Joshua 4 - 6

Joshua — Steve Gregg

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Joshua 4 - 6

JoshuaSteve Gregg

This discussion unpacks the events of Joshua 4-6 and the importance of remembering the miracles of the past. The narrative includes details such as the circumcision of the Israelites and the destruction of Jericho. The speaker emphasizes the significance of obedience to God's commands, even when they may seem inconvenient or difficult. Overall, the discussion highlights the value of faith and trust in God's plan for His people.

Transcript

Coming now to Joshua chapter 4. It says, Now this lodging place ended up being Gilgal, three miles from the river. So these 12 men apparently carry these stones on their shoulders for three miles. Probably picked some pretty hardy gentlemen.

I mean, these were not, you know, stones like David would throw from a sling. These were stones like you build a monument from. They're not lightweight.

So these guys had to carry these stones for, well, maybe they had them on carts. It's hard to say. We don't know that they had them on their shoulders.

But they did have to take them to Gilgal and that's where they set them up. Then Joshua called the 12 men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe. Now, he had actually been told back in chapter 4 to select these 12 men.

In chapter 3, excuse me, verse 12. It says, Now therefore take for yourselves 12 men from the tribes of Israel, one man from every tribe. But it does not at that point say what it is they are being chosen for.

He tells them to pick out these men, but he doesn't in chapter 3 say what they're picked out for. It's here that they're told each one is to gather one rock out of the riverbed while the river is stopped up and while they're able to still be crossing it. And wander around in the riverbed before the water returns.

This way, of course, when they build a monument, it'll be a marvel. Whenever they see these stones, they say, you know, these stones were once in the middle of that river there. How'd that happen? Well, it had to happen by God drying up the river or else we couldn't have this monument standing.

These rocks could never have been retrieved if not for this miracle. So it was a memorial of the miracle. So verse five, Joshua said to them, cross over before the ark of the Lord, your God, into the midst of the Jordan and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come saying, What do these stones mean to you? Now, this is, as I say, presupposing that there will be a generation that doesn't see miracles and needs to be told about them.

This is something we just might take a moment to consider. You wouldn't need memorials like this if God was just going to keep doing miracles like this all the time and everyone's going to see them. You don't need to have, you know, memorials of the miracles that he did necessarily.

But the assumption is that God does miracles at special times, significant miracles, and then the generation that didn't see them has got to be told about them and has got to be reminded of them. Setting up a memorial was one way to get that conversation going with their children. Children say, those don't look like a natural configuration there.

How did these twelve stones get set up like this? Oh, we did that. Why? Well, those stones were in the middle of the Jordan. We crossed over the Jordan and God miraculously stopped the river and that's where these stones came from.

So, they become a way of transmitting information about a former deliverance, a former miracle, to a generation that didn't see it. And a lot of times people, when they see the miracles in the Bible, say, you know, that doesn't seem like reality because I haven't ever seen a miracle. I mean, when I talk to atheists, I've heard them say that kind of thing many times.

They say, well, in the Bible, I read about all these miracles. I've never seen a miracle. I usually say, I'm not sure I have either.

I mean, I might have. I've seen things that could possibly be miracles. I've seen answers to prayer, but I'm not really sure that I'm going to say that I've seen a miracle.

You know, not like where the sun stopped in the sky or where a dead man rose from the dead or where the laws of nature were clearly violated. I mean, I'm not saying they don't happen, but I'm not sure I could testify to having seen one. That doesn't in any way add or subtract from my belief that these miracles occurred because the Bible does not necessarily give me reason to believe that I should be seeing miracles all the time.

The Bible doesn't indicate that people saw miracles all the time in ancient times either. The Bible does not present a magical world where strange and unnatural things are continually going on. It may seem like it because those times where God is doing an abundance of miracles are the important times and they are the times that the narrative gives a lot of attention to.

It'll pass over several hundred years where there's no miracles to talk about a time where God is doing miracles because of something he's doing exceptional. When you consider you've got 4,000 years of history in the Old Testament and really just two periods of time essentially where there's a cluster of a lot of miracles. The first being the exodus and the conquest of the land, that is Moses and Joshua, and the other cluster of miracles being around Elijah and Elisha at a much later time, hundreds of years later.

Now there were miraculous or at least providential deliverances in the judges and in David's life and so forth, but not in the sense of what you could necessarily call a miracle. A boy killing a giant with a sling is a remarkable thing and we see God's hand in it, but no one can call that a miracle like the parting of the Red Sea. After all, a kid might be able to do that if he's really good with a sling.

Or it could even be just dumb luck. No one can call it absolutely against the laws of nature, which a miracle is. And the atheist is right in that respect.

He probably never has seen a miracle and probably I haven't either and that would almost be agreeable, I mean not almost, it would be entirely agreeable with what the Bible teaches me to expect. It doesn't teach me to expect that the world is full of miracles. And some Christians think, well now that those Holy Spirits come and you read about miraculous things happening in the gospel and Acts, maybe someone could tell those people we're recording in here.

We sometimes read in the gospel and Acts about all the miracles done and we say, well that should be happening today. Well, it should be if God wants it to be, but just because it happened at that time doesn't mean necessarily that it's expected to happen at all times. It happened that there were a lot of miracles in the time of Moses because of the significant deliverance.

