I'm a little behind and just finished Joshua. What struck me most was the violence. The whole book is about an aggressive campaign to establish a territory for the national of Israel. It was an offensive, not a defensive, war. How would such a thing be viewed today? Granted it was ordained by God, and, ostensibly, these were bad people being slaughtered. But slaughtered they were. Wiped out. Men, women, children, sheep, goats... What would the SPCA or PETA say? (Just being facetious there.) Seriously though, it was very violent and much of it was without mercy. It's an odd thing to attribute to the God that we're typically taught about in Sunday school in America. The God we are taught is all about being nice to others, being peaceful, turning the other cheek, all that stuff.
The other thing that struck me was the common refrain of "be strong and courageous" that keeps coming back in Joshua. It's an inspiring word of encouragement to keep coming back to.
It is a little difficult to reconcile what you read in the OT with what Jesus said in the NT. Perhaps we can look at it as Jesus coming to fulfill the law and the prophets and that his coming was a turning point in the history of the Jewish people turned Christian.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be interesting to revisit some of these posts after we've hit the New Testament. We might have more insight. I sense some of these things and people pop up again. Balaam (the guy with the cute ass, haha) pops up again for sure. And we thought he was a third stringer.
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