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Context No. 1847 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 10:28-33: in context

28Joshua took Makkedah on that day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, with its king. He utterly destroyed it and all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining. He did to the king of Makkedah as he had done to the king of Jericho. 29Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, to Libnah, and fought against Libnah. 30The LORD delivered it also, with its king, into the hand of Israel. He struck it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls who were in it. He left no one remaining in it. He did to its king as he had done to the king of Jericho. 31Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, to Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it. 32The LORD delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel. He took it on the second day, and struck it with the edge of the sword, with all the souls who were in it, according to all that he had done to Libnah. 33Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua struck him and his people, until he had left him no one remaining.

This passage records Joshua's campaign against the southern cities of Canaan, one after another, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, and the king of Gezer who came to help. City by city, the account tells of conquest and total destruction, carrying out the command of devotion to destruction that God had given for the peoples of that land. These are among the hardest passages in Scripture to read, and they should not be softened or waved away.

We should be honest that passages like this trouble us, and it is right that they do. The wholesale destruction commanded in the conquest is difficult, and we do the Scriptures no service by pretending it is easy or by explaining it away. It deserves to be faced rather than skipped. A few things can be said, not to dissolve the difficulty but to hold it rightly. These passages describe a particular moment in a particular history: God's judgment, through Israel, on peoples whose entrenched wickedness Scripture elsewhere describes in grim terms, a judgment long delayed and repeatedly warned of. They are not given as a pattern for us; nowhere does the New Testament, or God's people since, take them as a model for how to treat others. Rather, they stand as a sobering witness to the seriousness with which God regards deep and settled evil, and to the reality of a divine judgment that we would often rather forget. And they press us toward a humility before the God whose judgments are, as Scripture says, unsearchable, and whose ways are higher than ours. There are things in God's dealings, and in his word, that we do not fully understand, that trouble us, that we cannot tidily resolve; and the question these hard passages put to us is whether we will trust the God we cannot fully understand, or sit in judgment over him from the small vantage of our own understanding. This is not a call to pretend the difficulty away, but to hold it honestly while trusting that the Judge of all the earth does right, even where we cannot see how. The secret things belong to God; and there are hard things in his word before which the honest response is neither to soften them nor to reject God, but to acknowledge what we cannot fully grasp and trust the God whose justice and mercy exceed our understanding.

When I meet passages in Scripture that trouble me, that I cannot tidily resolve, do I either soften them away or turn from God over them, or can I face the difficulty honestly while trusting the God whose judgments are unsearchable and whose ways are higher than mine, acknowledging what I cannot fully grasp rather than sitting in judgment over him?

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