We are thinking about one of the Old Testament’s interesting
conundrums: the violent, strange Book of
Joshua, based on Dr Matthew Lynch’s series of blogs on it.
The book of Joshua is famous for violence of a degree that
may well seem problematic to the modern mind, but isn’t entirely as it seems. It starts out as the story of Joshua being the one to conquer the
Canaanites but it splits into two tracks, like two alternative time-streams, as
if two potential futures in Joshua’s mission start mysteriously to unfold side by
side, producing two alternative realities. Dr Lynch calls them a ‘surface’
narrative and a ‘deeper’ narrative. It’s a mystery that is not asking to be
left unexplained. These are the two ‘realities’ we’re looking at:
- In one time-stream, ruthless total wipe-out of the enemy: “Thus Joshua conquered the whole country … he let none escape, but proscribed [destroyed] everything that breathed—as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded (Josh 10:40).”
- In the other time-stream, merely a flawed and incomplete defeat of their enemy: “when the Israelites grew stronger, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labour but did not drive them out completely.” (Joshua 17:3)
It’s a riddle, and seems to be meant to be that way. But why
would the Book of Joshua be written like two versions, in alternative
time-streams, overlapping each other? Lynch: “I refer to these as ‘narratives’
though they’re at times juxtaposed to one another within the space of two
verses. It’s probably most accurate to refer to these as two perspectives on
the conquest within Joshua”.
Dr Lynch sets out to work out what the function of the text
is, and what it is telling us. He suggests that each of the two time-streams
“has its own function in the book, and each says things that couldn’t be said
otherwise with just one narrative.”
We have seen that the second time-stream takes an ancient
warfare story and tells it as if it were describing a pageant, structured like
a church liturgy version of a story – like we might see in a Christmas nativity
story. Joshua’s army is reduced almost to non-combatants watching God win a
victory, while their main contribution is to have the priests leading worship
on the battlefield. That is, godly struggle is more effective in singing songs
to God, not in swinging swords at people. It’s warfare fought in unseen
spiritual realms. But how does the book deal with Joshua’s army if that is the
case?
In this third and final post on the Book of Joshua, I will
look at Lynch’s argument for how the second time-stream
- tones down the violence of the story
- undermines the image of a holy army
- undermines us-and-them stories
As we do so, we start to wonder how the story of conquest
gets turned on its head in some surprising ways.
Toning down the violence
Let’s look closer at the problem of violence in the less violent second time-stream, as this
gives clues to resolve some of the riddles here, and to expose some of the limiting
realities of ancient warfare. The first thing is to recognise when we are
looking at rhetoric.
Putting to the sword
everything that breathes: this really only meant ‘winning a victory’
Without suggesting that there was no killing, a story can be
told with exaggerated figures of speech that should not be taken literally:
“Like Chronicles, Joshua is
hyperbolizing (not falsifying! Is Monet falsifying the water lilies?) its
historical sources in order to make important theological points. This is a
non-controversial claim. Lawson Younger detailed the many ways that Joshua’s
conquest rhetoric participates in standard ancient Near Eastern warfare
rhetoric, where ‘putting to the sword everything that
breathes’ basically meant, ‘winning a victory,’ and everyone knew it.”
This manner of speech is not uncommon even today. For
instance, in a sports match, it might be said that the winning team wiped-out
the opposition, but this does not mean the same as it would on a battlefield.