It happened in the days of Elijah and Elisha because of the significant warning God was giving to Israel that it was about to be destroyed. And he was giving them unmistakable evidence that he was speaking to them through the miraculous. It happened in the establishment of the new covenant with the Messiah and the apostolic age.

And it has happened at other times since. I'm not arguing that miracles cease, that's far from it. I believe miracles are very likely, very arguably happening at this very day in some places.

They're not happening in front of my eyes, but that doesn't mean they're not happening anywhere. I have seen people healed in answer to prayer. Was it a miracle? I could say so if that's how I'm disposed.

Someone else could say, no, it would have gotten well anyway. But what I'm saying is the kinds of miracles where dead people rise and someone walks on water and virgins get pregnant and things like that. Those are against the laws of nature.

Those don't happen all the time in the Bible either. They happen on rare occasions. And most of us have to live with the report about it.

We have to live without seeing the miracles. And that's no doubt why Jesus said to Thomas, when he saw the proof of the resurrection, he said, you believe because you've seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. Makes it sound almost like the people who haven't seen, but who believe are to be more commended because their faith is perhaps more purely trust in God rather than trust in evidence.

Anyway, the point is this presupposes that their children will need to be told about the miracle, which means their children probably won't be seeing the same things themselves. So what they'll see is a pile of stones instead. But that'll be sufficient to get the conversation going so they can pass on the information to their children.

So in verse 60 said that when your children ask you, what do these stones mean to you? Verse seven says, Then you shall answer them at the waters of the Jordan that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. When it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off and these stones shall be for memorial to the children of Israel forever. And the children of Israel did so just as Joshua commanded and took up 12 stones from the midst of the Jordan as the Lord had spoken to Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel and carried them over with them to the place where they live and laid them down there.

Then Joshua set up the 12 stones in the midst of the Jordan in the place where the feet of the priests who bore the Ark of the Covenant stood and they are there to this day. Now, this verse and another one a little later like it sounds by its wording as if it's saying that a memorial was actually built not only at Gilgal, but right in the middle of the river. But scholars mostly don't believe that's what it's saying because apparently the Hebrew text is a bit ambiguous and apparently what it can mean is not that he set up the stones in the middle of the river, but he set up the stones which came from the middle of the river.

The way it's worded here sounds like the monument was erected in the middle of the river, which would then, of course, after be covered with water never seen by anybody. But rather that when it says he's cut up the stones in the middle of the river, it should be understood sort of like the stones which were acquired in the middle of the river and they were set up at Gilgal. So the priests who bore the Ark stood in the midst of the Jordan until everything was finished that the Lord had commanded Joshua to speak to the people, according to all that Moses had commanded Joshua and the people hurried and crossed over.

Then it came to pass when all the people had completely crossed over that the Ark of the Lord and the priests crossed over in the presence of the people and the men of Reuben, the men of Gad, the half covered Manasseh cross over arms before the children of Israel as Moses had spoken to them about forty thousand prepared for war crossed over before the Lord for battle to the plains of Jericho. On that day, the Lord exalted Joshua in the sight of Israel and others. They saw that he truly had the mantle of Moses upon him because God did the same thing, you know, to honor Joshua's mission as he did to honor Moses mission by parting the waters and they feared him as they had feared Moses all the days of his life.

Now, I might just point out, it says that Reuben Gad and the half covered Manasseh sent forty thousand soldiers ahead of the Ark. They provided the front group of soldiers ahead of all the other children of Israel. They had promised to do that.

They had said to Moses earlier, if you'll let us own these lands over here on the east side of Jordan, then we will go ahead of the children of Israel, fight with them, help them acquire their lands. And then when it's all done and the dust is settled, we'll go back to our families over here. We'll leave our children in cattle.

Now, someone's mentioned the other day, wonder when they left their children and their wives and their cattle on the other side of the Jordan, the whole army went over the river. They left their families, but for six years or something like that, vulnerable to raiders. And I mean, these nomadic raiders to come through.

I wouldn't want my women and children, you know, unguarded in an area like they were at. But notice back in numbers, it said that the tribes of Reuben and Gad and Manasseh had forty three thousand men who were able to be armed for battle. And here we read forty thousand of them went across the river.

They may have left three thousand of them behind to watch the women and children. It's very possible because there were more armed men or more men of war in these tribes than we find today. Crossing over and it would only make sense that they might leave a small, you know, segment of their armed men to to watch over the stock, the cattle and the families at home.

Verse 15, Then the Lord spoke to Joshua saying, Command the priests who bear the ark of the testimony come up from the Jordan. So they're out in the river waiting for everyone to pass through and they're the last to leave. Joshua, therefore, commanded the priest saying, Come up from the Jordan.

And it came to pass when the priest who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord had come up from the midst of the Jordan and the souls of the priest's feet touched the dry land that the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks as before. Now, the people came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, which for the Jewish sacred calendar was the day you're supposed to select the lambs for the Passover, the first month of the or Nissan. As it was called alternately was established as such as the first month, 40 years earlier because the exodus had occurred in that month.

So this is 40 years to the month. Well, essentially, almost to the day from the exodus. Four days from this would be essentially, you know, 40 years to the day from the first Passover.

And so the Passover was four days away. And under the law in Exodus 12, they were supposed to select the lambs for the Passover. Select a lamb on the 10th day of the month and examine it for days to make sure it's a perfect lamb.

