Joshua 23-24: The Settled Land

Joshua 23: Joshua Exhorts the People
Joshua 24: The Tribes Renew the Covenant / Death of Joshua and Eleazar

With the end of Joshua comes the end of a narrative that began way, way back in Bereshit (Genesis), the first book of the Hebrew bible. The promise of land and progeny that was made to Abraham has finally been fulfilled. And at the end of the chapter, in the penultimate verse, a plotline is ended that I completely forgot about. But you're going to have to read to the end of the post to find out what it is.

Today's scenes take place "a long time afterward, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their enemies all around, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years" (Josh. 23.1). We can feel the Joshua narrative starting to wind down. True, not all the land has been conquered. But Joshua's speech exhorting the people serves as a succinct summary of the events of the book that bears his name.

Joshua Exhorts the People: Joshua 23
The land is at rest and Joshua is old. He therefore starts to tidy up matters before he goes, starting with a recap of battle and ending (in the next chapter) in a renewal of the covenant.

YHWH Sabaoth, God portrayed as mighty warrior, is invoked four times throughout Joshua's exhortation, reminding the people that Israel's victory would not have been possible without God, because it is God that drove out the mighty nations before them.

And yet not all the nations have been cleared out. They still remain in the land and threaten to tempt the Israelites into apostasy. Israel receives a strong warning not to intermarry or fall into their ways, and if they remain faithful to God then God will continue to force these people out of the land. In the meantime, these people are given to Israel as part of a package deal; they are included with Israel's inheritance of land.

The biblical author tries to balance two contradictory ideas. There is the ancient myth (as in story, not falsehood) of Israel's might, which serves as a basis for Israel's divine right to the promised land. This is where the story of conquering all the tribes of the land comes from. This must be counterbalanced with the reality that the Israelites coexisted with foreign nations and had in fact done so for a long time. The way the biblical author solves this problem is by having God essentially say: "Here is what I promised you. It is not exactly as I promised you because I have not removed all your enemies yet. However, if you continue to obey me, these people will one day be gone and you alone (with the Gibeonites, perhaps shall inhabit the land." The conditionality of this agreement is especially important, because it is the tension between God and humankind that comprises the biblical story. If you want a twist in the biblical plot, just look for people disobeying the Lord's commands.

Joshua then switches gears into his own personal reflection, which then flares out to embrace all the people of Israel and remind them to follow the covenant of the Lord:

And now I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one thing has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you; all have come to pass for you, not one of them has failed. But just as all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have been fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the bad things, until he has destroyed you from this good land that the Lord your God has given you. If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he enjoined on you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from the good land that he has given to you.
(Josh. 23.14-16)

The next logical step is to renew the covenant Joshua just invoked.

The Tribes Renew the Covenant: Joshua 24.1-28
Joshua gathers all of Israel to Shechem in order to recount (speaking through the words of the Lord) their collective history. Actually, if you're interested in a Clif Notes version of the biblical narrative up until this point, Joshua 24 would be an excellent place to look.

It goes down like this: Abraham is taken from beyond the River Jordan into Canaan. The Lord give him Isaac. The Lord gives Isaac two sons: Esau, who inhabits the hill country, and Jacob, who goes with his children down to Egypt. The Israelites (though they are not referred to as such here) are brought out of Egypt, where God has worked many miracles. The Israelites are pursued, and cry out to the Lord at the Red Sea. The Lord protects the people and helps them cross the sea. The Israelites live in the wilderness for a long time. They then conquer the Amorites and are blessed - not cursed - by Balaam. After crossign the Jordan, the Lord conquers a number of people on behalf of the Israelites. The land they have received is exceptional:

I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and towns that you had not built, and you live in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and oliveyards that you did not plant.
(Josh. 24.13)

For all this, the Israelites are commanded to revere and serve the Lord, not the gods that their ancestors served beyond the river before Abraham, nor the gods of the Amorites.

The people respond that they will serve the lord, recounting very succinctly the history that the Lord just spoke through Joshua. Joshua warns that the Lord is holy and jealous, and will not forgive transgressions: "If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm, and consume you, after having done you good" (Josh. 24.20). A second time the people promise to serve the Lord.