It just means one team won the match by an overwhelming margin. Even on the
battlefield today, to say the enemy was wiped out does not necessarily mean
they all enemy fighters were killed. In ancient times, this sort of hyperbole
could be very strong. An example of hyperbolic, seemingly genocidal, language
with a note from Lynch in () brackets:
“When the LORD your God brings
you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it … and when the
LORD your God gives them [the Canaanites] over to you, and you defeat them,
then you must devote them to complete destruction (from Hebrew verb herem). You
shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them”. (Deut 7:1-2)
This passage is immediately followed by the following words,
showing that the intention above is actually not genocidal:
“Do not intermarry with them. Do
not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons,
for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods,
and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This
is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred
stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire.” (Duet
7:3-5)
This is a good example of where the text almost seems to diverge
into two time-streams, one genocidal, the other not genocidal, in adjacent
verses. And the point of the book juxtaposing it like that seems to be that
genocide does not mean genocide! That is, any genocidal impulses are sublimated
into a different concept. Lynch argues that
“The reasons Joshua took up this
radically hyperbolic language of herem and total destruction might’ve been
similar to the reasons Jesus used radically violent language: ‘If your right
eye … [or] right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away’
(5:29-30). Jesus didn’t stop to say, ‘Now I’m speaking metaphorically here,
FYI.’ His audience knew it… the force of Jesus’ summons depended on him not
stopping to qualify it.”
If the book of Joshua uses hyperbole in regard to violence,
then what would a description without hyperbole look like? And what would be
the extent of the violence? The second time-stream gives us some really
important clues. The broader picture which emerges is that “the campaigns
listed in Joshua were geographically limited and most likely strategically
targeted at the Canaanite city-state strongholds.”
Even then, “the emphasis in Israel’s campaigns is upon the
killing of the kings rather than the cities as such.” Lynch crucially observes
that the book of Joshua “does not report the Israelites attacking any Canaanite
peasant villages or settlements or any encampments of pastoralists, an odd
omission if the text really sought to report annihilation of the entire
population.”
Lynch adds more detail:
“The people engaged in
conventional warfare against major urban centers and ousted some but not all of
their inhabitants. From a historical perspective, the purpose of these wars was
likely to dismantle the Canaanite city states, which were ruled by war lords
from large(-ish) cities but facing collapse in the 13th century [BC].
This deep narrative provides a
more nuanced picture of what might have actually happened when Israel fought with
the inhabitants of Canaan. Israel couldn’t ‘drive out’ the Jebusites living in
Jerusalem (15:63); they couldn’t ‘dislodge’ the Canaanites in Gezer (16:10);
they couldn’t ‘occupy’ the towns in the Trans-Jordan (17:13); Judah took the
hill country but couldn’t ‘drive out’ those living on the plains because of
their iron chariots (Judg 1:19) … and so on. These are but a few examples of
the way that Israel engaged in conventional warfare against major Canaanite
(Late Bronze) sites, were often unsuccessful, and ended up settling in the hill
country.
If you look at a map of the
actual cities Israel captured, they were quite limited…”
Lynch clarifies that
“the places early Israel actually
settled, according to the best archaeological guesses, are precisely between
the neutralized zones. In other words, the aims of the campaigns were likely to
‘de-militarize’ the royal strongholds to the north and south of regions where
Israel peaceably settled.”
This made it possible to settle in the countryside. And
“according to Joshua, all of Israel’s campaigns after Jericho and Ai were
defensive in nature.”
The surprises keep coming: “most of Israel’s battles were
against Canaanites in defense of the Canaanites!” Thus, the second time-stream
undermines the idea of total wipe-out, and it undermines the ideas that it was
a simplistic us-and-them thing. But isn’t this still a holy war of a kind that
makes us uncomfortable? Well, the second time-stream undermines that too,
because for a holy war, you need a holy army, and the Israelites had some
failings on that score…
Undermining the image of a holy army
Was Israel meant to be a holy super-army? Lynch notes that according
to the book of Joshua:
“Israel’s army was never its
source of strength. Its strength was ‘not with your sword or with your bow’
(Josh 24:12). Rather, it was the God enthroned in the praises of Israel who
defeats the enemy.”
This is warfare conducted, to take a verse from elsewhere,
“not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord”. That is, the
battle is waged by God rather more than by men. This partial transfer of
warfare from earth to the spiritual realms is crucial to Lynch’s argument as we
saw earlier. This was a war fought from heaven.