And then they slayed on the 14th day, which is the Passover. So they're passing over into the in the Canaan on the day that they would be selecting lambs. Now, in the 40 years they wanted in the wilderness, they had livestock with them.

We know because they had were commanded to offer sacrifices at the tabernacle on a regular basis. Goats and lambs and bulls. So they had livestock.

You might remember that when they were in the wilderness wandering, they complained that the food was sparse. And that's why God gave them man. And even even when he gave them manna, they complained that that was too bland.

And they said, you know, we want meat to eat. And you think, well, didn't they have all these livestock? They did. In fact, on one occasion, God said to Moses, I'm going to give all these people meat to eat tomorrow.

And most of what are we going to kill all the livestock? In other words, the livestock was there. But the idea of killing it didn't make sense. They needed that to start their farms and ranches.

I mean, they could easily have eaten all their livestock within a few days time and all liked it if they wanted to. There were three million of them. They could have used up their livestock, but then they wouldn't have any green stock or sacrifices to offer.

So they avoided eating their animals during the 40 years. But it passed over. You eat a lamb.

And so they and actually we're going to find the manna stopped also about this time in a few days. So they're going to start eating differently. They're going to eat livestock.

They can start breeding it. And they're going to eat also crops that were already growing at that particular season in the land that they're conquering. So they're not going to need the manna anymore.

But they now, I assume, although it doesn't say so, since this is the 10th day of the first month, they were not only crossing the Jordan, but they also would have to select the lambs that would in four days time be offered as Passover. Verse 20. And those 12 stones which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal.

Then he spoke to the children of Israel, saying, When your children ask your fathers in times to come, ask their fathers in times to come, saying, What are these stones? Then you shall let your children know, saying, Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord, your God, dried up the waters of this Jordan before you until you had crossed over as the Lord, your God, did to the Red Sea, which he dried up before us until we had crossed over. That all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty.

And you may fear the Lord, your God, forever. So this crossing is even likened to the crossing of the Red Sea explicitly. And there's quite a lot of attention given in this chapter to these stones and this monument.

Not an awful lot happens except the finishing of the crossing of the sea in this chapter. But the emphasis seems to be primarily on the gathering of the stones and the building of that monument. So we come to chapter five.

So it was when all the kings of the Amorites who were on the west side of the Jordan, the side that was being invaded. And all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel until we had crossed over, that their heart melted and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel. This is, of course, a Hebraism.

Their heart melted. There was no spirit in them. It took away all their courage.

Essentially, they had no spirit to resist. They had no courage. They were just in despair because they saw that supernatural assistance was on the side of their enemies.

At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives for yourself and circumcise the sons of Israel again the second time. Now, this isn't like they get a second circumcision. That would really be unpopular.

I'm sure it was unpopular enough, but if they were already circumcised, they'd say, hey, this is really unnecessary, isn't it? But, yeah, not much left. But they had obviously neglected circumcision. These were uncircumcised generation of Jews.

Now, God had told, or of Israelites, God had told Abraham when he instituted circumcision as a law or a rule for his offspring in Genesis 17, he said, any of your offspring who are uncircumcised will be cut off from the people. So, the neglect of circumcision was not something that someone should do lightly. If you don't circumcise your son on the eighth day, you're basically saying, we don't care about being part of the people of God, part of the people of Israel.

However, it would appear to be just not so much out of direct rebellion of that sort, but just out of neglect that while they're wandering through the wilderness, they had been having babies that hadn't been circumcised. So, we have a whole new generation here who are uncircumcised. And we've got to get that cleared up before you go to battle.

You can't have something so, some glaring area of disobedience to God in your life when you're about ready to confront the enemy. You need God on your side 100% and you can't be compromised. And so, being uncircumcised was clearly a compromise.

So, Joshua made Flint knives for himself and circumcised the sons of Israel at the Hill of the Foreskins. The Hill of the Foreskins in Hebrew is Gibiath Haaraloth. It means Hill of the Foreskins.

And it's not clear whether there was a hill that was called that. Unlikely. I mean, unlikely they happened to do this at a hill that already had the name Hill of the Foreskins.

That would be very coincidental. It'd be unusual to find a hill by that name anyway. So, so either it was a hill that they forever afterward referred to because that's where the Foreskins were deposited.

Or it's not even clear whether it was a hill composed of foreskin. You know, that many, you know, quarter of a million or maybe a million, as many as a million foreskins could, I don't know how many there were, but it certainly would make a considerable hill. Definitely a strange thing to think about.

And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. Now, we shouldn't think that Joshua went around with a knife and did all this himself. He, it was done under his command and under his supervision.

Therefore it said Joshua did it. And this is a manner of speaking we'll find throughout the whole Bible. Sometimes it is something, certain actions attributed to somebody, but they didn't do it themselves.

Like, like when the Bible says the Jews crucified Christ. Frequently it says that. It says that in Acts chapter 2. It says it in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. It says that other places that the Jews crucified Christ.

Well, the Jews didn't crucify anyone. The Romans did that. The Jews didn't put any nails in Jesus.

The Roman soldiers did that. But they did it at the instigation of the Jews, of the Sanhedrin. And so it's not uncommon at all in the Bible or even frankly in modern English to speak that way.

What is done under the orders of somebody is said to be their action. We read, for example, in one gospel, Matthew, that a centurion came to Jesus and asked Jesus to heal his sick servant. But in Luke's gospel, we read that the centurion never did.

