Into the Land

Read it: Joshua 1–6; Joshua 24

Moses was dead. For forty years he had led Israel, and he had died on a mountain looking out over a land he would never enter. The job passed to his assistant, Joshua, one of the two scouts who had trusted God at Kadesh. God said: “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore arise, you and all these people, and cross over the Jordan into the land that I am giving to the children of Israel” (Joshua 1:2). The promise made to Abraham centuries before was about to be kept.

Joshua had enormous shoes to fill. Three times He told him to be strong and courageous, and He gave the reason: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). His courage was tied to God’s word: “This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth” (Joshua 1:8).

A woman on the wall

Across the Jordan stood Jericho, one of the oldest walled cities in the world. Joshua sent two spies, and they lodged with a woman named Rahab, a prostitute whose house was built into the city wall. When the king’s men came looking, she hid the spies on her roof and sent the search party the wrong way. The Bible records her lie without praising it. What it does praise is her faith. Jericho had heard what God did at the Red Sea, and while everyone else was terrified, Rahab drew a conclusion: “the LORD your God is God in the heavens above and on the earth below” (Joshua 2:11). She asked for mercy, and the spies told her to tie a scarlet cord in her window. Her whole family would be safe inside.

The Jordan was in flood. But when the priests carrying the ark stepped into the river, the water stopped upstream, and “all Israel crossed over the dry ground” (Joshua 3:17), just as their parents had crossed the sea. They piled up twelve stones from the riverbed as a memorial, “so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty” (Joshua 4:24). The manna stopped. They were home.

Then, near Jericho, Joshua saw a man standing with a drawn sword. Joshua asked, “Are You for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” He replied. “I have now come as Commander of the LORD’s army” (Joshua 5:14). Joshua fell on his face. That one word, “Neither”, matters for everything that follows. God is not Israel’s mascot. The question is never whether God is on our side, but whether we are on His.

God’s battle plan sounded absurd. For six days the people marched silently around the city once, with priests blowing rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day they marched around seven times, and then they shouted. “The people gave a great shout, and the wall collapsed” (Joshua 6:20). Jericho fell not to weapons but to God.

The hard part

The next verse is one no honest reader should skip: “they devoted to destruction everything in the city—man and woman, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys” (Joshua 6:21). “Devoted to destruction” translates a Hebrew word meaning handed over entirely to God, in judgment. If this troubles you, it should. Faithful Christians have wrestled with it for centuries. It shouldn’t be explained away, but the Bible itself gives us some things to hold alongside it.

It was judgment, and long delayed. Centuries earlier God told Abraham his family must wait, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). The Bible names what was happening in Canaan, including the burning of children as sacrifices to gods (Deuteronomy 18:10). God waited four hundred years.

Israel was not the good guys. “It is not because of your righteousness or uprightness of heart that you are going in to possess their land” (Deuteronomy 9:5). God held His own people to the same standard: “if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you” (Leviticus 18:28). Centuries later, that is exactly what happened.

Mercy was open. Rahab, a Canaanite, turned to God and lived, with her whole family (Joshua 6:25), and later the people of Gibeon, a Canaanite town that came seeking peace, were spared (Joshua 9). God says, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked should turn from their ways and live” (Ezekiel 33:11).

It was one moment, not a pattern. The command belonged to this land at this point in the story, and the Bible never tells God’s people to do it anywhere else. Many scholars also note that ancient war reports used sweeping language, since Joshua and Judges themselves show Canaanites still living in the land afterwards. Christians weigh that point differently. What they agree on is that Jesus told His followers, “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), and the church has no holy wars to fight.

Not every question disappears. But this is not a story of a tribal god who hates foreigners. It is the story of a patient Judge whose mercy reached right inside the doomed city.

Choose this day

Years later, an old Joshua gathered the tribes and retold the whole story from Abraham onward. Then he put a choice before them: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve ... As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” (Joshua 24:15). The people promised, and for a generation they kept it. What happened when the next generation forgot is the next chapter.

Where Jesus is in this

Joshua’s name in Hebrew, Yehoshua, means “the LORD saves”. Its shorter form, Yeshua, is the name the angel gave Mary’s son: “you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Joshua led Israel into the land, but Hebrews says that wasn’t the final rest God had in mind: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:8–9). Jesus is the greater Joshua who brings His people home for good.

And Rahab? She shows up in the first chapter of the New Testament, in Jesus’ own family tree: “Salmon was the father of Boaz by Rahab” (Matthew 1:5). The Canaanite woman who hung a scarlet cord in her window became a great-great-grandmother of King David, and an ancestor of the Saviour. Judgment is real, and the Bible doesn’t hide it. But at the cross Jesus took judgment on Himself, so that anyone, from any people, who turns to Him can live.

Think about it: Joshua asked, “Are You for us or for our enemies?” and God said, “Neither.” Do you ever treat God as being on your side, instead of asking whether you are on His?

Go deeper: He Holds My Tomorrows by Gareth Evans — Evans tells the story of the spies and the fall of Jericho through Rahab, admits plainly that her lie is not to be commended, and shows how her faith became a confession that saved her family and wrote her into the family tree of Jesus. Start with chapter 17, “Rahab”.