Exile

The kingdom of Judah ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the brightest young people to Babylon. However, Jeremiah had predicted that the exile would last only 70 years, and Isaiah even predicted a king named Cyrus would be the one to return the Jews to their homeland. It turned out that both were exactly right.

The Jewish people spent 70 years in exile, and during that time much of the biblical account revolves around the life of a man named Daniel. Daniel was among the most gifted young kids who were deported. He so impressed the kings that he quickly joined the ranks of the most highly influential individuals in the kingdom.

The Babylonians were conquered by the Medes and they by the Persians, but Daniel remained a key leader regardless of kingdom changes–quite a testimony to the character of Daniel and the power of God.

Return to Jerusalem

After the 70 years were up, Cyrus, king of Persia decreed that the Jewish people should be given the right to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. He sent them out with his own support and financial resources. The two key leaders during this time were Ezra and Nehemiah. Their stories are recounted in the books named after them. The majority of Ezra’s leadership went toward the rebuilding of the temple while Nehemiah focused his leadership on the rebuilding of the walls around Jerusalem. Both of them, however, were instrumental in sparking the people to return to Jerusalem and to renew their spiritual commitment to God and the law of Moses in the process.

The years of their leadership were marked by spiritual revival and renewal.

Meanwhile in Persia

Not all the Jews returned to the land of Israel, however. Some stayed back in Persia for many reasons, and the book of Esther tells the story of how God used the bravery of a young woman (Esther) to rescue the Jews from potential genocide at the hands of the persian king. Nevertheless, after Esther, we lose track of the Jews who remained in Persia, and in fact, the story of Esther is chronologically the last event to be recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures.

To be sure, there are some Jewish writings that claim to be a record of the events bridging the gap between Esther and Jesus, and those writings seem to be historically accurate, but they never claimed to be Scripture and the Jews never treated them with the same kind of reverence and respect as they did the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Prophets

Placing the prophets chronologically in the midst of the historical narrative is at times difficult, and so I’ve reserved discussion of them until now. Additionally, discussing the purpose and message of the prophets is not an easy topic to address because the poetic and metaphorical contents of their message engender debate. Nevertheless, I’m going to deal with what I see are the biggest themes in the prophetic message.

Major themes

There are three categories of prophets in the canon of Hebrew Scripture. Those who operated during the time of the kings are called pre-exilic and those who operated after are called post exilic referring to the exile of the southern kingdom to Babylon.

Regardless of when they wrote, all the prophets spoke of God’s total supremacy over all things and our human need to be fully surrendered to him, but there were major differences in the other topics of prophecy depending on whether the prophet was writing before the exile or after.

Before the exile the prophets mainly focused on proclaiming the coming judgment on any nation that neglected God. Sometimes they would beg for repentance from the people. Sometimes they would speak of a future Day of the Lord when all things would be judged and justice would finally and fully come, but the majority of their prophecies were focused on the fact that God judges individuals and nations, and no one is exempt.

After the exile the prophets spoke mostly of the coming Day of the Lord, speaking of cataclysmic cosmic events and a wonderful time of peace and prosperity for God’s people. However, not all their words focused on the future. They continued to emphasize the need for God’s people to honor him and exercise justice.

Finally, a few of the prophets began to recognize in their prophecies a figure who would embody the fulfillment of all the other prophecies. They were looking for a king like David, a prophet like Moses, and a priest like Aaron. For these prophets, the prophet, priest, and king sometimes coalesced into one individual known as the Messiah which means “Anointed One” in Hebrew, and is translated “Christ” in Greek.

See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. — Isaiah 52:13

• The Jews forsake God and his laws for foreign gods and immorality.
• God forsakes the Jews to foreign governments and oppression.
• The people repent and return to God.
• God rescues them.

Once God began to establish kings in Israel, the cycle shifted quite significantly… for the worse. In the new world of the kings, the cycle went more like this:

• The king forsakes God and his laws.
• The people don’t care.
• Prophets arise to warn the king and the people.
• No one cares

That cycle will continue until the day when God sends foreign powers to invade and destroy the nation of Israel. Here are the details.

Solomon & the Temple

The problems really began with Solomon. Even though God had commanded the kings that they were not to take many wives, and even though Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, he failed to honor God and took for himself nearly 1000 sexual partners!

