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JOSHUA 10–12

Week 11, Day 7

What difference does it make today that millennia ago several scores of city-states, with kings whose names are hardly a speck in history, were defeated by Israel? To a scholar, it means one more small piece in the knowledge of the ancient world, the kind of information that, added to some archaeological finding, becomes a segment in the human story.

But for Israel the importance is far more than the data of history. It is the stuff, eventually, of hymns of praise to God, with each name a reminder that “the LORD fought for Israel” (10:14, 42). Religion for the Israelites was no theoretical study; it dealt with specifics of names, dates, and battles. And when the event was marked by what seemed to be the cooperation of nature itself, the victory was all the more memorable.

When we are far removed from the circumstances, we may not be especially empathetic with a testimony about a God who marches with a nation’s armies. For that matter, a comfortably middle-class person today may not appreciate the emotional witness of a ghetto mother who says God sent the relief check just in time. But when one lives in the midst of some kind of oppression or peril, whether political, economic, physical, or emotional, and the answer comes in good time—well, the story looks different from that position. Then one wants not so much to analyze as to sing.

PRAYER: Give me a heart, O God, for the rejoicing of others. Amen.

How do you understand God’s role and purpose in the conquest of the land?