DAY TWENTY-FIVE: 

The Fall of Jericho 

Joshua 5:13-6:27 

Yesterday we saw Joshua lead Israel across the Jordan during the spring flood. Reminiscent of the parting of the Red Sea forty years earlier, the river parted and they crossed on dry land in a single day. They camped at Gilgal, just six miles from Jericho. There they observed the Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. As soon as they ate the local food the manna stopped appearing. They will feast on the milk and honey and all the other rich foods of the land.

Before we look at the conquest of Jericho, let's look at this city. Jericho is possibly the oldest city in the world. Archeologists have found evidence that it was occupied as early as 8,000 BC, or 6,000 years before the birth of Abraham. It is also the lowest city in the world in terms of elevation, some 670 feet below sea level. Jericho is a beautiful place. The Bible also calls it "The City of Palm Trees." The coldest temperature ever recorded there is 58 degrees, and it can reach 130 degrees in the summer. I was there in early May and it was 95. An enormous spring of water flows out of the cliff above the city. It was bitter, however, until the Prophet Elisha threw some salt into it. It's been beautiful, sweet water ever since!

Joshua took a walk to get a closer look at the city. Suddenly he realized that he wasn't alone. He turned and saw a man with a sword in his hand! Alarmed, he asked "Whose side are you on?" He responded, "No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come." He then told Joshua to take his shoes off because he was on holy ground. An unseen army of angels stood ready to fight for Israel! Joshua asked for orders. He received a strange answer: form up the whole army, then put the priests with the Ark of the Covenant in front; then march around the city once each day for six days; then on the seventh day march around seven times; then a priest will blow a trumpet and you shout for all you're worth! The wall will fall flat before you and you'll take the city.

Joshua obeyed. The priests led the way with the Ark and the sound of trumpets. The soldiers, however, were absolutely silent. Then on the seventh day after the seventh time around, Joshua said, "Shout, for the Lord has given you the city!" They shouted, and the walls collapsed outward! Here's a picture from the research of Dr. Bryant Wood, an archeologist who has done extensive work at Jericho:

You'll notice that Jericho hat TWO walls. This was common for ancient cities and gave an extra level of protection. If an enemy were to breach the first wall they could fall back behind the second. The outer wall was a massive stone structure with a slope to the lower part to make it difficult for anyone to scale it. The second wall was of mud brick above the first wall. The picture shows how both walls fell outward, as the archeological evidence shows. Normally an army would pull the walls down toward them, as they had no means to push them in. Should they make a breach in the wall this way, the attacking army would have to climb up and over the rubble. With the walls falling outward Israel had an easy time entering the city.  The whole story is fascinating and way more than we can cover here. If you'd like to learn more, you can read Dr. Wood's article here.

Joshua commanded the army to kill everyone in the city and to burn it all down. They were to take nothing for themselves. It was all to be destroyed. All, that is, except for Rahab, the prostitute who hid the two spies. They told her to hang a scarlet cord in her window, and to get everyone in her family into her house. When the wall fell, the section with Rahab's house still stood. She and her family came out safely. Rahab married a man from the tribe of Judah named Salmon. She bore a son named Boaz, who in turn married Ruth the Moabitess (we'll look at her story next week). Rahab was the great-great grandmother of King David and thus an ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Jericho was the first victory in the seven-year-long conquest of the land. At that time Joshua divided the land among the tribes and clans of Israel by the drawing of lots. Pockets of the "ites" remained, and Joshua told the tribes that they were responsible for taking the rest of the land in their territory. Then Joshua challenged the people to remain faithful to God. He said, "Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (24:14-15) Then Joshua retired to his own inheritance in the hill country of Ephraim, where he died at the age of 110.

Next week we'll look at the period of the Judges.

The commander of the army of the Lord didn't answer Joshua's question of whether he was for or against Israel. He was for God and was there to to His will. If Israel would obey and serve God the hosts of Heaven would fight with and for them and no one would be able to stand before them. They would find out in the very next battle against Ai, that the Lord would not be with them if they were disobedient. This is a critical lesson for us in today's church. We long for God's blessings, but are we willing to obey what He commands? We have this habit of assuming that God is on our side. Someone once asked Abraham Lincoln if he believed that God was on the Union's side in the Civil War. He replied, "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right." If we find that we are not on God's side, it's time to repent and draw near to Him.

It's impossible to read this passage in our day without wondering about the command to kill everyone in Jericho. In our time we call that genocide, the destruction of an entire people. Hitler's goal was to kill every Jew in the world, and he succeeded in killing nearly half of them. Less than twenty years ago the obscure country of Rwanda hit the headlines when Hutus killed as many as 800,000 members of the rival Tutsi tribe in a six-month period. How can a good God order the deaths of the men, women and children of Jericho? First, their deaths were not inevitable. Moses commanded in Deuteronomy 20:10-12, "When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it." Had the rulers of Jericho surrendered they all would have lived. The Gibeonites tricked Joshua into thinking that they were from far away and made a peace treaty with Israel. Even when he found out they had been duped, the Lord told Joshua he had to honor the agreement and not kill them. Last summer I read an article that totally changed my understanding of this question, "Gentiles in the Hands of a Genocidal God," by Phillip Carey. He wrote that too often we identify with Israel when in fact we should see ourselves in the place of the Canaanites. "In fact, with respect to the command to exterminate the Canaanites, our position is less like Israel's and more like that of Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute in Jericho who befriends the Israelite spies. She has not taken part in Israel's exodus, but she has heard of it and believes it. She knows the name of the Lord, the God who has given the land to Israel, and she confesses that he is God of heaven and earth (Josh. 2:9–11). She is a believer, and eventually will be included in Hebrews 11's great litany of heroes who lived by faith. But she is not an Israelite. She is a Canaanite who hopes to live, not die. As a believer, Rahab can have hope, because the threat she faces is not so much moral as religious. It is not as if the Israelites were so much more righteous than every other nation (Deut. 9:4–6). Israel is holy not because of their own righteousness but because the Lord loves them and chose them as his people. And the holiness of the Lord is a kind of jealousy that claims Israel as his own, not allowing other nations to lead them into worshiping false gods (7:5–8). That is the holiness that leads to herem, the extermination of Rahab's people for their idolatry."

I leave you today with one of the great hymns of the church, Who Is On The Lord's Side? It's a reminder that just like Israel we are called to conquer.