King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. — 1 Kings 11:1-6

Nevertheless, God still allowed Solomon to be incredibly wealthy and to construct the first temple to Israel’s God.

The temple was undeniably the single most important building in all of Israel, and understanding its construction is essential for understanding many other parts of the Bible. The key points are these:

• The temple was built completely without tools. The stones were cut at the quarry and brought to the construction site. No sound of any tool was to be heard at the construction site to honor the sanctity of the site.
• The temple was built with a logical progression of courtyards. Just inside the outer wall was the Court of the Gentiles, the only place on the face of the earth where a non Jew was allowed to be in the presence of the Almighty God. Inside another division was the Court of Women, followed by the Court of Men and then the Inner Court where only the priests could go.
• There was an altar in the Inner Court where animals were sacrificed.
• The actual temple sat in the west end of the Inner Court, and was itself divided into a region called the Holy Place where there were holy objects and where the priests could go perform services for the worship of God and a region called the Most Holy Place where only the high priest was allowed to go one day out of the year and place the blood of a sacrifice on top of the Ark of the Covenant.
• A curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.

The construction of the site clearly communicated to the people of Jerusalem that God was both right in their midst and still far away. Only special people could get close to God and how special you were determined how close you could go.

Rehoboam & Jeroboam

In addition to being a philanderer, Solomon didn’t do a very good job of raising his son. When his son Rehoboam came to power, he considered all the taxes his father had levied on the people for the construction of the temple and for his own lavish lifestyle and decided to be even more harsh to the people and raise taxes. The temple was completed, but Rehoboam in his greedy thirst for power and significance raised the taxes.

Because of his cruelty to the people God empowered Jeroboam to lead a revolt and ten tribes of Israel chose to follow Jeroboam instead of Rehoboam, but to honor the heritage of David, God left Rehoboam in charge of the remaining two tribes.

The Divided Kingdom

Of course Jeroboam was supposed to be a good king following God, but he wasn’t, and in fact the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom (known as Israel through the rest of the Old Testament) descended farther and farther into wickedness. From the time of Jeroboam on, there were repeated assassinations and usurpations of the throne and there was never a king in Israel who followed God.

In the Southern Kingdom (called Judah throughout the rest of the Old Testament), things didn’t fare much better, but in honor to his promise to David, God made it so that there was always a descendent of David on the throne. The Southern Kingdom didn’t suffer from the assassinations that the Northern Kingdom did.

The Prophets

Throughout the rest of the time of the Divided Kingdom, God sent prophets periodically to warn the kings of their wickedness and that God’s judgment was coming. The most significant of these prophets was the dynamic duo of Elijah and Elisha.

Elijah came on the scene when Ahab was king of Israel and Jezebel, his wife, was queen.

Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word.” — 1 Kings 17:1

After the famine in the land became severe, Elijah called Ahab to send his prophets of Baal (the fertility god of the Caananites and the most common rival deity to YHWH, the God of Abraham whose divine name throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is represented by the four letters YHWH and in English Bibles is most commonly written as LORD) to the top of Mount Carmel for a deity duel of sorts. Elijah challenged them to set up two altars, one to Baal and one to YHWH, prepared for sacrifice. They would take turns praying to their god and the one who answered with fire on the altar would be declared the true God.

After hours of prayer, Baal would not answer, but when Elijah prayed, God sent fire so hot that it burned up the sacrifice and the entire altar with it!

Elijah called Elisha to be his apprentice and when Elijah was miraculously taken to heaven without dying, Elisha was left with the mission to carry on where his master had left off. His own ministry was filled with miracles as well, and much of the book of 2 Kings is a record of the miraculous exploits of Elisha.

The Fall of Israel

In 721 B.C. God passed judgment on the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Shalmaneser king of Assyria conquered the land (now called Samaria) and deported every Israelite he didn’t kill. He resettled the land with foreigners and the deported Israelites disappeared from the pages of history. Their heritage was not preserved and they were completely assimilated into the Assyrian Empire never to be heard from again.

Revival in Judah

In 628 B.C. when Josiah king of Judah was only 18, he began a spiritual reformation in the land that culminated when the ancient books of Moses were discovered buried away in some back room of the temple. Upon reading these Books of the Law, Josiah was convicted of his own sin and the sin of the people and launched a full scale revival in the land.

Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses. — 2 Kings 23:25

The Fall of Jerusalem

Sadly, the reformation didn’t last, and in just a few generations after Josiah, God brought his judgment against the Southern Kingdom of Judah. In 606 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded Jerusalem. However, he deported only a portion of the population. He took for himself the best and the brightest of the land along with whatever valuables they could find. They destroyed the wall around the city as well as the temple to God. Zedekiah was the last king descended from David to sit on the throne in Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, there is much more to the story of the Bible and the ancient history of the Jews. In the next post in this thread, I’ll address what happened to the Jews according to the Bible after the deportation to Babylon began.

The key thing to remember for the rest of Jewish history is that the Jews lived in a constant cycle that went something like this:

• The Jews forsake God and his laws for foreign gods and immorality.
• God forsakes the Jews to foreign governments and oppression.
• The people repent and return to God.
• God rescues them.

The Time of the Judges

This cycle of rebellion is especially clear during the 400 years after Joshua and before the first king. It is known as the time of the Judges because there was no central leadership for the Hebrew people. Instead, God led the people through his law and through some key people known as the judges.

The Bible doesn’t give us an exhaustive list of all the judges during those 400 years, but the ones we are told about are significant figures. Here’s a summary of the most notable ones:

• Gideon was a humble man who never thought much of himself. He ambushed the Midianites according to a plan God had given him and conquered them with only 300 Israelite men.
• Deborah was a woman who tried to encourage Barak (a man) to lead the nation into war against their enemies, but Barak wouldn’t go unless she went too.
• Samson is the famous one who had been promised strength from God so long as he maintained a spiritually focused and somewhat ascetic life. He got cocky and hooked up with a foreign spy named Delilah who convinced him to reveal his secret (symbolized by uncut hair). However, at the end of his life, he dramatically pulled an entire building down on his captors killing himself in the process.

God Speaks Again

During the time of the Judges, God hadn’t been speaking much to people, but that changed with the coming of a man named Samuel. Samuel’s mother had promised that if God would bless her with a child, she would dedicate him to the service of the Lord.

God gave her a son, and she kept her promise. After he had been weaned, she took him to the High Priest, Eli, and gave him to the service of the Lord.

One night, God spoke audibly to Samuel, and that began the time of the last judge who was also a prophet.

During Samuel’s leadership, the people demanded a king. God allowed it, and Samuel poured oil on Saul, an act called anointing, to signify that he was the one God had chosen to be the next king. When Samuel anointed Saul, God also sent his Holy Spirit to come upon Saul and empower him for his job as king.

Saul’s time as king was rough, though. During his reign, the nation was consistently harrassed by the Philistines, but Saul never could do anything about it. Saul also simply refused to listen to Samuel and the messages from God that Samuel would deliver. It got so bad, that God actually removed His Spirit from Saul and allowed an evil spirit to come and torment Saul.

It was at this time when we first hear about David, the youngest son of Jesse.

David: A Man After God’s Own Heart

God told Samuel to go and anoint a new king. He had rejected Saul as king and told Samuel that the next king would be selected based on his internal character over any other quality. In fact, God said of David that he was “a man after God’s own heart.”

Immediately after David was anointed, God removed his Spirit from Saul and allowed an evil spirit to torment him. Then, in an ironic turn, David was chosen to be Saul’s musician because when David played his harp, the king’s suffering would be alleviated. While in the palace, David became fast friends with Saul’s son Jonathan and married Saul’s daughter Michal.

During one battle against the Philistines, Saul’s army was taunted by a 9 foot tall giant named Goliath. No one was willing to go one-on-one with him except David who before that moment had been only a shepherd. God helped him defeat Goliath, and the nation began to revere David.

Saul’s jealousy burned against David. He attempted to kill David, and David ran away. Then, for the majority of the rest of his reign, Saul went on a manhunt for David. Meanwhile, David continued to build a makeshift army of men completely loyal to him.

When David finally became king after Saul’s death, the nation flourished into an empire. David conquered the surrounding peoples and led the nation with integrity except for a couple exceptions. His biggest failing was when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of one of his best friends, and then conspired to kill the husband when he discovered the wife was pregnant.

David’s legacy as king boiled down to three things:

• David led the country to a level of military success it would never know again.
• Because of David’s faithfulness, God promised that he would always keep a descendant of David on the throne of His Kingdom.
• God said of David at the end of his life that he had been completely devoted to God throughout his life except for the one incident with Bathsheba.

