Devotionals Detail

Reading: Joshua 24

If I asked you what you knew about the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, the first thing that might come to mind would be the song you learned as a child:

“Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho

Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came a tumblin’ down….”

The concept that God gives “victory” was ingrained in many of us at an early age, particularly when it comes to warfare in the Old Testament passages. The book of Joshua is filled with tales of battles won because of God’s favor. Joshua recaps them all in this final chapter, as he proclaims that the Lord delivered the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites into the hands of the Israelites. (Joshua 24:11).

And truth be told, it’s disturbing.

Because we have seen throughout modern history what interpreting God as being on “our side” has done though “holy” wars. So it’s important not to gloss over the difficulty of these passages. We must pause when God’s nature is used to promote annihilation of groups of people, because that same nature can then be used to promote modern genocide, dehumanization, colonization, racism, prejudice and all manner of ways of “othering” groups of people.

So let’s take a minute to listen to how these battles are described and how the Bible is written. First and foremost, these descriptions are written as hyperbole, designed to make a literary point. When it says that God “totally destroyed” a people or “no survivors were left,” that is exaggerated, to make the authors point that God is faithful to the Israelites. We know this because later on in the book, these groups of people are described as alive and well.

Secondly, we must remember that in Deuteronomy 20, God commands the Israelites to live in peace with all nations. Possessing the Canaanite land is specifically limited, because of their corruption and child sacrifice. In other words, these specific battles are waged to destroy evil behavior, not a particular group of people. In fact, there are quite a few Canaanites who turn to the Lord and are welcomed into the covenant people.

The reality is this – Joshua is a book that we cannot cut and paste into our current day and age, as if God is on “our side” as a nation and against other nations. This is the danger of

applying God’s nature and agency when human nature and agency is also a factor. For if God’s promise in the very beginning of this covenant with Abram and Sarai is a promise that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3), annihilating groups of people could not be God’s will.

Joshua is instead a lesson to us - in these moments of paradox in the Bible, pay attention. For we must remember that the Bible is written in retrospect from those who benefitted from these battles, not those who suffered in them.

This Sunday we celebrate World Communion Sunday. In reflection, let us pause so we do not assign God’s nature to humanity’s propensity towards violence, especially not in favor of one nation over another.