Joshua 7-10 Recap | OT Ep 27

In this episode, Austin and Ashley continue to story of the New Generation of Israel now under Joshua's leadership. They discuss the consequences of Achan's sin, the victory over Ai, the deception of the Gibeonites, and the battle against the five kings. They highlight themes of obedience, faith, and God's sovereignty throughout these narratives, drawing parallels to the gospel and the importance of humility before God.

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:26 The Sin of Achan (Ch 7)
• 4:25 The Victory at Ai (Ch 8)
• 6:32 The Deception of the Gibeonites (Ch 9)
• 10:04 The Battle Against the Five Kings (Ch 10)

Transcript

Hey everyone

My name is Austin, and my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Welcome in to episode 27. We are so glad y'all are here with us whenever you're listening.

Today's recap will cover Joshua chapter 7 through chapter 10.

Coming out of an astounding victory over Jericho, it seems that this new generation of Israelites are finally being obedient to the Lord and flourishing and conquering…oh wait…chapter 7 verse 1. But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. For Achan the son of Carmi, son of Zabdi, son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of the devoted things.

and the anger of the Lord burned against the people of Israel.

Now, this sin is unbeknownst to Joshua, and he sends a few spies to AI to scope it out.

and the spies report back that the men of the city are few. We only need about 2 3,000 men to attack them. So Joshua sent about 3,000 men to attack Ai, but unfortunately did not do this at God's command, nor did he seek the counsel of the Lord prior to doing so, or the Lord would have told him there was a covenant-breaking sin amongst them. Verse five tells us,

and the men of Ai killed about 36 of their men and chased them before the gate as far as Shibarim and struck them at the descent.

and the hearts of the people melted and became as water.

Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the LORD until evening. He and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads.

So looking back, the way Jericho fell, it seems they did not lose a single warrior. And here they lost 36 men and were defeated. After that, now in verse seven, Joshua seeks the Lord. However, we see a little familiar attitude here. Joshua said, alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to give us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us?

would that we had been content to dwell beyond the Jordan. O Lord, what can I say when Israel has turned their backs before their enemies?

To Joshua's credit, at least he didn't say we would have been better off to go back to Egypt. We are seeing some growth in the complaining.

And we see the Lord's patient response in verse 10.

I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you.

The Lord goes on to tell Joshua how to find the one who is responsible and that he and all he has must be destroyed. Sure enough, Joshua finds Achan, the guilty one, and he and all he has, including his family and livestock, were stoned with stones and burned with fire. Now, something to note,

It should really sober us that the Lord saw Achan when no one else did. We already read in Numbers 32-23 that your sin will find you out. It should make us pause more that Achan hid until they forced his hand. The sin of one man corporately separates an entire nation with the Lord's favor. However, the good news for us is that in salvation,

God makes many sinners righteous through the obedience of one man. That's a bonus gospel glimpse for you guys.

The chapter ends by telling us Joshua named this place the Valley of Achor, which means the Valley of Trouble, because of the trouble Achan brought upon them there.

So the story continues in chapter 8, with the Lord instructing Joshua to take all the fighting men to initiate this attack on Ai. He says, I have given into your hand the king of Ai and his people, his city and his land, and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king.

Only its spoil and its livestock you shall take as a plunder for yourselves. Lay an ambush against the city behind it.

This command seems kind of ironic after the events of chapter 7. If only Achan could have waited. Considering God made literally everything, he has the right to determine the nature and extent of destruction in any battle.

So Joshua takes 10 times the men this time, 30,000 men, and they set up an ambush for the city. They'll take 5,000 men and appear to be attacking and flee just as before, but then the rest of the 25,000 men will be the main attack force.

and the king of AI falls for it.

Verse says, Then the Lord said to Joshua, Stretch out your javelin that is in your hand toward Ai, for I will give it into your hand. And Joshua stretched out the javelin that was in his hand toward the city. And the men in the ambush rose quickly out of their place

As soon as he had stretched out his hand, they ran and entered the city and captured it, And they hurried to set the city on fire. This scene is very akin to Moses holding up his staff in Exodus 17 during the battle against the Amalekites. And who led those armies into battle? Joshua did. So it seems he learned something that day. So back to our passage in chapter eight.

Verse 26 says, but Joshua did not draw back his hand with which he stretched out the javelin until he had devoted all the inhabitants of AI to destruction.

This chapter closes with Joshua's continued obedience to what Moses had commanded him to

tells us, there was not a word of all that Moses commanded that Joshua did not read before all of the assembly of Israel, and the women and the little ones and the sojourners who lived among them. So with this, Joshua renews the covenant with the assembly and reads the book of the law. This would have included the blessings and the cursings and included language like, cause your enemies to rise against you to be defeated before you.

These and similar words were read during this ceremony and likely made it to the kings in surrounding areas, which carries us right into chapter nine.

Chapter 9 features a huge deception put on by whole people.

The people are known as the Gibeonites, as their capital city, if you will, is Gibeon.

which is in the promised land.