Solomon

In a testament to the grace of God, Solomon, David’s second son with Bathsheba, became the next king. Solomon’s reign was one of extreme prosperity. David had conquered nations and signed treaties so that for most of Solomon’s reign tribute was paid to Israel from surrounding nations. On top of that, God made a promise to Solomon that he would be incredibly wise, rich, and long-lived. Finally, during Solomon’s reign, the construction of the First Temple was undertaken and completed.

Nothing existed except for God, and he decided when everything should begin. He created the world in a flash of light, and built it up piece by piece until it was exactly the way he wanted it, but despite its beauty and greatness, he noticed something was missing, so he created human beings.

God formed his crowning achievement from the dust of the earth and gave the first man and the first woman the first job—to be his representatives throughout the whole world, taking care of all that God had made. He also gave them their first true choice when he told them they were not to eat the fruit from one particular tree. However, disregarding God’s will, they ate it anyway.

The consequences for disobeying God were severe. They lost their innocence, they lost their place in paradise, they lost access to the tree of life and its sustaining power, but most of all, they lost the purity of relationship they had with each other and with God.

From that point on, history is a record of people struggling to have healthy relationships with each other, struggling to find their place in this world, struggling against sickness and death, and most of all struggling with the temptations to do their own thing and disregard God.

(The Bible does not shy away from telling us these struggles in all their graphic detail.)

Noah: Scrap it all and start over!

Adam and Eve had children together, and those children began to populate the earth, but the first two got in a fight over who was better at pleasing God. Cain couldn’t stand the fact that God was more pleased with Abel’s way of worship, so Cain became the first murderer. God banished Cain to be a wanderer, but his descendants were the first to develop cities and civilization.

In those early cities, people did whatever they wanted. They continued to live without regard for God. They became more and more evil. In fact, there was only one family line that maintained the knowledge of God, and by the time Noah was born, God was fed up. He destroyed all people with a great flood, but saved Noah, his family, and many animals by warning him in advance to build the largest sea-going vessel of all time.

When the flood subsided, God made a promise to Noah, that he would never bring flood the earth again. Additionally, he called Noah to a higher standard of living based on the simple fact that blood was sacred. No animal should be eaten with blood still in it, and no innocent human blood should be shed.

Noah’s descendants, however, soon forgot God’s commands to live in humble relationship with him and others. Instead, they tried to build a tower to the heavens to declare their own supremacy on the earth. God, again fed up with their disregard of him, simply caused them all to have different languages. Once they couldn’t communicate, they couldn’t work together, and they dispersed. After all, God had commanded them in the beginning to be his representatives throughout the whole earth and to take care of the whole world. As long as they stayed together in one place, they would only get more and more concerned with themselves and what they were doing. Getting their languages all mixed up was what they needed to finally begin the spread throughout the earth.

Abraham: A Third Beginning

As people began to spread throughout the earth, they continued to live their lives independently from the one who created them. They continued to disregard God, but God never gave up on them. Once again, he identified a single person with whom he could start over. God chose Abram (who later became known as Abraham), and made a “covenant” with him. God entered into a binding agreement with Abraham that was pretty one-sided.

God would bless Abraham with great wealth. God would give Abraham many descendants. God would give Abraham and his descendants a wonderfully fertile land to call their own. God would protect Abraham, and as if that weren’t enough, God would eventually use Abraham and his offspring to bless the entire world!

In return, Abraham had to follow God where he led, obey God’s clear commands, and be circumcised as a sign of the unique arrangement he had with God—each side would make specific sacrifices, but each side would receive great blessings. It would all start with Abraham’s offspring, so God claimed ownership over Abraham’s body.

Abraham proved to be the most faithful of all people up to that point. He had some major failings to be sure, but he developed a close relationship with God that empowered him to take great risks for God.

Abraham’s son Isaac had a son named Jacob, and God changed his name to Israel. He had 12 sons (and a number of daughters too), but two were his favorite. 10 of them ganged up on Joseph and sold him into slavery. He eventually ended up in Egypt. However, his faith in God caused him to be committed to integrity, and God blessed him with great insight as well. Before long, he ended up being the right-hand-man of the king (Pharaoh) of Egypt! In that position, he stockpiled food in preparation for a famine God warned them about.

