God Gives The Earth To Us (Joshua 10:29-11:23) Series

If you walk up to a random Christian in church, and ask them what the book of Joshua is about, they will tell you it's about the conquest of the land God promised Israel. But consider this: we are almost through Joshua 10, and at this point in the book, Joshua has conquered three cities: Jericho, Ai, and Makkedah. And none of these cities were captured for Israel to actually use. The focus of each of these stories has been on two things: the khereming of everyone living inside of the city, and the killing of the city's (Nephilim) king.

By the end of our passage this morning, this overall situation is going to look completely different. AJ has told his story slowly up this point. But now, he picks up the pace of his story telling. What you are going to read is going to feel like a blur of action. Joshua and Israel will strike one city after another, taking/capturing it, killing everyone in it, killing its king, and looting anything valuable.

If you are like me, when you read these chapters, you are going to instinctively visualize this as describing the near-total conquest of Canaan. Joshua 10:28-43 describes Joshua's campaign against the southern half of the country. Joshua 11:1-23 describes Joshua's campaign against the northern half of the country.

But our initial reaction to these verses is almost certainly wrong (What follows is loosely based on MIchael Heiser, The Unseen Realm). What you're about to read, you should understand as a series of raids. More like, what the Vikings used to do, raiding up and down the coastlands.

Joshua isn't going to try to hold any of these territories. He's not going to leave behind a garrison. He's not going to set up a provisional government in any of these cities.

If Joshua's not going to do these things, what is he going to do?

He's going to kill lots and lots of people.

As we read, these attacks are going to sound random. We are going to wonder, "Why these people? Why these cities? Why these kings?"

What Joshua is doing in these chapters is specifically targeting the Anakites.

Let's cheat, and read 11:19-22 first:

(19) There wasn't a city that made peace with the sons of Israel except the Hivites, the dwellers of Gibeon.

All/everything they took/captured in battle,

because from Yahweh it was to harden their heart to encounter the war with Israel, in order to kherem them, not being for them mercy but in order to destroy/exterminate them, just as Yahweh had commanded Moses,

(21) and Joshua came at that time and he exterminated/cut off the Anakites from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country/mountain of Judah and from all the hill/mountain country of Israel.

With their cities Joshua kheremed.

(22) The Anakites weren't left over in the land of the sons of Israel.

Only, in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod they remained,

Why is Joshua committing genocide against the Anakites? Why is he trying to exterminate them?

Our answer is found in Numbers 13:25-33:

25 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land. 26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 And they told him, “We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea, and along the Jordan.”

30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” 31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we.” 32 So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

And who are the Nephilim again? For that, we have to read Genesis 6:1-4 (NRSV):