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DAY 8 – JOSHUA AND JUDGES

The books of Joshua and Judges tell the story of Israel as a fledgling nation. The Israelites conquer and occupy the land of Canaan, and then once they’ve settled there, they have to fight over and over again to regain their freedom from other peoples. 

Moses, the leader who brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, dies in Moab, just outside Canaan. God appoints Joshua as his successor to lead the Israelites into the land they’ll conquer and make their own. The book of Joshua begins by telling how this new leader prepares for the invasion of Canaan. It then describes how, at the head of a combined army from all the tribes of Israel, he conducts a strategic campaign against the first and greatest threat they face, the “royal cities” of the region. These cities have their own kings and are heavily fortified and defended. 

The narrative follows the army as it overcomes one royal city after another. The army conquers first the central part of the land, and then its northern and southern parts. The narrative elaborates at length on the campaign against some cities, but gives only a brief notice about what happened at other cities. At the end of the campaign, the text lists all the defeated kings to show that “Joshua took the entire land, just as the Lord had directed Moses.” 

The book of Joshua next reports in detail how the territory was divided among the tribes. It details each tribe’s allotments and its boundaries. But then it shows that pockets of resistance remained. It therefore concludes as Joshua, in his final speech before his death, urges each tribe to take full possession of its own territory. Joshua also leads the people to renew the covenant they made with God before entering the land.

After Joshua’s death the individual tribes have only limited success in driving out the remaining Canaanites. So they try to live with them instead. They intermarry with them and even join in worshiping Canaanite gods. This makes God angry, and he lets one nation after another conquer the Israelites. The book of Judges describes how, when the people return to God and cry out for help, God raises up “judges” to deliver them. These are both military leaders and legal authorities. Unfortunately, the people remain faithful to God only during the judge’s lifetime, and then they “do evil in the sight of the Lord” once again. 

The book relates the careers of twelve judges, six of them in some detail. By the book’s end, the pattern of recurring lapses proves unavoidable. The nation is going to keep falling into anarchy and vulnerability every time its leader dies unless an institution can be created that will ensure justice and stability across the generations. The book of Judges stresses that this institution must be a monarchy. It explains the worsening anarchy and atrocities of the period by noting, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” But the book also warns, by recounting the disastrous career of Abimelek, who is very much an anti-judge, that this must not be a Canaanite-style king who will brutally oppress his own people. Judges, in other words, completes the story of the fledgling nation by making the case for the kind of godly king who can bring Israelite society to cultural and spiritual maturity. 

PRAYER: Help me to learn from the experiences of the people of Israel and from Your faithfulness to them.