They come down to the encampment looking like sojourners themselves with worn out wine skins, crunchy bread, and so on.

The Gibeonites knew that their cities would be devoted to destruction as Jericho and Ai have been and they wanted to make a deal. But they knew enough to know the Israelites wouldn't make a deal with any kingdom or people from the land, so they got creative.

The Gibeonites fooled the leaders of Israel, making them believe that they were from a far-off nation and wanted to make a covenant with Israel and serve Yahweh.

And Joshua reluctantly agrees.

Soon after, Israel was moving through the land on their conquest

and came to the cities of the Gibeonites and figured out the fact that they had been deceived. When Joshua called the leaders of Gibeon out, they confessed the whole thing.

The people, the Israelites, wanted to destroy Gibeon and its cities, but Joshua reminded them that he had made a covenant with them, and that if Israel broke that covenant, the wrath of God would fall on Israel for breaking the covenant.

For the first time, the people murmured for good reason. They were frustrated because they knew that that covenant should not have been made with the people from the land. But Joshua was right. It was too late for that now.

Joshua allowed them to live and upheld the covenant that he had made with them, but the Gibeonites would have to stock the tabernacle with wood and water continually. Now that may not sound like a big deal, but let's think about it. The tabernacle had fire going around the clock and needed a whole lot of water for all the rituals. This would have been a ton of work. The people of Gibeon gladly accepted this work though.

So in light of that, I want to draw your attention to, even though the way Gideon went about doing this was wrong, the fact that they desired to submit to God.

They could see the writing on the wall and they really believed that nothing could or would stop God and His chosen nation.

The people of Gibeon and Rahab, back from chapter 2, have this in common.

they can see that this God really is God and rather than fight against that

They desired a covenant with Him and guys. What's wild is they got it.

neither them deserved it

They were both firmly in the enemy camp before and now they are in covenant relationship with Israel. This is such a great glimpse of the gospel and how we, who the scripture defines as being in Adam, go from being in the enemy camp to being adopted and a part of the family of God.

In a similar fashion, we have to lay down our pride and bow before this King of Kings and call him Lord.

But juxtapose this to the kings of the Canaanites here in chapter 10 as we're moving into that, who came out to fight against the people of Israel. They were terrified, but not enough to kneel. If you think about that for a moment, it sort of doesn't make sense, right? I mean, you may think that's so irrational. Why would they be afraid and yet go fight?

They had to know they couldn't win.

but y'all the Lord resists the proud.

God bids sinners to come to him with a careful and contrite spirit, but choosing to fight against him is a very dangerous game.

So like I said, the five kings come out to fight against Israel, but what they do is they actually go up to attack Gibeon. The people of Gibeon get word to Joshua, and Joshua marches Israel's army overnight and takes the kings by surprise the next day. The Lord, who is the leader of God's army, sends panic on the forces of the kings

as Israel begins its assault.

that day, the sun and moon stood still to give Israel time to exact vengeance on their enemies. By the way, this is an oft-debated miracle.

Even some believers have issue with this because the earth rotates around the sun and not the sun around the earth.

There are actually multiple other interpretations other than the literal reading of the passage. such as this would be Joshua picking up in a then current pagan belief that when the sun and moon stood opposite one another but were in the sky at the same time that that was a bad omen.

another would be perhaps there was an eclipse and there are actually several others but we'll move on

The thing about all of the alternate interpretations is that they all have their problems.

The one regarding the potential eclipse doesn't work because the scripture says the sun and moon were opposite one another. The one about the bad omens has an issue because it does seem the day actually lasted much longer than normal. I actually think the literal reading is the correct one. When someone asks, well, how can that be? I don't know the answer to that, but I also don't have to. God made everything out of nothing. We have never been able to reproduce that feed, even making a grain of sand

out of nothing

is impossible for us. So if that same God who made everything out of nothing decided to hold the earth and the moon still at a certain point, it wouldn't be hard for him to figure out how to do that.

the five kings escape the original foray and hide themselves in a cave. Joshua has the cave sealed up until everything is finished, and then he comes back and releases them. He and the leaders of the military execute them and bury them in the cave they tried to hide in.

army of the kings fled, some were ran down by the Israelites, but many more were actually killed by large hail that fell from heaven. is not insignificant. Remember, this is one of the same plagues the Lord sent on Egypt in judgment, and it further shows how the Lord is fighting in this conflict. This is as much or more His war on the Amorites than it is Israel's.

Chapter 10 ends with kind of a repetitive cadence to it. You'll see Joshua and Israel conquer each of these kingdoms in successive order, and each time the Bible says,

As he had done to blank the last city or kingdom to fall

up to fight against Israel in verse 33.

We aren't really sure of their motives and they weren't in Israel sites at the time. Gezer was about 20 miles from where these battles were taking place. So it wasn't as if...

Israel was coming for them directly. either case, their army and king were destroyed in the fray. At the end of all of these things, Joshua and the army of Israel returned to their encampment at Gibeon

We are going to pause right there and pick the story back up in the next episode. May His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.