Our passage this morning shouldn't make sense to you. Not because the language is complicated, or because it's hard to visualize the events it describes. It shouldn't make sense to you, because the battle we've been reading about for the past two weeks between Israel and the Amorite kings has been nothing, except a glorious victory for Yahweh, and Israel.
Two weeks ago, we read about how Yahweh threw the Amorites into confusion, and Israel's enemy panicked. Joshua and Israel cut down their enemies for miles as they ran away, while Yahweh threw enormous hail stones from the heavens to kill thousands of the Amorites. Last week, read about how Joshua, seeing the daylight hours fading, commanded the sun to stop moving, and Yahweh heeded. This was a day, literally, like no other-- when Yahweh openly, obviously, gloriously, fought for his people.
In today's passage, AJ gives us a third angle on this day's happenings. Today, we read about the fate of these five Amorite kings who dared to attack Yahweh's people.
Starting in Joshua 10:16, and I'll read half-way through verse 21:
(16) and these five kings fled,
and they hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah,
(17) and it was reported to Joshua, saying,
"Five of the kings were found hidden in the cave at Makkedah,"
(18) And Joshua said,
"Roll great stones to the mouth of the cave,
and set by it men to guard them,
(19) while you , may you not stay.
Pursue after your enemies,
and attack them from the rear.
May you not allow them to go to their cities
because Yahweh your God has given them into your hand."
(20) And then, as soon as Joshua and the sons of Israel finished striking them a very great blow until they perished, the survivors survived from them, and they went into the fortified cities,
(21) and all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace.
No one threatened his tongue against the sons of Israel, against [any] man,
So let's pause here. Even with the sun stopping, and Yahweh throwing hail stones, some of their enemy got away, and made it to the safety of their fortified cities. But the day's victory was complete. Verse 21 is a little confusing, maybe. In most battles, some enemy soldiers are killed, and some are just wounded. You struck down your enemy with your sword, and it was a killing blow. You move on to the next soldier. Sometimes, you don't quite kill your enemy. You leave them dying. They are out of the fight, just hanging on for life as they slowly, inevitably die. What verse 21 is saying, is that everyone was completely dead. No one hanging on for life saw the Israelites go by, and had just enough strength to curse them. They are all dead.
Picking the story back up, reading through verse 25:
and Joshua said,
"Open the mouth of the cave,
and bring out to me those five kings from the cave,"
(23) and they did thus,
and they brought out to him these five kings from the cave--the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Yarmut, the king of Lakish, the King of Eglon-- ,
(24) and then , as soon as these kings were brought out to Joshua, Joshua called to all the men of Israel,
and he said to the commanders of the men of the camp, the ones who had gone with him,
"Come near.
Put your feet on the necks of these kings,"
and they came near,
and they put their feet on their necks,
(25) and Joshua said to them,
"May you not be afraid,
and may you not be shattered.
Be strong and courageous,
because in this way Yahweh shall do to all your enemies who you are fighting,"
In verse 25, Joshua uses the same language Yahweh used toward him, after the crushing defeat at Ai. He says, "May you not be afraid, and may you not be shattered" (Joshua 8:1).
Back in Joshua 8, we understood why Joshua was shattered. He had led the Israelites into battle against Ai, but Yahweh didn't go with him because of Israel's--and Achan's-- sin. The end result was a crushing defeat. So we understood why Joshua would have a hard time trusting Yahweh after this, and why he'd be tempted to just quit.
But returning back to Joshua 10:25:
1) Why would the commanders of Israel's army be afraid and shattered by these kings? These kings were found cowering in a cave, after fleeing in battle. Their armies are decimated. And Joshua has them at sword point, under his control. Why would they fear an enemy whose neck is under their foot (Psalm 110:1)?
2) Why would Joshua make the commanders put their feet on these kings' neck? Why do the commanders need reassurance that Yahweh will kill all their enemies?
When Saddam Hussein was found hiding after the second Gulf War, I still remember the pictures. He was filthy, with dirty, unkept beard and hair. This was the man who ruled as dictator of Iraq for decades. The man who many people legitimately lived in fear of.
Who was still scared of Saddam when they found him, when they saw him? Who was falling apart in fear-- who was shattered? No one.
So what is it about these kings that's so terrifying? Why, on this day of all days, does Joshua have to reassure the commanders of the army that they can defeat these kings-- that they don't need to be shattered, or afraid, of them?