But it’s time to come to a different point, already touched
upon. There is still an armed Israelite army. Yet the familiar impression of a total
wipe-out holy super-army is subverted further, and here are a few pointers as
to that:
- At the book’s start, the Israelites don’t seem to be circumcised, which means they did not enter the land in a state of Israelite-style ritual holiness. Lynch: “Why was Israel uncircumcised in the first place? Weren’t they coming to displace the uncircumcised?” After all, “for Israel, the term ‘uncircumcised’ acted as a kind of slur for denigrating enemies. When confronted with Goliath, David asks, ‘Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?’ (1 Sam 17:26)”. The Israelite army in Joshua was not such a ritually pure army then.
- Also, even at the book’s end, the Israelites don’t seem to be avoiding pagan idol-worship. The evidence, as Lynch picks it up: “Joshua implores the people to ‘put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD’ (Josh 24:14). Not always such a faithful people, then.
- What about Joshua himself, was he a perfect model of faith? Lynch points out: “when Joshua appoints spies to go into the land, the reader has reason to furrow her brow. It looks like Joshua lacks faith. And that’s bad, right? Remember all the guarantees Joshua had (Josh 1)? Why would he even need to spy the land?” Joshua’s faith actually seems to waver there.
- And not such a well-prepared army either - the book of Joshua “doesn’t even mention weapons until chapter 5.” And get ready to be surprised at the first two times weapons are mentioned:
- Firstly, it’s to put right their lack of circumcision – ouch! Lynch: “the Israelites use the sword to render themselves—then uncircumcised (!)—vulnerable and submissive”. The first time that “the people use weapons (literally ‘flint swords’) it’s against themselves.” This is what it says: “Make yourselves flint swords and circumcise the Israelites again. So Joshua made flint swords and circumcised Israel at the ‘Hill of Foreskins.’” Lynch makes a telling point: “This would have been physically excruciating, and symbolically disempowering. As Mark Bucanan points out… ‘We know from earlier in the Bible that circumcision was a way of rendering yourself unfit for battle, vulnerable to attack.” So no, this army was not really well-prepared for battle. And it’s almost as if God deliberately allowed things to go this way.
- Secondly, an army commander come to the scene from heaven – yes! – but seems ambiguous about taking sides, which would be unsettling for the Israelites’ preparations. Lynch: “Yahweh’s own army commander raises his sword in a profoundly mysterious expression of non-alignment. He will not be paraded in to provide unqualified support for Israel’s army.” This is despite Joshua asking the heavenly commander explicitly, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” (5:13). Just look at the reply he got from Yahweh’s commander: “Neither! I have come as commander of the LORD’s army.’ Oh my – neither! There is a clear line drawn between God’s army and the Israelite army. So: “why doesn’t God re-affirm his earlier promises to guarantee victory for Joshua and the people? Why doesn’t the story resolve the encounter, instead of just leaving us with the image of Joshua bowed low before the non-aligned God?”
This is not the kind of preparation an army usually wants. The
fact that Yahweh’s commander is neither for nor against Joshua really changes
things, as Lynch explains:
“The storyteller wants to
unsettle and dislodge the binary us-them categories implied by a surface
reading of the book’s earlier chapters. One strand of the conquest story
fosters nationalistic confidence, religious certainty, and a story of success.
But Joshua (and later readers) needed to uncouple his perceptions of God from
the narrow confines of his patriotic story.”
That is perhaps more appealing to modern sensibilities. And
it means that the story can’t be just about cleansing pagan enemies from the
land, also given the many other points above. Which brings us to…
How the book of Joshua undermines us-and-them stories
Cleansing the conduct
of Israel
To summarise, if it’s about cleansing, then the second
time-stream is making the cleansing of the conduct of Israelites a top priority,
whereas total cleansing of pagans of the land is never a higher priority:
“Israel needed to become the circumcised people, they needed to become
non-idolaters.” Otherwise, as Lynch says, “If Israel did not cling to Yahweh,
he would let the nations remain. They would become thorns in their sides until
Israel was eventually ‘driven’ from the land (23:12-13).“ And that is more or
less the direction in which the story that the Old Testament develops.