But messengers came from the centurion asking Jesus to go and heal his servant. So, sometimes there's a contradiction. One tells us that messengers came from the centurion and asked Jesus to heal the guy's servant.

But in Luke's version, it looks like Jesus and the centurion never met each other face to face. But in Matthew, it's almost like there's a direct conversation going on between the guys. Because what's done on behalf of him, it can be said in a more compressed narrative to be said to be his action, his request.

He requested it through servants. And that's the way often we talk. Here, it says Joshua circumcised all these people.

I doubt that he was doing all the work, but it was done through his command. For all the people who came out of Egypt, verse 5, had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness on the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised. For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the people who were men of war who came out of Egypt were consumed.

That just means they died. Because they did not obey the voice of the Lord, to whom the Lord swore that he would not show them the land of the Lord, which the Lord had sworn to their fathers, that he would give us a land flowing with milk and honey. By the way, this expression, a land flowing with milk and honey, was first used, I believe, at the burning bush when God told Moses that the land he's taking the Israelites out of Egypt to go to is a land flowing with milk and honey.

The term is used about 15 times in the Old Testament. It's actually a term that's very well known, even in culture, not necessarily always referring to Israel. But a land flowing with milk and honey is sort of an idiom that we would use to speak of a prosperous land.

But the term means something. Obviously, it's not literal. And we can even take a familiar term like this just as an illustration of how much we take for granted non-literal language without realizing that we're doing so.

The Bible uses non-literal language all the time. You would not walk into Canaan and see the rivers flowing with milk and honey or milk and honey flowing down out of the springs or whatever. To say it's flowing with milk and honey is a poetic way of saying there's a lot of grazing for cattle.

You can get a lot of milk out of cattle and the land will support a lot of cattle. And honey? Well, of course, that's made by bees. Bees make a lot of honey when there's a lot of plant life again.

So the idea is the land is very productive of grass, of flowering plants, and therefore can produce milk and honey for you through your livestock and through the wild, the nature of the bees and so forth. But the expression flowing with milk and honey, I mean, if you take it literally, we realize that that wasn't the way it should be understood, that it wasn't literally flowing with milk and honey, but it's a common expression for this land. Then Joshua circumcised their sons whom he raised up in their place, for they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way.

There's a fair bit of repetition in the narrative at this point. So it was when they had finished circumcising all the people that they stayed in their places in the camp until they were healed. Now, I don't think probably anyone in this room has ever been circumcised as an adult.

Many of us may have been circumcised as infants, as was the custom when I was born. They just kind of routinely just circumcised baby boys when they're born. That's become more of a controversial practice in our time.

And many people argue that's a horrible, child abusive kind of thing to do. And I can see why they'd say that. I was present for my son's, my first son's circumcision.

I wouldn't be there for my second one. It was not a pretty thing. And I can see why people who didn't see any compelling reason to do it would see it as nothing else but torture of a child.

But it was for Israel. It's a sign of their obedience to God. And in modern times, when people are supportive of it and do it, as we did with our children and as my parents did with their children, it was because it's considered to be hygienically advantageous.

That is disputed even now by many people. So there's quite a controversy over circumcision. In fact, there's even certain political special interest groups that are trying to outlaw circumcision even for religious purposes.

I heard that on the news talk just a week or two ago. That there's political pressure groups that see their whole purpose is to ban circumcision as a practice. Of course, if they did that and gave no religious exemption, then that would be almost like when Antiochus Epiphanes wouldn't let the Jews circumcise or keep Sabbath or do anything that was distinctive of their religion.

Now, of course, I'm not sympathetic with the Jewish religion because it is defunct. But it would certainly be a violation of freedom of the exercise of religion if it was outlawed today. But it is an extremely painful practice.

I think it's even more painful for adults than for eight-day-old babies. And there's a reason for saying that. Because at eight days old, a human baby has the highest level in his blood of vitamin K. Which is, it promotes healing and recovery.

And even some say, increases tolerance to pain. High levels of vitamin K. And babies naturally have the highest level in their lifetime of vitamin K on the eighth day of their life. Not a day before or day after.

So, that's when God told people to circumcise their babies. But they didn't do it. So, you don't do it at the advantageous time when God said to do it.

You have to do it at a time much less advantageous. Delayed obedience sometimes is more painful than obedience would have been in a timely fashion. Now, the neglect of circumcision, we see in an earlier story.

In Exodus chapter 4, Moses also had neglected to circumcise his son. And when he was called to go from Midian to Egypt and confront Pharaoh. Before he was to confront Pharaoh, he had to get this matter cleared up in his family too.

You might remember that very strange, short passage in Exodus 4. Maybe we can look at it. Because I would just allude to it, except it's so central. I hear people ask about it all the time because it's so confusing to people.

In Exodus chapter 4, verses 24 through 26. After God had met Moses at the burning bush and had commissioned to go face Pharaoh. We read that Moses now with his wife and son are traveling to Egypt to do just what God said to do.

And strangely, in verse 24, it says it came to pass on the way at the encampment that the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah, who is his wife, took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses feet and said, surely you are a husband of blood to me. So God let him go.

Then she said, you're a husband of blood because of the circumcision. As it turns out, Moses at this point sent her home to her father and she didn't make the rest of the trip with him. There was a bit of a problem in their marriage over this.