When the famine came, many people came to Egypt for food, and Joseph’s family ended up moving there after Joseph’s brothers demonstrated their remorse for how they treated him when he was younger. Joseph wisely told them, “What you intended for evil, God meant for good.” It was because of their evil deed that Joseph ended up in Egypt, and it was because of Joseph that Egypt had so much food to go around. What they intended for evil, God meant for good.

Moses: Deliverance from Slavery

A new dynasty of Pharaoh’s came to the throne of Egypt, and they wanted to undo many of the things of the past. This included the nice treatment given to the people of Israel (the Hebrews). Soon, they were considered slaves of the nation and the Pharaoh’s demanded hard labor from them. It got so bad that eventually a Pharaoh ordered that all the Hebrew boys were to be killed to control the population growth of the Hebrews. God spared Moses as a baby by having the Pharaoh’s daughter adopt him as her own.

Moses was raised in the palace but soon became aware of the terrible way the Egyptians were treating his own people. One day, in a fit of rage, he killed an Egyptian taskmaster who was beating a Hebrew. Ashamed of his deed, he ran into the desert where he met a man who believed in the God who created all things. Moses stayed with Jethro, married one of his daughters and tended his sheep in the desert for 40 years when one day, God spoke to him.

God told Moses that it was time to rescue the Hebrews from their slavery and to fulfill his promise to Abraham about his descendents living in a fertile land they could call their own. With the power of God on his side, then, Moses returned to Egypt and demanded that Pharaoh let the Hebrews leave. Of course, Pharaoh refused, and God sent plague after plague on the people of Egypt until finally Pharaoh relented.

The last plague was different from the others, though. Most of the plagues involved some kind of terrible environmental catastrophe that could have been explained away somehow, but the final plague was undoubtedly supernatural. Every single firstborn male in the entire land of Egypt, including people and livestock, died. However, some were spared. Specifically, God told Moses that if anyone took the blood of a lamb and put it on the top and sides of their front doors, then he would “pass over” that house and spare those inside. Thus, the blood of a lamb was a shield of protection against death.

Pharaoh’s own son died that night, and countless Egyptian families lost loved ones as well. They wanted the Israelites out of there. In fact, they wanted so badly for them to leave, that they sent them off that night with food, supplies, and tons of Egyptian gold and silver.

That’s how, after 400 years of life in Egypt, many of them served in slavery, the Hebrews finally left. All 2 million of them headed out toward the Red Sea and the desert beyond. When they got to the Red Sea, God sent a violent wind to push back the waters and let them pass, but when Pharaoh, who changed his mind, tried to cross with his army, the sea returned to its place and drowned them all.

The Hebrews were completely safe in the desert of the Sinai Peninsula. While they were there in the desert, God led them with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He gave Moses wisdom to handle disputes that arose. He provided water in the most amazing ways, and he even gave them miraculous food. There were quail that flew through regularly for the people to kill and eat, and every morning the ground was covered with an edible white substance the people affectionately called “Manna” which meant, “What is it?”

Sinai: The Covenant

God had made a covenant with Adam and Eve—they were to be his representatives throughout the world, multiply, fill it up, and take care of it. God had made a covenant with Noah—God would never flood the world again, and people would consider all blood to be sacred. God had made a covenant with Abraham—God would bless, and Abraham would obey even to the point of making deeply personal sacrifices. Now, God was making a covenant that would be directly with all the people of Israel.

God had Moses lead the people to the mountain called Sinai, and he descended onto the mountain in a great dark cloud. It looked like a volcano about to erupt in smoke, ash and lava. The people were afraid to go near the mountain, and in fact, God told them not to touch it. Moses, however, was allowed to go up the mountain into the cloud, and it was there that he received the 10 Commandments for the first time.

God himself took two tablets of stone and carved the 10 Commandments onto the two tablets. Moses stayed on the mountain for 40 days and nights while God taught him other rules and laws for how this new society should function.

When Moses came down the mountain, however, he saw that Aaron, his brother, had taken the gold and silver given them by the Egyptians, had fashioned a statue of a calf, and all the people were having a worship party to honor the statue! Moses was disgusted. He threw down the tablets, breaking them to bits, he slaughtered many of the people in righteous anger, and he finally ground up the statue and put the powder into their drinking water. Many more died of illness from the water.

