Notes: May 26, 2008 - Joshua 8 & 9
Bob Feather May 26th, 2008
These chapters, and several that follow, describe the widening conquest of Canaan.
I. The fall of Ai (8:1-29)
- Israel confidently sent 3,000 soldiers against the city, but was handily routed by Ai before (chapter 7). This time they send 35,000 troops (Joshua 8:3,12).
- Previously Israel conducted a one-front attack on the city; this time they pretended the same tactic in order to draw Ai out into the fields to fight.
II. The law of God (8:30-35)
- After the battle, Joshua erected a stone memorial altar; and he had the law of God written thereon (Joshua 8:32-35).
- Then the word of God was read publicly.
- Separation of church and state was not an issue.
III. The Gibeonite ruse (9:1-27)
- The inhabitants of Gibeon, a large and powerful, royal city (Joshua 10:2), desired peace with Israel.
- But had forbad covenants with the Canaanites (Deuteronomy 20:16-20).
- The Gibeonite ambassadors pretended, quite believably, to be from a distant land.
- Joshua and the elders of Israel, depending upon their own intuition, accepted the actors, and made a peace treaty with them.
- Upon discovering the charade, Joshua ordered that the Gibeonites be allowed to live, in keeping with the terms of the treaty; but they would become servants to Israel.
- The Gibeonites, pleased to be alive, accepted servitude.
Meditation Points:
- Sometimes what appears to be a small problem can be very difficult to solve, and may even require our full strength to overcome.
- When God has given us victory over our enemies we should rededicate ourselves to His service.
- Joshua entered into a covenant with the Gibeonites in much the same way that Isaac blessed Jacob instead of Esau–living by sight rather than by faith and obedience to the word of God.
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Joshua 8:3,12
3So Joshua arose, and all the people of war, to go up against Ai: and Joshua chose out thirty thousand mighty men of valour, and sent them away by night.
12And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.
Joshua 8:32-35
32And he wrote there upon the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he wrote in the presence of the children of Israel.
33And all Israel, and their elders, and officers, and their judges, stood on this side the ark and on that side before the priests the Levites, which bare the ark of the covenant of the LORD, as well the stranger, as he that was born among them; half of them over against mount Gerizim, and half of them over against mount Ebal; as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded before, that they should bless the people of Israel.
34And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings, according to all that is written in the book of the law.
35There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women, and the little ones, and the strangers that were conversant among them.
Joshua 10:2
2That they feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, as one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all the men thereof were mighty.
Deuteronomy 20:16-20
16But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
18That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.
19When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man's life) to employ them in the siege:
20Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
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