The issues with Israel’s conduct aren’t just to do with
circumcision and idolatry. It’s also about the things that lead to idolatry. This
brings us back to the fact that Israelites could become idolaters under the
influence of pagan idolaters who were already in the land. I have spoken about
the smashing up of pagan objects. But there’s also the problem of Israelites
making treaties with the enemy. As Lynch says, “Moses’ words to the conquest…:
‘Make no covenant with them’ precedes the call to show the Canaanites no pity
(Deut 7:2).” But the people do make treaties with the enemy in the book of
Joshua. It takes shape with issues like intermarriage.
Intermarriage
Lynch is referring to intermarriage of Israelites with
non-Israelites: “God commanded the people to tear down the sacred altars and
idols of the nations and avoid intermarriage (Deut 7, 20). Intermarriage would
lead to idolatry, and vice-versa. On that basis, the people were specifically
instructed to avoid making covenants with the Canaanites.‘
The threat of this happening was still around towards the
end of the story, as Lynch explains,
“At the end of his life Joshua
told the people that many lands remained unclaimed, but promised that God would
eventually ‘push back’ and ‘drive out’ the nations that remained (Josh 23:5).
Yet there’s a hint of contingency to this promise. Notably, the people were not
to ‘mix’ with the remaining nations through marriage or worship, for that would
lead them away from their God (23:7, 12). Instead, they were to cling to Yahweh
(23:7-8).”
This is where the second-time-stream really is plainly different
from the first. It adds to the evidence that there was obviously no total
extermination. After all, how could the risk of intermarriage ever apply to
those you’ve exterminated? It couldn’t.
Intermarriage is not the only kind of treaty in the picture.
Because next we come to the fascinating story of Israel treating with the
street-smart prostitute Rahab. This story, we shall see, strongly undermines
ancient Israelite nationalism. It embarrasses Israel by portraying Rahab
showing in certain ways how Israel should really conduct itself. Israel’s
conduct should make it a shining light to the world, but it needs a prostitute
called Rahab to show them how to be that. There something very deliberate in
the book of Joshua telling the story this way.
How this story starts off embarrasses Israel again, showing
us moral weakness. Lynch: “So Joshua sends the spies from Shittim. And what did
his spies do? They went straight to the house of a prostitute! What were they
thinking? Well, most English translations don’t fully capture all the
innuendos. They ‘go into’ the house of Rahab ... This doesn’t look good.”
As one preacher I’ve heard puts it, Rahab knew how to hide
men and lie for them, perhaps using the skills of her profession!
Well, although that doesn’t reflect well on the spies,
actually Rahab proves to be the hero of the hour. Lynch argues rightly that the
“surprise encounter with Rahab suggests that the author is purposefully lifting
up the stereotypical Canaanite outsider—the embodiment of all that threatens
Yahwism—and subverting that stereotype.” And Rahab’s bravery only highlights
the failings and imperfections of the Israelites. Lynch, states that – setting
aside the obvious -
“Rahab proves to be the
incarnation of everything Israel was supposed to be! She shows hospitality to
the foreigners, protects them from harm through civil disobedience, extols the
mighty deeds and character of Yahweh, and acknowledges his supremacy (‘for the
LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath’ 2:11).”
So, the story of Rahab contributes mightily to the overall
critique that we find in the second time-stream: “Joshua is not a
straightforward tale of genocide… the book is designed to critique the
ethnocentric and nationalistic assumptions on which a genocidal ideology
depends.”
Obviously, we may still be uncomfortable with some of the
violence, and perhaps the reasons for it. As Lynch admits, “weaving those
critiques into a story that includes genocide might seem like a strange brew,
but there may be reasons. Maybe the simple conquest story was a cultural given
that needed to be re-examined, and one way to do that was to retell it in a way
that foregrounded the story of Rahab.”
