Joshua 12: Conquered Kings
Thursday, April 4, 2019.
A re-post from Holy Week 2012.
This territory had belonged to the Hittites, the Amorites, Canaanites and others. A series of city-states falls, their kings are vanquished: Jericho, Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, and more. With a quick reading it might appear the subjugated are nameless, faceless peoples. If this is our impression, again we would be wrong.
This kind of struggle never comes without a cost, and it comes as part of the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 15. He was to have descendants that numbered as stars in the night sky, and these descendants were to inhabit a land that would be delivered with the help of God.
The twelve tribes use violence as they take over the mountains and foothills, deserts, slopes and rivers of this promised place. Several thousand years later, Jesus arrives to tell his people that this way of violence is over, that now they are to deliver another cheek to an attacker rather than another blow. He brings the strange message that rather than pray for our friends alone, we are to intercede for our enemies. We can see how bizarre this thinking must have seemed to a people who had won what they had through the spilling of blood. We can see how the message will seem strange to us today.
Our question on this Holy Wednesday is this . . . As we go through our days, moving toward the promises made to us by God, do we take care with how we move and why . . . and do we use Old Testament ways or New Testament thinking . . . do we resort to the weapons of violence, or do we use the tools of peace?
For more information on the many tribes cited in Genesis and Joshua, go to:http://biblos.com/ and search the dictionary, encyclopedia, atlas or other resources on this site.
Image from: http://heavenawaits.wordpress.com
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