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II. Entering the Promised Land

A. Joshua at Jericho

We pick up the story with the career of Joshua, Moses’ hand-picked successor (Deuteronomy 31:14-15,23; 34:9).

The Book of Joshua is a bridge between the Pentateuch (the name given to the five books of Moses - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) and the remainder of the Old Testament.

Joshua leads the people across the Jordan and, in a series of campaigns against the Canaanite kings (see Joshua 1-12), lays claim to much of the land God promised first to Abraham and again to Moses and the Israelites (see Genesis 17:8; Exodus 3:8).

His most famous battle was no battle at all - the siege of Jericho (Joshua 6). We all know the story: For six days the Israelites marched around the city with seven priests in the lead, carrying the Ark of the Covenant which God had ordered Moses to build at Sinai to be with the people in their wanderings (see Exodus 25:10, 21-22; Numbers 10:22; 14:44). On the seventh day, they marched around around the city seven final times, then blew a horn, gave a loud shout and watched as the walls of Jericho collapsed.

This was to be emblematic of the character of the Israelites’ conquest of the Promised Land. At every stage, it was to be won, not by military might, but by priestly and religious means.

As the Israelites were led out of Egypt across the dry bed of the Red Sea, led by the pillar of cloud, the presence of God, so Joshua leds the people across the dry land of the Jordan, behind the Ark of God’s presence (see Exodus 12-14; Joshua 3:13-14). Their crossing takes place in the same month as the Exodus (see Joshua 3:15; 5:10) and - again as with Moses and the Exodus - they’re circumcised and celebrate the Passover before crossing the waters (see Joshua 5).

The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord is crucial to the religious character of Joshua’s mission. As you will notice throughout the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings and Chronicles, the Ark is a defining symbol of God’s election of Israel as His chosen people.

The Ark contained signs of God’s covenant with Moses - the tablets of the Law, the staff of Aaron, some manna from the wilderness (see Hebrews 9:4). It was God’s dwelling place, the sign of His real presence among the Israelites.

But notice that already in Joshua, the Ark is not merely the sign of Israel’s "tribal" or "national" deity. It is a sign of the Lord of the Universe, of the one God who wants to dwell with all peoples.

As Joshua says: "This is how you will know that there is a living God in your midst…The Ark of the Covenant of the Lord of the whole earth will precede you into the Jordan" (seeJoshua 3:10-11).

B. Barbs and Thorns Remain

Despite Joshua’s victories, at the time of his death, Israel had conquered much - but not all- of the promised land (see Judges 1:27-36; 3:1-6).

This failure to secure the entire land will become a decisive factor in the subsequent history of the God’s people.

God had ordered Israel to drive out all the inhabitants of Canaan and to destroy all their idols (see Numbers 33:50-52). If any Canaanites were permitted to remain, God warned, they would become "as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides….and I will treat you as I had intended to treat them" (see Numbers 33:55-56).

We’re often troubled and find it difficult to comprehend how God could order or permit the Israelites to wage ethnic genocide against the peoples living in the Promised Land (seeDeuteronomy 20:16-17).

Mass murder, of course, is not God’s way. What we see in these commands is an example of the divine Father’s reluctant concession, His sorrowful accommodation to His first-born son’s spiritual weakness.

Later, under the monarchy of David and Solomon and word of the prophets, Israel’s true character will be revealed - a people living among the nations as a sign of God’s providence and wisdom, a people sent to teach and convert the nations to the ways of the living God.

But at this early stage in their history, God knew that His chosen children weren’t ready, spiritually or morally, to live among the idolatrous pagans across the Jordan. He knew they could never live among them without succumbing to idolatry themselves (see Deuteronomy 20:18).

C. Judging By Their Weakness

The history we read in the Book of Judges bears this out.

The "plot" of Judges pivots on the Israelites’ repeated fall into the snare of idolatry, their giving in to the worship of the gods of the Canaanites. The entire book, in fact, is built on this "testing" of Israel’s faithfulness to its covenant with God.

The narrator of Judges tells us that God allowed the pagans to remain in the Promised Land precisely to test Israel’s faithfulness to its covenant - "so that through them [the pagans left in the land] He might….put Israel to the test, to determine whether they would obey the commandments the Lord had enjoined on their fathers through Moses" (seeJudges 3:1,4).

Joshua had foreseen Israel’s weakness. At the end of his life, like Moses, he called on Israel to renew its covenant with God (see Joshua 24:13-28). He told the people they must choose - "decide today whom you will serve - the gods your fathers served beyond the river [Jordan] or the gods of the Amorites in whose countries you are dwelling" (see Joshua 24:15).

But like Moses, Joshua also predicted they wouldn’t be able to keep the covenant (seeJoshua 24:19; compare Deuteronomy 31:16,24-29).

He was right. Israel failed the test. That’s the message of Judges. That’s why the history we read there seems to repeat itself in a sad cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, forgiveness, and backsliding into sin again.

D. Born in Bethlehem

But even in the midst of the corruption and weakness of His people, God continued unfolding His saving plan. That’s what we learn from the Book of Ruth, a slice-of-life story from "the time of the judges" (see Ruth 1:1).

Ruth appears at this point in the canon of the Bible as if to remind us that, beneath the big political and military events of Israel’s history, God was still working quietly, in the hidden lives of ordinary people - non-Israelites even - to fulfill His covenant promises.

During Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land, God used Rahab - a pagan and a woman and a harlot to boot - to ensure the success of His plan (see Joshua 2; Hebrews 11:31;James 2:25). And during the time of the judges, God again resorts to a pagan woman, the servant girl Ruth, to advance the objectives of His saving plan - in a way that also involves Rahab again.

Rahab had the faith to recognize the Israelites’ God as the true God (see Joshua 2:11;6:25). Similarly, Ruth vows herself to the Israelites’ God, using covenantal language - "Your people shall be my people and your God my God" (see Ruth 1:16).

Ruth marries Boaz, a righteous man from Bethlehem who, as it turns out, is the son of Rahab (see Ruth 1:1; 1:19, 2:1, 2:19-20; Matthew 1:5-6). Ruth bears Boaz a son, Obed, who will become the father of Jesse. "Jesse, as the last line of the book tells us, "became the father of David" (see Ruth 4:17,22).

This is the first mention of David in the Bible.

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