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Joshua's and My Thoughts - Joshua 24: 1-13

Joshua knows that he’s about to die, so after talking to “all the people of Israel” he calls just the elders of the tribes to him and tells them what God told him to say. He reminds them that their ancestors worshipped “other gods” on the other side of the Euphrates. TB makes an interesting note on the term “other gods” which is sometimes translated as “false gods,” he says that the literal translation is “non-gods” meaning, “non-entities.” This means that they don’t exist, so for a world where everyone believes in a bunch of gods and they have their main “boss” god, for Him to say “none of those other gods are real,” would have been a big blow to the understanding of the people. TB says that the main problem with ancient Israel accepting the almighty God at that time was because the prevailing belief among all people was that there were tons of gods that had very specific natural elements and that were contained to one specific geographic region. That’s why Jacob and Joseph died, they...
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Joshua's Farewell - Joshua 23

The weirdest thing just happened. I’ve been using the Institute Manual as a reference for the last 13 years and suddenly when I was reading the entry for Joshua 23, the screen refreshed and I was rerouted to the home page and now the IM is gone and replaced by some very vague “Scripture Helps.” This is unfortunate and I hope is just a glitch because I really want that content back. Here’s to hoping. Anyway. Joshua is now very old and he knows he’s about to die so he calls “all Israel” together to give him his final departing address. Joshua reminds the people that they have seen God do many great things for them and that He promises to continue to drive out their enemies from the land. He tells them to keep the law of Moses and to not fall into idolatry by associating with the people around them by marriage, breeding, or to worship any of their pagan gods. If Israel does choose to associate with them, instead of becoming friends, “they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges ...
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Another Altar - Joshua 22

The large army that has been conquering Canaan is disbanded and the 2 ½ tribes that wanted land to settle on the east of the Jordan river were discharged from the army, probably in a ceremony of some sort. Joshua tells them that they have fulfilled their obligations to be a part of the conquering army of Israel and that they are free to return to the east side of the Jordan river to the land that they wanted. Joshua reminds them “take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law… to. Love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandment, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.” It’s also important to note that Joshua had to give these departing tribes their share of the spoils of war to take back with them. When the departing tribes got to the Jordan river, they stopped and built an altar on the west side of the river before they crossed over to their side on the east. The question of the day is, why would th...
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Land Division 2 - Joshua 17-21

I listened to TB’s lecture on chapter 17 and got some insight into some of the questions that I had from yesterday. The first insight was about the timeline of conquering Canaan vs settling the land. TB suggests that at this point all 12 tribes had been given their land but 7 of the tribes had refused what was offered. He says that the reason they rejected the land was “the element of responsibility and obligation of the inheritors to the divine giver… what they didn’t realize was that connected with the inheritance of the land was an obligation to finish conquering it. Up to now the 12 tribes worked together as a large and formidable army to battle the Canaanites in order to take their land from them, The Holy Was against Canaan had largely been successful; but much remained to be done… Acceptance of their land inheritance meant that each tribe now assumed full responsibility to finish conquering and to govern their allotted territory. Inheritance neither meant peace nor stability for...
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Land Division - Joshua 12-16

The IM only has a short paragraph to cover chapters 12-21 and TB has some lectures, but I started listening to one and I think I’m going to skip those because they mostly go over borders and land disputes and I’m not interested in listening to him go on his Pro-current state of Israel rants, so I’m just going to skip those and cover these chapters in chunks and go over what I think it important. Israel and Joshua have conquered the south and north parts of the land of Canaan and have taken that land to settle, and now they move on to the east and west parts. Chapter 12 is basically summed up by the header which says, “two kings on the east of the Jordan and thirty-one on the west are conquered by Israel.” The whole chapter is just a list of those conquered cities, which just listed out like that makes it seem insignificant, but that’s a lot of warfare and a lot of time and a lot of killing, especially when we’re talking about not only killing combatants but also women and children, i...
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Taking the North - Joshua 11

Chapter 11 is basically just a continuation of chapter 10, where chapter 10 talks about the Israelites conquering the southern part of the promised land and chapter 11 talking about them taking the northern part of the land. The kingdoms of the north did similar to what the southern kingdoms did, which was to try to band together to defeat the Israelites so that they wouldn’t be killed. So all these northern kingdoms banded together and came out to battle against Israel. An interesting point that TB made is that all these cities had very large, impenetrable walls so the safest place for these people would have been inside their heavily fortified cities but they left the safety of their cities and came out against the Israelites to battle. TB asked why they would do that, and answered, “the reason these various Canaanite kings will do this foolhardy act of leaving positions of strength to come out into the open to fight Israel (and thus losing the military advantage of defending nearly ...
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Finishing the 5 Kingdoms - Joshua 10:15-43

After that incredible day of miracles and victory where Israel fought and beat much of the 5 armies that came to fight against Gibeon, Joshua and “all Israel” went back to their base camp at Gilgal. But the kings of the beaten 5 armies fled and “hid themselves in a cave.” When Joshua found out that the kings were hiding in a cave, he said to block them in the cave with stones and he’ll deal with them later. Joshua and the army pursued the fleeing 5 armies and kill most of them but some still make it back to their walled cities and are going to be a bit harder to get out. Now it’s time to deal with these walled in kings. Joshua has them pulled out of the cave, laid them on the ground and had his new officers come and put their feet on the necks of the kings. This isn’t like they stomped on them or anything but it was a symbolic humiliation demonstrating Israel’s complete victory over these kings. Joshua puts an added message to these young officers saying, “for thus shall the Lord do t...
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