Joshua fit the battle of Jericho

 Joshua fit the battle of Jericho 

from the Introduction to Bakker Thornhill’s commentary on Joshua (the latest in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2018, p. 4) —

 

 The Story So Far

Of all the people in all the world, God chose the sons and daughters of Abraham - and of Abraham’s son Isaac and of Isaac’s son - Jacob to be his people. And their enemies in the area that extended from the River Jordan to the Sea were his enemies, and none of the rest of the world mattered, not Asia or the Asians, not Africa south of the Sahara or those that lived there, not the continents across the Greater Sea, not the Mayans, not the Incans, not the Aztecs, nor any of the other tribes of the Americas, certainly not Europe, not the pale-skinned Europeans running brightly-painted, half-naked through their cold forests - none of these were of any account to God. They could tell their own stories, but they weren’t part of His story: he chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their sons and daughters forever to tell that.

     The story began with Abraham to whom God appeared, saying, “Leave this place behind. I’ll show you a better.” And Abraham did. True, things would go wrong, and Jacob and his sons and daughters would end up somewhere else until Moses rescued them. But Moses had married a Kenite woman, so he could only rescue God’s people, he could not lead them, into this better place. Under his leadership, then, they wandered for 40 years until Joshua led them into “the Promised Land.”

     Inconveniently, there were people already living there: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, among others. These needed to be cleared away - completely! So Joshua went to work on that. . . .

09.11.18