June 10, 2019: Day 44 – Joshua 10

The chapter begins at least with Joshua merely acting on behalf of his allies, the Gibeonites, remember those who had tricked Joshua but to whom Joshua remained loyal.  The Gibeonites were being attacked by 5 kings and Joshua was sworn under oath to protect the Gibeonites, and he does.  But things then get a little out of hand.  Not only do the Israelites defeat the five kings and their armies, but he also assassinates the five kings who were hiding in a cave.  But wait, there is more.

From there he continues and goes into the lands of these five kings and lays utter waste to their countries and takes over all of them and more on top of that.  So what began as a defensive battle to help an ally, turned into a full assault making sure that none of those in the land would ever doubt who was king.  There could be no doubt that God was on Joshua’s side especially since in vs.11 we see huge stones which fell from heaven, so that more were killed from the stones than those that the Israelites defeated.  That is really a bit of a lopsided victory and not really fair, but it was once again an object lesson of what it means to trust in the Lord.

We have these verses starting in vs.12 and following where we see that Joshua was able to command the sun and in battle he was able to visible have the Lord on his side.  It seems like the promise of chapter 1 is coming to fruition.  As I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

Here is a clip that I thought might be of interest for you, what with the stones from heaven etc.