From the desk of Liesl St. James - Joshua fought the battle of Jericho...and later they wrote a snappy song about it

So I’ve decided to skip the book of Deuteronomy. There’s nothing important in that one either. Just Moses dies. So here’s the book of Deuteronomy – Moses goes to Moses heaven. There you have it. And now that we’re out of the really Jewy parts, I can start putting the “o” back in God.

So we pick up in the book of Joshua. Moses is dead and Joshua has been appointed his successor. God has ordered him to destroy everything that breathes in the city of Jericho. Why, you may ask? I can’t tell you. There are all sorts of times in the bible where cities and peoples are determined to be no longer worthy of oxygen without explicit explanation as to why. I guess that’s when God gets to pull the “god” card and say “because I said so”. So he says so – Jericho has to come down. Joshua sends two spies out to Jericho to determine the best way to loose the people there from the mortal coil. Rahab (no, not rehab) helps them while they spy in exchange for her family being spared from the future calamity.

The spies come back and Joshua decided it’s go time. He gathers everybody up and to Jericho they march. When they reach the river Jordan, the river miraculously dries up allowing them all the march across without getting muddy. Funny how bodies of water move hither and yon at people’s will in the bible. Why doesn’t that happen these days? I’d like that ability. I promise to only use it for good.

On the other side of the river, they all decide to camp and get circumcised. Why? I don’t know. Apparently it was just that time. Everybody who had been born during the 40 years they were wandering in the desert hadn’t been circumcised…or at least the men hadn’t. So they got to chopping. I guess really they had to. The place they camped was called Gibeath-Haaraloth, which means (and I am not making this up) the hill of foreskins.

Then off they go, a little worse for wear, to the battle of Jericho. Since all the guys were having a little trouble walking straight, they decided to fight this battle in a more round-about manner. The Israelites circled the city once a day for six days. On the seventh day they blew horns really loud and shouted. The walls then fell down, as walls tend to do when you yell at them loud enough. Everybody in the city, except Rahab and her family, were slaughtered. And a curse was pronounced against anybody who tried to rebuild the city. Note: Jericho still stands today and people live and work and go to the grocery there. For all the crazy things the bible had to offer, apparently effective curses against rebuilding cities was not one of them.

Next, they turned to the city of Ai. Decided it was week and sent a small group to go kill those guys, too. But somehow the Ai people defeat the little army and Joshua is sad. THEN more bad news! God says that the people sinned! Someone stole some booty from Jericho! So they had to find out who. So they cast lots. This was a practice of divination where they divided people into groups and then flipping a coin or something and God would tell you which group contained the sinner (heads, it’s the group on the left, Tails, it’s the ones on the right). So they do this over and over again until they figure out that Achan stole the booty. Having been caught by this sure-fire method, he admits he stole gold, silver, and garments. Then they found the stuff in his tent. So there’s no denying it at this point. Then they stone and burn him and everybody who lives in his household to death, as you do when someone steals from you.

The next day, they try again and destroy Ai. And they impale the king and put is corpse on display.

The next book is Judges. Joshua dies. That’s all you need to know from that one. Then after that is Ruth. Finally! Some chicks get involved in this book!