As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, 2 he[b] feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors. 3 So Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent to Hoham king of Hebron, to Piram king of Jarmuth, to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Debir king of Eglon, saying, 4 “Come up to me and help me, and let us strike Gibeon. For it has made peace with Joshua and with the people of Israel.” 5 Then the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon, gathered their forces and went up with all their armies and encamped against Gibeon and made war against it. 6 And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” 7 So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. 8 And the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” 9 So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. 10 And the Lord threw them into a panic before Israel, who struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah.11 And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, the Lord threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.
12 At that time Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lordgave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
“Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.
Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day.14 There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel. 15 So Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal.
16 These five kings fled and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah. 17 And it was told to Joshua, “The five kings have been found, hidden in the cave at Makkedah.” 18 And Joshua said, “Roll large stones against the mouth of the cave and set men by it to guard them, 19 but do not stay there yourselves. Pursue your enemies; attack their rear guard. Do not let them enter their cities, for the Lord your God has given them into your hand.” 20 When Joshua and the sons of Israel had finished striking them with a great blow until they were wiped out, and when the remnant that remained of them had entered into the fortified cities, 21 then all the people returned safe to Joshua in the camp at Makkedah. Not a man moved his tongue against any of the people of Israel. 22 Then Joshua said, “Open the mouth of the cave and bring those five kings out to me from the cave.” 23 And they did so, and brought those five kings out to him from the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 And when they brought those kings out to Joshua, Joshua summoned all the men of Israel and said to the chiefs of the men of war who had gone with him, “Come near; put your feet on the necks of these kings.” Then they came near and put their feet on their necks. 25 And Joshua said to them, “Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous. For thus the Lord will do to all your enemies against whom you fight.”26 And afterward Joshua struck them and put them to death, and he hanged them on five trees. And they hung on the trees until evening. 27 But at the time of the going down of the sun, Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees and threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves, and they set large stones against the mouth of the cave, which remain to this very day.
28 As for Makkedah, Joshua captured it on that day and struck it, and its king, with the edge of the sword. He devoted to destruction every person in it; he left none remaining. And he did to the king of Makkedah just as he had done to the king of Jericho.
This chapter begins with more war plans being made. It might strike us odd that the nations mentioned in this chapter gather together to fight against…not Israel…but Gibeon! These are the folks who deceived Israel as we looked at last week. However, if we look at the geography, (I know, a geography lesson for a devotion doesn’t sound too inspiring! But, hang in there), we begin to understand why Gibeon.
The four cities constituted a confederation of which Gibeon appears to have been a dominant feature. Gibeon was located about 6 miles northwest of Jerusalem and guarded the eastern end of a very important road between Jerusalem to the west. So here is the situation: Israel had already defeated Jericho and Ai to the east. The Gibeonites had made peace with Israel through deception to the west. So we have a rectangle of four key sites now under Joshua’s control, meaning that Israel had the strategic central plateau, the same land that later will belong to the tribe of Benjamin. Joshua had driven a wedge between the north and the south.
The text tells us that Gibeon was an important city and a large city and that all of its men were excellent fighters. The Canaanite plan was to take Gibeon back and re-establish the power for themselves. The text doesn’t tell us if Israel came to their aid because of the covenant they made with Gibeon or because of military concerns. Nonetheless, they attacked.
Before the invasion into Canaan in 1:5 the Lord spoke to Joshua and here He repeats Himself, the same words…the same promises…repeated…again. “Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand, not one of them will stand before you.”
This is the way God gives to His people, reassurance, peace, comfort and courage…not by necessarily unveiling to them some new truth previously unknown but by reminding us of the promises He has already made and thereby calling us to renewed responses. The key here is ‘renewed’. As we have discussed in the recent past, God’s Word calls us to respond and to renew, or consecrate our “present” according to that Word and hopefully as we have in the past.
The Israelites did not need some new truth, previously unknown, and neither do we. We have everything we need in God’s Word and in His Messiah, our King and Savior. They/We do not need new information, a new-fangled way of dealing with the circumstances or the world around us. They/We simply need to remember and to be reminded of what God has said and be faithful to it!
I am certain that folks who call themselves Christian would collectively nod like a room full of bobble-heads. However, nodding is not the end of faithfulness! I think we would all agree, our problem is not that we don’t know what holiness requires, or how God has called us to live. No. Our problem is that we don’t live according to what we know and what we have been given.
