Get Real November 23 Devotional
November 23, 2024
JOSHUA 6:21| Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys.
The Joshua narratives have been heavily criticized on moral grounds. Why does God insist on and Joshua carry out, the instruction to destroy the population of Jericho, putting the population to the ban. Some of this criticism is anachronistic using later standards of conflict to judge an earlier era. The conquest of Canaan took place long before the international conventions on human rights and warfare, long before the slow development of a just war tradition that sought to constrain conflict and distinguish combatants and civilians. The world of 1200 or 1300 BC involved a brutal struggle for survival. But this verse does show the tendency of human beings to glorify their clans and nations, forgetting their common humanity. We see that common humanity and common origins in the creation narratives, Genesis 1 and 2, and in the list of nations in Genesis 10. Jesus too challenges blind nationalism and pushes his contemporaries toward a view of God’s saving purpose, wider than their own race and nation.
What is good about nation states?
What is dangerous?