Moses returned to the mountain, where God gave him a second set of tablets, and confirmed once again the laws they were to follow with an added sense of urgency—the people were on thin ice with God. Nevertheless, God prescribed for the people a method by which they could always receive forgiveness for anything they had done and by which they could maintain a healthy relationship with the one who made them.

Their relationship with God would be based on three things, the Prophet, the Priest, and the Sacrificial System. The Prophet would spend time in God’s presence and hear his words for the people. Then he would speak to the people for God and let them know what God expected of them. The Sacrificial System would enable people to pay God back for the sins they had committed, to receive forgiveness from him, and to re-enact his saving grace when the angel of death passed over their homes back in Egypt. They would present an animal, perfect in every way, to the Priest who would kill it, spill its blood onto the altar, and then burn the carcass up. The blood was sacred, and the holiness of innocent blood was enough to wash away the sins of people and make them right again with God. The Priest was there to make sure everything was done the way God wanted it to, but more than that, he was the one who would take the blood from the sacrifice, and go into the presence of God himself to present the blood. It was an elaborate system, but the people knew clearly that their relationship with God was always based on the Prophet, the Priest, and the Sacrifice.

Aaron, despite his major mistake at the foot of Sinai, would be the first High Priest.

Kadesh: So Close, and Yet So Far

They soon reached the southern border of the land God had promised to Abraham a hundred generations before. Moses sent 12 spies northward to scope out the land, but when they came back, only two spies (Caleb and Joshua) actually believed God would help them take possession of the land. The others were too overwhelmed with the size and circumstances of the existing population, and spoke against heading into the land.

The people complained. No one wanted to go into the land God had promised, so God, once again angered by the rebelliousness of his people ordered them to spend another 40 years in the desert so all the rebellious people could die off and their children would be able to enter the land.

40 years later, though, Moses, Joshua, and Caleb were still alive and they brought the people back to the border of the land of promise. In one final speech to the people, Moses reminded them all of the amazing history of their relationship with God. Moses spoke of the promise to Abraham, the time in Egypt, the miraculous escape, the Laws of God, and the land before them. He prophesied of a day when God would raise up another prophet like himself, and then he handed the people over to their new leader, Joshua. Moses, however, went up onto a mountain overlooking the promised land. He died there, and God himself buried the body.

Joshua, down below, prepared to lead the people into the land they had been promised centuries before.

Joshua: Entering the Land

Of all the people who came out of Egypt, all had died in the desert. Joshua and Caleb were the only two who had seen the miracles of Egypt, endured the wanderings in the desert, and were going to enter the land promised to Abraham. Leading these hardhearted people was a daunting task for someone as old as Joshua, but at the beginning of his leadership, God spoke to him:

No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. — Joshua 1:5-6

With confidence that comes from knowing the presence of the Lord, Joshua led the people to invade the land of Canaan. God told them it was time to bring judgment on all the people who had been living in the land and worshiping other gods. He told his people to go throughout the land and completely eliminate all the people who were living there. It seems awfully vicious of God to ruthlessly kill so many people, but then again, this was only the second time since Noah’s Flood that God had brought judgment on a large group of people by killing them, and it was the only time that God told his people to go on the offensive against another group of people.

They first went up against Jericho, a city with a very formidable wall. In response to a message from God, Joshua led the people to march around the city and make a lot of noise for a week, and on the final day, they marched so much and made so much noise that the walls crumbled to the ground! Everything in the city was destroyed except the family of a former prostitute who had helped out the people of Israel because she feared God.

Aachan, however, stole some of the riches that he saw and hid them in his tent. For that disobedience, God did not help the Israelites in their next battle and they were soundly beaten. Aachan’s sin was then discovered, so he and his family were immediately stoned to death.

The rest of the conquest went pretty well under Joshua’s leadership. The land was divided into 12 units, and different family groups were given some of the land with a few exceptions. The descendents of Levi (Levites) were given the job of managing the religious system of the land, so as priests, they were given no land of their own. God himself would be their inheritance. Since the Levites had no land, Joseph’s descendents were split in two and each half-tribe was given a unit of land.

Once they entered the land and had gotten relatively settled, Joshua, at the end of his life, gathered the people together and once again reconfirmed the covenant they had with God to obey him and to receive his blessings. He culminated his speech with one of the most climactic sayings in the Bible:

“… choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” — Joshua 24:15

I’m not sure how this is going to work, so I’ll just get started.

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God bless.