Now, why did this happen? This is very strange. It's one of the strangest stories. People are always, when they read this, they say, huh, what's that? And I get a question about that all the time.

I think the way to understand what's going on here is that Moses is now, after 40 years of tending sheep in a foreign land. Midian sent back to his native land, Egypt, to confront Pharaoh and to be God's agent and God's spokesman. But he's got an area of continuing disobedience in his life, namely that he was commanded by God, like all Israelites, to circumcise his son and his son.

Now, we don't know how old his son was at this point. It was certainly well past eight days and had been neglected. And God, when it says God sought to kill him, we don't know what that really means.

God could easily kill him in an instant if he wanted to. So God wasn't really attempting to kill him, but as it were, was engaged in something that would have killed him had it not been resolved in the way it was. Perhaps he got very, very sick and that was recognized as a judgment of God.

And God was about ready to kill him if he didn't do the right thing. Or maybe God appeared like he did to wrestle with Jacob. Maybe God appeared in a human form and was fighting with Moses in a battle that could have been a life and death struggle.

We don't know how that looked, that God sought to kill him. But we know that it looked like something because the poor saw what was going on. She knew what it was about intuitively and she knew it was about the circumcision of her son.

So she circumcised the son and relieved the situation. But she registered her complaint about it. She wasn't happy about it.

And it's almost like she blamed Moses for it. You're a bloody husband to me. Like it was his fault? But you see, you can read between the lines here.

Apparently, Zipporah and Moses had had some disagreements about this earlier. It seemed like it was a bone of contention between them, which is why she would act like it was his fault that she finally caved in and circumcised her son. It's almost certain that Moses, when the son was born, said, Hey, we're going to have to circumcise this baby on the eighth day.

And she said, You know, I can do that to my baby. And Moses, we're told in Numbers, is the meekest man in all the earth. Too meek at times.

He submitted even to his wife and he didn't circumcise the child. It may be that he brought it up on other occasions. Honey, I think we should certainly... No, and they may have even argued about it.

We don't know whether they argued, but we know they had a difference of opinion about it. And it wasn't, you know, there was some undercurrent of division between them over this matter. And when she saw and understood what was going on, that Moses was, in fact, going to die if the baby wasn't circumcised.

She knew instantly. I think her conscience wasn't all that clear about having resisted it. And so she finally gives in.

But she does so protesting, angrily. Okay, you got what you want. You're a bloody husband to me.

Well, that was apparently the end of their relationship. We don't see her again until, oh, after the Exodus in chapter 18 of Exodus, when she comes with her father to visit Moses. But anyway, that's the other occasion.

Of course, one of the key transition points in Israel's life where there had been a neglect in the Arab circumcision. By the way, both stories are the only stories in the Bible that use the word flint. Both of them speak in the Hebrew of a flint knife.

Flint was a very hard stone. It's abundant in that region. This was the Bronze Age.

They could have had bronze knives, but probably if they wandered through the wilderness, they didn't have smelting and, you know, metal working equipment and foundries and so forth. So they, it was easier to just take a very hard substance like flint and sharpen it into a knife. So these two times of circumcision are both said to be done by flint knives.

And that's the only time flint is mentioned in the Bible. Not that that's highly significant to my knowledge. I don't think it is.

But they, after they were circumcised, they had to wait until they were healed. How long does that take? Well, I don't know how long it takes, but apparently three days isn't quite long enough. Because we have a story in Genesis of a whole town of men, Shechem, being circumcised.

And three days later, they're still hurting so bad they can't defend themselves against two men who come and slay them all. It says, while they're still hurting, Simeon and Levi went into the town with their swords and they killed the whole population of men because the men had been circumcised three days earlier. They couldn't defend themselves.

Think of how vulnerable this made the Israelites. The whole male population, they've now invaded a foreign territory. Why didn't they do it while they were safely on the other side of Jordan and wait till they recovered and then make the invasion? God leads them to invade and put themselves in harm's way and then incapacitate themselves for several days so that they couldn't even defend themselves if they were attacked.

What has God up to here? Well, it's clear that God wanted to get across to them that they got to depend on him, not on themselves. He puts them right in the battle zone and then says, OK, now circumcise yourselves so that you could not possibly defend yourselves if you were attacked by the enemies that are only a few miles away. But of course, verse one of this chapter says that all the kings of the Canaanites were terrified and it was the fear of the Lord that God put in those peoples that defend Israel.

Same thing after Stephen and Levi had slaughtered all the men of Shechem. It says the Lord put the fear of the Lord in the nations around us so they didn't attack back. They didn't fight back against Jacob's family.

So, I think that's kind of interesting that God would put them in that vulnerable position for several days right in the shadow of one of their enemy's territories of Jericho. Now, then the Lord, verse 9, said to Joshua, This day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Therefore, the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day, which apparently means something like rolling.

And the fact that God actually made them do this in a situation which, like by common sense, they thought to be a very risky, dangerous place to be doing this kind of thing, circumcise yourself in enemy territory. It just shows God's priorities. You know, even more than national security, God wanted them to be obedient to him.

In fact, it makes it very clear that they had to be obedient to him before they could make even their first attack. And it just places a high, shows a high priority that God places on obedience in this matter. Now, the children of Israel camped in Gilgal and kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho.