Let's keep reading, and we will find a couple more questions to add to the outline. Starting back up in verse 26, reading through verse 28:
(26) and Joshua struck them down after thus,
and he killed them,
and he hanged them on five trees,
and they were hanging on the trees until evening,
(27) and then, at the time of the going of the sun, Joshua commanded,
and they brought them down from on the trees,
and they threw them into the cave where they had hidden themselves there,
and they set great stones against the mouth of the cave until this very day,
(28) while Makkedah, Joshua captured on that day,
and he struck it with the mouth of the sword, and its king.
He kheremed them,
while every person that was in it he did not leave behind [as] a survivor,
and he did to the king of Makkedah, just as he had done to the king of Jericho.
In these verses, we find ourselves with the same questions we've had throughout the book of Joshua. Why does Joshua kherem-- kill everyone-- in the cities of these Amorite kings? Why does he keep hanging the kings of these cities after killing them, and treat their bodies so brutally?
Today, I'm going to try to answer this.
AJ gives us a clue, to help us answer this. And this clue is like a thread we can trace all the way back, to near the beginning of Genesis. The clue is this: these kings are Amorites.
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Everything that follows is loosely based on Michael Heiser's book The Unseen Realm. Heiser is a well-respected evangelical, who earned a PhD in Hebrew from arguably the best school for that in the world (U of W Madison).
His book has received high praise from professors from Dallas Seminary, TEDS, and Fuller. Everything that follows may be new to you, but it's orthodox, and well within mainstream evangelical OT study.
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If we'd started reading Joshua after Deuteronomy, like we should've, we'd have come into our story understanding Amorites a little better. Moses killed two Amorite kings himself, Sihon and Og. And these two kings have been
name-dropped at least twice in Joshua.
Let's turn to Deuteronomy 2:16-3:11:
16 “So as soon as all the men of war had perished and were dead from among the people, 17 the LORD said to me, 18 ‘Today you are to cross the border of Moab at Ar. 19 And when you approach the territory of the people of Ammon, do not harass them or contend with them, for I will not give you any of the land of the people of Ammon as a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot for a possession.’ 20 (It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— 21 a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim; but the LORD destroyed them before the Ammonites,[a] and they dispossessed them and settled in their place, 22 as he did for the people of Esau, who live in Seir, when he destroyed the Horites before them and they dispossessed them and settled in their place even to this day. 23 As for the Avvim, who lived in villages as far as Gaza, the Caphtorim, who came from Caphtor, destroyed them and settled in their place.) 24 ‘Rise up, set out on your journey and go over the Valley of the Arnon. Behold, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his land. Begin to take possession, and contend with him in battle. 25 This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.’
26 “So I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedemoth to Sihon the king of Heshbon, with words of peace, saying, 27 ‘Let me pass through your land. I will go only by the road; I will turn aside neither to the right nor to the left. 28 You shall sell me food for money, that I may eat, and give me water for money, that I may drink. Only let me pass through on foot, 29 as the sons of Esau who live in Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me, until I go over the Jordan into the land that the LORD our God is giving to us.’ 30 But Sihon the king of Heshbon would not let us pass by him, for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, that he might give him into your hand, as he is this day.31 And the LORD said to me, ‘Behold, I have begun to give Sihon and his land over to you. Begin to take possession, that you may occupy his land.’ 32 Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Jahaz. 33 And the LORD our God gave him over to us, and we defeated him and his sons and all his people. 34 And we captured all his cities at that time and devoted to destruction[b] every city, men, women, and children. We left no survivors. 35 Only the livestock we took as spoil for ourselves, with the plunder of the cities that we captured. 36 From Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and from the city that is in the valley, as far as Gilead, there was not a city too high for us. The LORD our God gave all into our hands. 37 Only to the land of the sons of Ammon you did not draw near, that is, to all the banks of the river Jabbok and the cities of the hill country, whatever the LORD our God had forbidden us.
3 “Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan. And Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei.2 But the LORD said to me, ‘Do not fear him, for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you shall do to him as you did to Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.’ 3 So the LORD our God gave into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people, and we struck him down until he had no survivor left. 4 And we took all his cities at that time—there was not a city that we did not take from them—sixty cities, the whole region of Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 5 All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides very many unwalled villages. 6 And we devoted them to destruction,[a] as we did to Sihon the king of Heshbon, devoting to destruction every city, men, women, and children. 7 But all the livestock and the spoil of the cities we took as our plunder. 8 So we took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon 9 (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir), 10 all the cities of the tableland and all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. 11 (For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits[b] was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.[c])
Let's talk about Og. Og was the last remaining Rephaim. What's a Rephaim? In Deuteronomy 2:20-21, they are described as giants, as being like the Anakim.