“challenges
us to re-consider the question: Who’s in and who’s out? Rahab the archetypal
Canaanite is included in the people of God. By contrast, we read in Joshua 6
that an Israelite named Achan dies the death of a Canaanite (in accordance with
Deuteronomic law) because he sought to gain from the conquest. So Rahab’s
family was spared but Achan’s family was destroyed. By highlighting these two
specific cases, Joshua sends a signal that ‘not all Israel is Israel; not every
Canaanite is a Canaanite.’ The narrative space devoted to this subject (2
entire chapters) suggests an intentional focus on disturbing the boundaries
dividing insider and outsider identities.”
One of the ways in which the book of Joshua’s message was
that from time to time shows the conduct of Israel had needed to be cleansed,
but cleansed to wrongful attitudes and prejudices.
Footnote
The Bible
re-interprets
These might seem arcane and niche matters for Old Testament
buffs. But they play a part in the story of Jesus, which must be of interest to
many, if not all, Christians. His scriptures were what we call the Old
Testament, and the book of Joshua would have been no exception to him. And
Lynch picks up something very interesting in Matthew’s Gospel:
“Yeshua or Joshua in Hebrew—met a
‘Canaanite’ woman (Matt 15:22). It’s highly anachronistic for Matthew to use
the term ‘Canaanite,’ since it’s the only time that the term is used in the
Gospels. The use must be deliberate. In fact, when Jesus encounters her, she
asks for mercy, because her daughter was oppressed by a demon. Now, for
Jesus/Joshua to meet a Canaanite asking for mercy (remember: ‘show them no
mercy’) sounds like a re-enactment of the conquest. But rather than applying
Deuteronomy 7 literally, Jesus engages in a battle of wits about who’s in and
who’s out. In other words, Jesus negotiates with the enemy. Seeing the woman’s
‘great faith,’ he heals her daughter. By moving toward the one who his
disciples wanted to ‘dismiss’ (Matt 15:23), he found a Canaanite ‘outsider’
with the faith of an Israelite ‘insider.’”
So what have we found? If we look at the book of Joshua as
history, we have to understand what kind of history its author was writing –
this is always part of the historian’s task, to understand what kind of thing a
book was meant to be in its own time. If we don’t try to do that, we are apt to
miss the original author’s intentions. And that is why a two time-stream
understanding gets us well past the lazy assumption that it is a book of
genocide. (I hope you found my analogy of two time-streams, culled from the
language of science-fiction, helpful!) Perhaps I should leave this subject with
this message from Lynch:
“I don’t think Joshua tells a
story of straightforward genocide, its claims are nonetheless radical and
reflective of reality. We need these texts to work on us like these shocking
words from Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:
If
anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and
children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my
disciple. (Luke 14:26)”.
Hyperbole, rhetoric from a different age, to be understood,
and not just read off the surface. It’s often said that the past is a foreign
country, and we are mistaken to think that it always speaks to us on our own
terms. We have to understand it on its terms. Religious scripture from
antiquity, Judaeo/Christian Scripture included, is a case in point.
I’m grateful to Matthew Lynch for his support in my publishing
these posts, based on his work, on the Book
of Joshua. Here are links to the posts by Matthew, around which my mine
have been drawn:
http://theologicalmisc.net/2016/06/jesus-resolve-joshua-violence-joshua-vii/
Here are links to my three posts in this short series on the Book of Joshua:
Here are links to my three posts in this short series on the Book of Joshua:
You are here - Part three
Thanks for doing this, Colin. Some really insightful thoughts from a Matt Lynch which will help me as I reflect on Joshua in future. I love the undermining of ‘us and them’ thinking that he traces from us early as Deuteronomy. It also goes back to Exodus, where a mixed multitude leave Egypt (12:38).
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