And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after the Passover, unleavened bread and parts grain on the very same day, probably from crops that were already growing that others had planted. You know, the Canaanites grew their food there, so they're now taking the territory, they're taking the food too. And so they now can take wheat and things like that.

They don't have to have manna anymore. So, verse 12 says, Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land. And the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year.

And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a man stood opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, Are you for us or for our adversaries? Now, when you're a general of an army and your men are incapacitated by being circumcised, of course, by the Passover, maybe they weren't. That was four days later, so maybe they weren't incapacitated.

But you see a stranger, probably a rather foreboding looking stranger with a sword drawn, which means he means business. He's not there to just come and negotiate. He's ready for war.

You wonder, you know, are you here to give us some trouble? Are you here to volunteer your services on our side? Joshua goes out to meet this person, not knowing who it is. For all he knows, it's just a fierce warrior, either coming to their aid or coming to challenge them. He says, Are you for us or for our adversaries? And the answer was no.

But as commander of the army of the Lord, I've come now. I'm not necessarily for you or for your adversaries. I'm for the Lord.

I'm the commander of the Lord's armies. Whoever the Lord orders me to fight for, I'll fight for. It's interesting.

He didn't say, Yeah, I'm on your side because I'm the commander of the Lord's armies. And God's always on your side. Well, God was on their side at the moment, but God's always on his own side.

And Israel wasn't always at later dates. In fact, when they attacked Ai, God wasn't on their side because there was sin in the camp. So they couldn't count on the captain of the Lord's host always being on their side.

It depended on them. It depended on their obedience to God. The commander of the Lord's host is on God's side.

And so he says, Are you on our side or our adversaries? Neither, necessarily. I'm on God's side. I command God's armies.

Now, who is this commander of the Lord's armies? It could be an angel, possibly. In Revelation chapter 12, verses 7 through 9, we read about a war in heaven where Michael and his angels are fighting a war against the dragon and his angels. Certainly the Lord's hosts, we might assume, are the angels.

And the commander of the angels, at least in Revelation, is Michael, the archangel. But most Christians believe that this commander of the Lord's host is actually more elevated than an angel. Because it says, Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his servant? Now, my Lord is that an I, which just means my, it's a term of respect that many men would say to other men who are their superiors.

Calling him my Lord doesn't mean he recognizes him as God. But falling down and worshiping him does seem to give that impression. In Revelation chapter 19, John, at one point, was overwhelmed by what was being shown to him.

And he says he fell down and worshiped before the angel that was showing him his face. And the angel said, Get up. Don't do that.

I'm an angel. I'm not an angel. I'm one of your brethren.

He says, You worship God. Worshiping angels isn't OK. You're not allowed to do that.

But this commander was worshipped by Joshua and didn't seem to rebuke him for it. Which may mean that this commander was a worthy object of worship and therefore would have to be God. Now, most Christian commentators believe that this was Christ in a pre-incarnate appearance, like many others.

But we call it theophany. Technically, the word theophany means an appearance of God. There's another word, a Christophany, which means an appearance of Christ.

And most Christians tend to think that theophanies in the Old Testament, appearances of God in a human-like form, are actually Christophanies. That it's not God the Father, but Christ who is being seen here, of course, before his actual birth and death. The difference between a theophany like this and the actual incarnation would be that the incarnation was him coming through a human family line through a somewhat normal process.

Not entirely, because there's a miraculous conception, but he goes through a gestation. He has human nature. He has a birth, a life, and a death like any man would.

Whereas in a theophany, presumably, this is just a momentary appearance in a human form. God appears, does what he's here to do, and then disappears. He doesn't go through a lifetime.

He's not born somewhere and dies somewhere. And that's even what it says about Melchizedek, who I personally think was a theophany. There are people who have a different opinion than that.

But it says of Melchizedek, he had no beginning of days or end of life, no father, mother, no genealogy. And while many people simply think that means there's no record of his father, mother, or his birth or his death, I'm going to take the writer of Hebrews for what he's saying. He says the man had no beginning of days or end of days.

He had no father or mother. That's what a theophany would be. He looks like a man, but he doesn't have human history.

He's not living a human life. He's in a human form, but he's just here for the moment. He's just here for this encounter.

Then he won't be here anymore. It's an appearance of God or appearance of Christ momentarily. We might consider the incarnation, when Jesus actually became a human being, as a prolonged theophany, like for a lifetime.

But it was, of course, unique in that he actually had human nature, not just a human appearance. He actually became a man. Here, he's probably not really a man.

He's called a man, as angels also are called men when they appear, because they appear like men, but they're not human men. And so Joshua falls on his face before him, and the commander of the Lord's army says to Joshua, take your sandal off your foot for the place where you stand is holy. And Joshua did so.

Now, this also would seem to point in the direction of this commander of the Lord's host as being God, because this is exactly what God had told Moses when Moses was in the presence of the burning bush, where God was. God appeared to Moses and spoke to him, and the presence of God made that spot a holy place. And so he said, take off your feet.

You take off shoes off your feet. And Joshua told the same thing, probably because he, too, is in the presence of God. And I think that's how we should best understand this.

So as Joshua is just entering the land, he encounters this heavenly messenger. In the next chapter, the Lord speaks to Joshua in verse two and may well be speaking through this commander or not. We're not told.