Who are the Anakim? For that, we have to turn to Numbers 13:17-33:
17 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up into the Negeb and go up into the hill country, 18 and see what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, 19 and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, 20 and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.
21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. 22 They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 And they came to the Valley of Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they also brought some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eshcol,[a] because of the cluster that the people of Israel cut down from there.
Report of the Spies
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 people of Israel 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 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell 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 the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
Now we have to take one last step. Who are the Nephilim? For that, we have to read Genesis 6:1-4:
6 When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in[a] man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim[b] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
Who are the sons of God? I think, based on passages like Psalm 82, 97, and Job 1, that these sons of God are divine beings. We want to say, they are like angels-- but angels are like less powerful messengers. These sons of God are the spiritual beings God placed over the nations (Deuteronomy 32:8-9). They are far more powerful than angels. They have far more responsibility. And some of these sons of God, seeing that human women are beautiful, took whoever they wanted, and the end result was the Nephilim.
There have been Christians over the centuries who have read Genesis 6, and resisted the idea that these sons of God are spiritual beings. Without getting into this, every other explanation falls apart if we focus on the end result-- if we focus on the Nephilim. Whenever a man and woman come together, and create a baby, that baby is always human. It doesn't matter whether the man is a king or a commoner, righteous or wicked, a hero or a coward. The end result is always a human baby. Every human baby in a hospital ward, looks like a baby.
In Genesis 6, the end result of this union between the sons of God, and daughters of man, is not human babies. It's Nephilim. "Nephilim" is a Hebrew word. It's a transliteration-- it's what the Hebrew sounds like. If we translated it, we'd say, "fallen ones." These Nephilim-- these fallen ones-- are a new type of creature, who were mighty men of old. These Nephilim are giants. Terrifying.
Og's bed was described, back in Deuteronomy 3, as being 13 1/2 feet long, and 6 feet wide. How tall do you have to be, to have a bed that big?
Many of you know of a giant in the OT. Maybe you think it's a children's story. Maybe you never really wrestled with it. Let's turn to 1 Samuel 17:1-11.
17 Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. And they were gathered at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim. 2 And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered, and encamped in the Valley of Elah, and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines. 3 And the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with a valley between them. 4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was 9 feet, 9 inches. 5 He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was 125 pounds. 6 And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighed 15 pounds. And his shield-bearer went before him. 8 He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” 10 And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” 11 When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.
Goliath is a descendant of the Nephilim. He was real. It's not just a kid's story.
Who was terrified of Goliath? Who was shattered, every time he stepped forward? Every single Israelite-- except David.
So this is what I think is happening in the OT (and this is straight Michael Heiser, basically). There's a group of powerful, spiritual beings called sons of God, who deliberately rebelled against Yahweh. They didn't respect the boundary Yahweh made between the spiritual realm, and the earthly realm, and they impregnated human women. The end result was the Nephilim. And what these Nephilim represent, is a competing blood line. We, as humans, image God. We are made in God's image. But the Nephilim image the sons of God. They are opposed to Yahweh's plan for the world. They resist him. They will fight to keep their land. They will fight to kill off his special chosen people Israel.
Yahweh is determined to wipe these Nephilim out. He will kherem them all. Moses started the process. Joshua is making fine progress toward this. Did you ever wonder why Saul was rejected as king? He was rejected as king because he half-heartedly attacked the descendants of the Nephilim (1 Samuel 15:7-21; 28:18). In fact, he was killed by the very descendants he was supposed to have killed himself.
And David? King David is remembered as a man after God's own heart, in large part because he is the one who finished them off. He personally killed Goliath, and he wiped out the last remaining strongholds of the Nephilim among the Philistines.
So returning to our passage this morning. Why does Joshua make his commanders put their feet on the necks of these Amorite kings? Why are the commanders terrified, and shattered? I think the answer is clear. These kings are terrifying. They are giants. They are half-human, half-elohim. So Joshua uses these five kings as an object lesson to the commanders. These Amorites bleed. They die. And Yahweh will do thus to all of your enemies. So don't be terrified. Don't be shattered.
Whenever I teach, I (almost) always hear my sister's voice buried inside my brain, telling me I'm supposed to apply the Bible. I have to help people see why the Bible matters. I'm not sure what I would say at this point, that you'd remember. But let me try this:
If the Israelites didn't need to fear the giant descendants of the Nephilim, because Yahweh is the More Powerful One, then who should you fear? Who could possibly stand against God, if these kings can't? No one.
God always wins in the end. God will eventually do to all of his enemies, just like he did to these five kings.
