Thursday, February 10, 2011

Week 5 (The Law & the Land) – Day 5: The Fall of Jericho

Day 25 – The Fall of Jericho - Joshua 5:13-6:27

The fall of Jericho is the first step in the account of Joshua’s campaign of conquest.  On the one hand this is a fairly simple story: obey God, even act in a manner which seems odd, and God will deliver.  It is clear that God is the actor here, not the Israelites.  This is a simple place to stop, especially for a blog.     

But I can’t help but mention that violence in scripture is a complex issue, far beyond what can be discussed here.  Unfortunately this is exactly the type of passage used to justify violence against “others”.  We have enough instances of ethnic cleansing, terrorism and violence all being justified by spurious interpretations of religious documents. 

Within the Reformed Tradition, we have a set of guidelines for reading scripture.  One of the guidelines is called the rule of love.  This is based on Matthew 22:36-39: Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He [Jesus] said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 

Our Confessions support this as well.  One example is from a section of the 2nd Helvetic Confession, written in 1561: “We hold that interpretation of the Scripture to be orthodox and genuine which agree[s] with the rule of faith and love, and contributes much to the glory of God and man's salvation.”

In the midst of our own violent world, may we pray for peace.

In Christ,
Randy

 
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3 comments:

  1. gayFebruary 11, 2011 at 7:25 PM

    God's messenger gave the message. Joshua knew it was God's message he knew the Holy ground. Sometimes people will say the message is from God, yet it wasn't God's message. God is powerful and those he talks with know His voice, they may even argue with Him not to carry out the message. The best we can do is study, listen,and keep in communication with Him and we as sheep will know the voice of the master.

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  2. UnknownFebruary 19, 2011 at 7:25 PM

    Is there a correlation between the 7 days of creation and the 7th day when Jericho fell?
    (I am a little behind with the readings!)

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  3. Pastor RandyFebruary 19, 2011 at 8:04 PM

    Hi Karen,

    I have never heard a relation made. Certain numbers such as 3, 7, 40 show up over and over in Scripture. This has much to do with certain numbers which were considered "perfect". Would take a lot more to discuss the issue of numerology (study of the meaning of numbers) than we can cover in this.

    Don't worry about where yo uare at. Best I can tell we are scattered over a variety of places. Big thing is to keep moving, wherever you are.
    Randy

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