The Lord had spoken to Joshua earlier in chapter one without appearing in this form, apparently. But the appearance of the commander of the Lord's host here may have just been momentary. May have just said, I'm here so you can see me and know I'm around.

You won't see me anymore, but I'm here. And the Lord's armies are working on your side. So when you see the walls of Jericho come down soon, you'll know that it wasn't the strength of your voice was shouting that, you know, and the sound waves that knock it down.

It's the Lord's armies did it. You just can't see that. And I'm just here to introduce myself.

You know, I'm here leading God's real armies. You think Israel is the armies of the Lord. Now he's got bigger armies than that.

Tougher armies than that. Remember, Jesus, his disciples wanted to be his army. At least one of them did.

When Jesus was arrested, Peter pulls out his sword and tries to defend Jesus. And Jesus said, who are you? I could call twelve legions of angels. In other words, I'm the commander for the Lord's hosts.

They've come and they've come and do whatever I tell them to do. So I don't need your swords. Thank you.

And in the conquest of Jericho, although although at later times, God did make use of Israel's swords in the conquest of Canaan in Jericho, the walls were brought down supernaturally in order to show that really it's not by might nor by power, but by God's spirit, by God's intervention, that they were going to win their battles. And so chapter six says, Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel. They weren't coming and going and doing normal business.

They were prepared to be besieged by their enemies, Israel. None went out, none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, See, I have given Jericho into your hand.

It's king and the mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all you men of war. You should go all around the city once.

This you should do six days. That is six days or they would march on one time. How long would that take? What Jericho is much smaller than you might picture it.

Although the walls were tall, they say the walls were like 200 feet tall. It's like a 20 story building tall. But the actual area covered was only seven acres.

That seems really small to me. I own this six acre homestead in Idaho, and it was not, didn't seem very big to me. The whole city, seven acres.

They say that the circumference around it was probably about half a mile. You could walk around it in 10 minutes. You know, of course, if you're out from some distance, it's a bigger circumference you're making, but still it wouldn't take very long each day to go out and walk around the city one time.

In fact, it wouldn't be difficult at all. On the seventh day to walk around it seven times, it still would be done before lunchtime. It was not really very large.

And so they would have gone and walk around it for the first six days, one time around the city each day. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the ark. But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times.

And the priests shall blow the trumpets. So all together that week, they marched around it 13 times. Six times the first six days and seven times the seventh day.

And then they said they'll blow the trumpets of the ram's horn. This is the shofar. This is the most commonly mentioned musical instrument in the Old Testament.

But it's actually not much of a musical instrument. The shofar is more of a noise maker than a music maker. Shofar, if you've ever heard one, because there's this fascination with all things Jewish in certain sectors of the body of Christ these days.

I've been placed as where Christians bring shofars to the worship service. And I wish they hadn't. Got a long ram's horn stretched out and they blow it and it's just noise.

It's not, it doesn't make music. You know, you can maybe get two or three notes out of it. But I doubt if you can control what notes they're going to be.

It's not like playing a musical instrument. It's more of a signal horn. It's for gathering the troops or for getting attention is what it's about.

And these are the ram's horn trumpets, so-called the shofar. It says in verse five, you should come to pass when they make a long blast with the shofar. And when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout this on the seventh day after the seventh circuit around the city, then the wall of the city will fall down flat and the people should go up every man straight before him.

That is, they'll invade the city once the walls are down. Then Joshua, the son of none called the priests and said to them, take up the Ark of the Covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Ark of the Lord. And he said to the people, proceed and march around the city and let him who is armed advance before the Ark of the Lord.

Now there's a lot of sevens here. This is going to take seven days. There's seven priests with seven horns and they're going to march around seven times the seventh day, almost like the book of Revelation that's interwoven with all kinds of sevens, sevens, seven trumpets, seven vials.

But the seven trumpets is something I wanted to mention that in Revelation, a lot of the imagery is borrowed from Old Testament stories, Old Testament passages and. The judgment upon God's victim in Revelation is accomplished, at least in part with the sounding of seven trumpets by seven angels, almost certainly an echo of this story here where the people of God conquered their enemies or the enemy's city fell because of seven trumpets blown. So in Revelation, chapter seven through ten, we have the, or through eleven, we have the sounding of seven trumpets that bring about the fall of God's enemy, not an actual city, perhaps, perhaps the whole world.

But the point is that the destruction is likened to the destruction of Jericho in Revelation. Also, by the way, there's similarities to Sodom and Babylon and other things in Revelation. Old stories from the Old Testament are echoed a lot in the book of Revelation in judgment prophecies.

Here, the seven trumpets probably provide the original imagery for the seven trumpets in Revelation. Verse eight, so it was when Joshua had spoken to the people that the seven priests bearing the seven trumpets of ram's horns before the Lord advanced and blew the trumpets and the ark of the covenant of the Lord followed them. And the armed men went before the priests who blew the trumpets and the rear guard came after the ark while the priests continued blowing the trumpets.

Now, Joshua had commanded the people saying, you shall not shout or make any noise with your voice, nor shall a word proceed out of your mouth until the day I say to you, shout, then you shall shout. So he had the ark of the Lord circled the city going around at once. Then they came into the camp and lodged in the camp.

Now, the people were not supposed to shout until the seventh day, and then they were supposed to give it all they had. However, it wasn't a silent march. The priests were blowing these shofars as they walked around the city and the people were just keeping their mouths shut.