How many times have we nodded our head at the word of the Lord only to turn around and live as though we have never heard it? Read carefully what this author has to say: “We need to learn to tell the story that makes sense of Jesus. Not a story that we ask Jesus to fit into. The gospel is a story about Jesus, it only then is it about us. To make the story first about us, or first about me and my salvation, is to reduce the story and to rob Jesus of the glory of being the central actor.”
Sadly, that is what is going on all around us.
Joshua was to move forward and believe the word of the Lord, the word that God had spoken now, three times. I am not implying that this irritates God, to repeat Himself, for He does this out of love and full knowledge of our weakness. He knows our frame. He is aware of our frailty and fickleness and so in His compassion and kindness, in his love for His children, He says the same things, over and over again.
There are four verbs in verse 10, (O, goody, now he is giving a grammar lesson!). The Lord is the subject of the first, the LORD threw the enemy into a panic and routed them. Interestingly many English translations make Israel the subject of the next three, but Hebrew scholars insist that the Lord is the subject of all four. The reason for saying that Israel struck them, pursued them etc, is because it sounds funny to modern ears to say that God was the One doing the fighting.
But the plain reading says that the Lord threw them into a panic, the Lord struck them with a great blow, the Lord chased them down and the Lord struck them down. God pursues the enemy. The Lord is the Fighter, the Lord is the Warrior, the Lord is fighting for His people. And so that we don’t miss this, we have the comment about the hailstones. God rained down huge boulders of hail upon the enemies and more were killed by the hail than by the sword.
Our God, our Christ, our Savior is a Warrior. And this text wants to declare the source and the cause of the victory. The Lord is the warrior who defeats the enemy and we…we ride in HIS train, if we will but follow Him, according to His word.
Why do you think the modern church doesn’t care for this kind of teaching? Could it be that we really don’t know who God is? Could it be that we have created a God who is only partially the God of the Bible? As one author put it: “We have done the same thing to the Lord Jesus with perhaps not a little help from church Sunday school materials. The popular image of Jesus is that he is not only kind and tender, but also soft and prissy as though he comes to us reeking of hand cream…”
There are so many texts we could refer to that erase much of the modern picture of the Christ. Psalm 24 asks, Who is this King of glory…the Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” Or what about Revelation 19 and the sight we are given of Jesus, with His robe dipped in the blood of His enemies sitting upon a warhorse?
God’s actions are the point of the text. God makes the sun stand still. God makes the enemies flee, God pursues them, God strikes them down and God rains hail down from heaven. And here is the glorious tension: All of the promises, and the fact that it is the Lord who fights for His people, does not lead us to inactivity. They still had to march, they still had to attack and they still had to fight.
The truth of God’s sovereignty, when rightly understood, does not negate but energizes the church’s response. And so the people fought and so the people prayed, even bold prayers, a prayer that we would not even think to pray and the sun stood still and the moon stopped until the nation avenged itself on its enemies.
Joshua was not afraid to pray such a prayer. He was not afraid to ask the Creator for a stay in the ordinary way the Lord rules and conducts His business. The point of this miracle serves the redemptive plan of God as even creation itself defends the people of God because this is the way it is supposed to be. Joshua did not hesitate to ask God for the sun to stand still so he could do what God had called him to do. Do not hesitate to ask God for those things that you need…be bold to seek Him to give you what you need to please Him.
Our text concludes with the execution of the Amorite kings who were in the cave. To some this seems barbaric; putting. The foot on the neck of the kings and then have them killed. But this is highly symbolic. This is an outward demonstration of the promise of God. Hummm….a promise and then a sign to picture the promise….I hope that doesn’t sound odd to us at all!!!
Life and Liturgy are filled with outward actions that have as their purpose to land us at the feet of the Messiah and to embrace the promises that God has made us in Christ Jesus. And we are back where we started: The word of God is enough. The word of God is our food and drink. The unchanging, unshifting promises of heaven that are to us our hope and confidence. Our God will do as He has promised…Always.
Prayer: Father, help me to see and understand the Savior as You have revealed Him and not according to the imaginations or wishes of men. I want to know Him as He truly is in all His majesty, holiness, goodness and mercy but also as the warrior who fights for truth and His people. Help me to pray…and to believe that You hear and are able to do more than I ask or imagine, in Jesus name, Amen.
Song: Shepherd of My Soul. (This is interesting…kind of Indie but the words and video are…well…you decide!)