In joshua how fast was the conquest of canaan

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Nehemiah 13 Nov. Esther 14 Nov. Esther 15 Nov. Esther 16 Nov. Esther 17 Nov. Esther 18 Nov. Esther 19 Nov. Esther 20 Nov. Esther 21 Nov. Esther , 22 Nov. The rebellion builds quickly, and humanity, created to spread the peace and flourishing of God throughout the earth, spreads disaster instead. In Genesis 12 , God chose one man, Abraham, and promised that, through him and his family, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

God then told Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land that was then inhabited by the Canaanites, so that as one people group, Yahweh would be their God and they would be his people. After the exodus from Egypt , Moses passed his leadership of the Israelites to Joshua. This is where the book confuses a lot of people. Why would God command his kingdom of priests to kick things off with an invasion? Before we land on answers to those questions, we need to take a deeper look at the culture and characters in play here.

The Bible paints a pretty grim picture of Canaanite practices. Leviticus and Deuteronomy contain detailed and lurid lists including: the worship of demonic idols, taboo sexual acts, and even the sacrifice of children to the Canaanite gods. The battles of the book of Joshua were not simply one ancient tribe using violence to displace another and then using God to underwrite their own territorial agenda.

So that is the why of the conquest, but what about the how? It turns out there is a whole lot more going on with these battle stories than most modern readers expect. God is pulling down the Great Wall of China, not demolishing Beijing. Israel is taking out the Pentagon, not New York City.

God put firm boundaries on the extent of the conquest, and several of the tribes in the region were not to be harmed at all Deuteronomy 2. God also put a time boundary on the conquest Deuteronomy God told them that he would drive the people out slowly over time. Deuteronomy 20 lays out the rules of warfare for the Israelite nation, a sort of ancient Geneva Convention. In that passage, God instructs Israel to offer terms of peace to their enemies before a battle.

This is the language of exile, not destruction. In fact, only three fortresses were totally destroyed: Jericho, AI, and Hazor Joshua , , Most often, even if a city or region was to be taken, its inhabitants were not to be destroyed. But just a few chapters later, when other Israelites go to these cities, there are still Canaanite people living there Joshua Perhaps some of you are scratching your heads after reading that last point.

What gives? The conquest accounts use extreme battle language to describe what Israel was doing in Canaan. Often, the key to understanding them lies in understanding the context out of which they came. How can this vivid battle language be understood then? We would like to suggest three things that are happening here: idiom, exaggeration, and rhetoric. Ancient cultures had literary idioms—or figurative language that says one thing but means another—just like we do.

They just mean it is raining hard. With idioms, to take the words literally is to misread them. For an example of an ancient battle idiom, consider this: 2 Kings tells the story of the Assyrian invasion of Israel, which was turned back after a miraculous defeat during the siege of Jerusalem.

Similarly, Joshua uses idioms like these when he is writing his battle narratives. As modern people, we expect a level of journalistic accuracy when it comes to historical accounts, but ancient cultures had a different understanding of things. In ancient battle narratives the exploits of the protagonists are often inflated for literary effect. However, as we know, Israel was never wiped out by Egypt.

The language was hyperbolic trash-talk. The book of Joshua observes the same conventions of exaggeration when it describes the scope and intensity of the conquest. Rhetoric often employs figurative language and conforms to the conventions of a literary tradition. In this case, the conventions of ancient warfare narratives are observed.

Rhetoric is meant to be persuasive; it has an agenda and a story to tell. Though the conquest remains a difficult section of Scripture for many reasons, we hope a clearer picture of the context and the scope of the conquest helps ease some of the tension we all feel when reading these passages.

Every part of the story points toward this great narrative arc of redemption, even the conquest of Canaan. We would expect to see a warlord who comes to set things right by might and blood. Though Jesus did come to set things right by blood, he is as far from a vengeful warlord as it is possible to be. Jesus was born into a poor family and oppressed by the Roman empire, and he knew what it meant to be marginalized and outcast.

In his ministry, he rejected violence as a means to establish his Kingdom Matthew He crossed tribal, ethnic, and cultural boundaries in his offer of love and grace, even to a Canaanite woman Matthew Similar to Joshua, Jesus came to drive evil out of his creation. In the book of Joshua, God was triumphant in Canaan despite the death and violence of battle. In Jesus, God triumphed over death itself because of the violence he endured.

The conquest is not the evidence of a strange divide between the Old Testament and its angry God and the New Testament. Rather, Joshua points to Jesus, the true conqueror, who announces an alternate Kingdom in the midst of ruling powers of evil. He holds an M. How to Read the Bible. Word Studies. Old Testament Overviews.