bless all the families of the earth.
So, what we see in Jesus' ministry when he comes is that he restores Israel to that role to be a light to the nations. And so, at the end of Matthew's gospel he says, "Go, and tell all the nations everything that I have commanded you; disciple them in all that I have done for you and with you.
Greg Perry]. The New Testament explains that Jesus' first advent was a major step toward fulfilling this hope. As Hebrews explains, God appointed Jesus as the "heir of all things. This is why the four gospels report that Jesus ministered throughout the boundaries of Israel's tribal inheritances that had been allotted in Joshua's day.
He and his disciples ministered both in the northern and southern territories of Cisjordan. And, on occasion, they ministered in Transjordan as well. All the while, Jesus gathered to himself a faithful remnant from the tribes of Israel who would inherit the earth with him. And beyond this, the newly-ascended Christ gathered into Jerusalem representatives of the tribes of Israel who began to follow him "from every nation under heaven," as Acts tells us. But overall, the most important connection between Israel's inheritance and the inauguration of Christ's kingdom is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the church that began on the day of Pentecost.
In Ephesians , the apostle Paul referred to the Holy Spirit as "the guarantee of our inheritance. And Old Testament prophecies, like Isaiah , 4, explain that the Spirit of God will also bring about the renewal of creation in the days of the Messiah.
In effect, the gift of the Holy Spirit to Christ's church is the foretaste of this renewed creation. He is the portion of our worldwide inheritance granted in the inauguration of Christ's kingdom as we wait for the consummation of all things in Christ's return. For this reason, the major themes that appear repeatedly in this portion of Joshua give us opportunities to reflect on the foretaste of our inheritance in the Holy Spirit.
Much like Joshua distributed Israel's inheritance in the Promised Land with divine authority, Jesus and his apostles and prophets distributed believers' inheritance in the Spirit with divine authority as well. Just as Joshua's distribution of lands was based in God's covenant, Jesus' distribution of the Holy Spirit to God's people was in fulfillment of the new covenant in Christ.
Israel's inheritance under Joshua accorded with the standard of Moses' law, and the distribution of the Spirit was the result of Christ's perfect obedience to Moses' law, in the light of God's further revelation after Moses' time.
Israel's inheritance depended on God's supernatural power, and the New Testament makes it clear that during Jesus' first advent, even greater supernatural power was at work in the distribution of the Holy Spirit. And the ideal of all Israel's inclusion in Joshua's day was expanded during the inauguration. Not only the faithful remnant of Israel, but also the Gentile believers received the deposit of Christ's inheritance in the Holy Spirit.
Having touched on how Christian application of Israel's tribal inheritances should turn us toward the inauguration of Christ's kingdom, we should also look at how it applies to the continuation of his kingdom throughout church history.
Joshua was likely in his early or mid-thirties at the time. Before the Jews entered Canaan, Moses died and Joshua succeeded him as leader.
Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go. The Israelites safely crossed the Jordan River in flood season on dry ground, while the Levitical priest stood holding the Ark of the Covenant in the dry riverbed.
The Israelite army immediately overran the city and slaughtered every living thing, except Rahab and her family. God gave yet another supernatural sign at the battle of Gibeon, whereby he made the sun stand still in the sky for an entire day so the Israelites could annihilate their enemies Josh.
Against overwhelming odds, Joshua successfully led the Israelite army in its conquest of the Promised Land.
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