But the shofars were sounding and that would have been a very eerie, if you've ever heard a shofar, the very eerie thing to the people in the city hearing these awful sounding horns and seeing this awful procession of these armies marching around them, not attacking, not even besieging. Not making any kind of military advance at all, just walking around and going home. But this sound of this shofar, I bet that'd be ringing in their ears all day long, and I bet it'd haunt them at night.

It wouldn't be a pleasant thing to watch happening, but it was just the horns for the first six days, no shouting. And it says in verse 14, in the second day, they marched around the city once and returned to the camp. So they did six days.

But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose early about the dawning of the day and marched around the city seven times in the same manner. That could have taken about an hour or more. On that day, only they marched around the city seven times.

And the seventh time it happened when the priest blew the trumpets that Joshua said to the people, shout for the Lord has given you the city. Now the city shall be doomed by the Lord to destruction. It and all who are in it.

Only Rahab the harlot shall live. She and all who are with her in the house because she hid the messengers that we sent and you by all means abstain from the cursed things. Lest you become accursed when you take of the accursed things and make the camp of Israel a curse and trouble it.

But all the silver and the gold and the vessels of bronze and iron are consecrated to the Lord. They shall come to the treasury of the Lord. Now, in their later conquests of other cities, they were going to be permitted to take the booty for themselves and enrich themselves.

But this first fruits is the Lord's. This is going to be. It's like giving God the first fruits of your harvest.

By bringing the first fruit to the temple later on of a harvest, it was a way of saying we recognize our entire crop belongs to the Lord. But giving the first fruits is our way of emblem, our emblem of acknowledgement. So also all the cities were going to be the Lord's victories, but they were going to specifically hand over this city and everything in it to the Lord and keep nothing for themselves in order to acknowledge God as the one who's their leader and and everything they're doing is consecrated to the Lord.

But this city more than instead of the others is the one that's going to actually be handed over. Not one bit of the booty is to be given to the victors. Everything will be burned.

Everyone will be killed except for the precious metals. They can't be burned. So they'll be given over to the tabernacle, probably for use there, given to the Lord in that sense.

Now, verse 20. So the people shouted when the priest blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet that the people shouted with a great shout that the wall fell down flat.

Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city and they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, oxen, sheep and donkey with the edge of the sword. But Joshua said to the two men who had spied out the country, go into the harlot's house and from there bring out the woman and all she has as you swore to her and the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers and all that she had. So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel and they burned the city and all that was in it with fire.

Only the silver and the gold and the vessels of bronze and iron they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord. And Joshua spared Rahab the harlot, her father's household and all that she had. So she dwells to Israel in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

So this was written during the lifetime of that first generation. Rahab was still living at the time the book was written. Now, she apparently met the conditions and brought her family into the house and they were all spared, but they were kept outside the camp of Israel.

They weren't Israelites. They were spared because of the agreement. But they weren't included in Israel.

But Rahab later was because we know from Matthew 1, 5 that she married a Jewish man named Solomon and became part of a lineage of David later on. But she was apparently converted to their religion. We don't know whether her family converted or whether they just escaped judgment.

They may eventually have been incorporated in Israel if they were circumcised and did the things they had to do. Verse 26, Joshua charged them at that time, saying, cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city, Jericho. He shall lay its foundation with his firstborn and with his youngest he shall set up its gates.

So the Lord was with Joshua and his fame spread throughout all the country. What's this mean? He shall lay the foundation with his firstborn and his youngest he shall set up with his youngest. He shall set up his gates.

It's always understood that this means that his firstborn will die the day he lays the foundation of the city and his youngest son will die when the city is completed and they're putting on the final touches, the gates, the last things hung. So with the rebuilding of Jericho, a man will lose his oldest and youngest son. Now, there was a practice in ancient times and something this is referring to that, that many times the pagans in their cities would have like a, what do you call it? When you put something, deposit something in the cornerstone of a building.

The time capsule, right, exactly. That they would actually dedicate buildings to their gods by putting live children, like in a time capsule in the cornerstone of a building or in the foundation of the building. It was just a pagan idea to please the gods.

And some feel that it means that he actually, his firstborn son would be entombed in the foundation, but it doesn't state that clearly. But that may be how it came to pass. It did come to pass hundreds of years later in first Kings chapter 16 and verse 34, we read about it.

First Kings 1634 says in Ahab's days, a man named Hiel or Heel, the Bethelite built Jericho. He laid the foundation thereof in a byroom, his firstborn and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son, Sigub, according to the word of the Lord, which he speaks by Joshua the son of Nun. So the book of first Kings records that this curse that Joshua uttered over the city was actually, it came to pass in the man who did rebuild Jericho hundreds of years after this time.

So, you know, the uttering of a curse, I guess, can have teeth to it. I mean, God can honor a blessing and he can honor a curse that's uttered by a godly man, at least if that man is led by the spirit to utter such a curse, God honors it. Now, we're done with Jericho, but we've got other cities to conquer and the next city won't be as successful, not initially anyway, because the firm warning Joshua gave about not taking any of the spoils of Jericho was not heeded by one particular man.

And this led to the first and really the only disaster that Israel faced in their conquest of the land of Canaan. The only recorded casualties they ever experienced in any of their battles were 36 people who got killed in the next one. And that was because of compromised sin in the camp.

And we'll see that when we come back to it next time.