Links for today’s readings:
Read: Joshua 11 Listen: (3:52) Read: Ephesians 3 Listen: (2:41)
Scripture Focus: Joshua 11:7-9
7 So Joshua and his whole army came against them suddenly at the Waters of Merom and attacked them, 8 and the Lord gave them into the hand of Israel. … 9 Joshua did to them as the Lord had directed: He hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots.
Reflection: Hamstrung Power
By Erin Newton
When we read stories of warfare and violence in the Bible, especially in narratives that depict the events as God-ordained, we should not take the stories too lightly. In fact, I suggest we not read them while gloating or with a sense of prowess. They are troubling; they jolt our senses.
The narratives in Joshua describe the journey of God’s people into an occupied land by means of war. The text says that God commanded them to kill everyone. Scholars have long felt the uneasiness of such a brutal request. Some have downplayed the language as hyperbole.
Others say the conquered locations are military outposts rather than civilized towns. Others focus on the details and compare Israel’s God with the foreign gods.
In a pursuit to understand why the violent texts are preserved as God’s word, William Webb and Gordon Oeste looked at various texts and discovered not a God who delights in death but “a highly reluctant war God who is not exactly eager to participate with Israel in its wars” (Bloody, Brutal, and Barbaric? Wrestling with Troubling War Texts).
In Joshua 11, God tells Joshua to hamstring the horses and burn the chariots. Webb and Oeste point out, “We might immediately cringe at the maiming of these animals.” I do. My love of nature includes my compassion on all created beings—from the beetles who burrow in my yard to the elusive tigers of Malaysia. Why would God call for harming his creatures?
Ancient Near Eastern cultures increased power and pride through the accumulation of chariots. With these new victories, Israel might try to increase its weaponry. Therefore, the horses are reduced to domestic labor.
Webb and Oeste see a God who “wanted his people to be owners of cattle in a land flowing with milk and honey, not a people whose land was full of war horses and chariots—the instruments of human oppression and domination.” It is God who hamstrings his people’s pride by asking them to debilitate the enemy’s horses and burn their chariots.
Webb and Oeste’s perspective offers another way of balancing the “leave-none-alive” Old Testament texts with the “turn-the-other-cheek” character of God.
We still wrestle with these violent texts and not all questions may ever be answered. But we see a God who disarms his people, stunts their might, and hinders their pride.
Because in our weakness, he is made strong.
Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
The Lord is my shepherd and nothing is wanting to me. In green pastures he has settled me. — The Short Breviary
– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summer
by Phyllis Tickle
Read more: Horses of Flesh or Spirit
Crises expose what we truly rely on. Comfort dulls our hold on principles and the strength of our convictions.
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