Joshua then tells the people that they are all witnesses among themselves. They agree. He tells them that they must put away all their foreign gods and "incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel." To this too they agree. The Israelites have devoted themselves to the Lord.

Joshua then makes a covenant with the people, writing the words he spoke in the book of the law of God. He erects a stone under the oak tree in the sanctuary of the Lord. The stone serves as a second witness against the people if they deal falsely with God.

Death of Joshua and Eleazar: Joshua 24.29-33
Joshua dies and is buried. The author recounts that Israel was faithful to God all the days of his leadership, and all the days of the elders that outlived him.

Here ends a plot line that began a very long time ago: The bones of Joseph, which he wanted to be buried in the promised land, are finally laid to rest at Shechem on a piece of land that Jacob bought from the children of Hamor, the father of Shechem.

Finally, Eleazar son of Aaron dies and is buried.

After the death of the old generation comes a new generation, which will be explored tomorrow as we begin our study of the book of Judges.

Deuteronomy 34 / Wrap Up: Moses' death / looking back / looking ahead

Deuteronomy 34: Moses Dies and is Buried in the Land of Moab
Deuteronomy Wrap-up

Moses Dies and is Buried in the Land of Moab: Deuteronomy 34
The tale of the central character of four biblical books finally comes to an end in the last chapter of the last book of the Torah.

Moses ascends Mount Nebo, as the Lord commanded. There he finally sees the promised land sworn to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Moses then dies, and is buried in Moab, "opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day" (Deut. 34.6). Though Moses dies at age 120, the biblical author tells us he was still vigorous and had perfect vision - attributes befitting such a storied leader.

The Israelites mourn Moses 30 days, and are then led into the promised land by Joshua, who has been imbued with Moses' "spirit of wisdom."

The biblical author closes with a testament to Moses' greatness and importance.

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.
(Deut. 34.10-12)

So ends the fifth book of the bible - and the fourth in which Moses was the protagonist. Moses receives the second-longest tale of all the characters of the Hebrew Scriptures. The longest? God. Then again, the entire book is about him.

Deuteronomy Wrap-up

The Story
The bible until this point has been very much concerned with the relationship between God and humankind. It is a strained relationship, and not one of equality. Inequality is in fact the basis for the relationship between God and Israel and gives the story its plot and curious nuances. God is always faithful to his chosen people of the Israelite line. The relationship began with Adam and continued through his son Seth to Noah, and eventually to Abraham. It was the covenant between God and Abraham that established his descendants as God's people. From that point forward, God would be ever-faithful to the covenant, promising land and progeny to the patriarchs.

The covenant changes as Israel prepares to enter the promised land. Here the covenant is not a promise of anything, for the promise of progeny has been fulfilled and the promise of land nearly-so. Now the covenant is based on the behavior of the people. God demands that the people obey him, and if they do, all will be well for them. Whereas the covenant with Abraham required only the action of God, the covenant with the people requires action from both God and his people. And yet God will never break the contract. If the Israelites break the contract by making false idols, God will punish them with the curses listed in the Torah. However, the covenant will always stand. The curses in a very real way define the covenant; their existence proves that the bond between God and his people is unbreakable, no matter how badly the Israelites screw up. God is always willing to again support his people once they begin again to follow his ways.

Fiction and History
The bible so far is a work of historicized fiction. It is a work of fiction that appears to be real with all of the place and character names, dates, and locations. These elements serve to add realism to the story. But in reality, many of these things probably never happened. The story is therefore a fiction that is historicized with realistic elements. Historicized fiction lacks a factual basis - all the facts are made up. However, it would be unfair to call historicized fiction "untrue." While the tales may not have hard facts, they do reveal "truths" about life or "the human condition." In fact, these "truths" may be the most effective way of making a point.

I would argue that some of the greatest historicized fiction written today falls under the genre of science fiction. In this case, the "history" is in fact the future, but the level of creativity the author must employ in creating this fiction is astounding. Names, dates, places must be created in order to set the fiction in time and place - to historicize it. This is exactly what the biblical authors did, albeit it was a number of people over a very long period of time.

The counterpart to historicized fiction is fictionalized history. This is pretty similar to historical fiction but has more of a poetic license in changing and creating names and numbers. Fictionalized history is concerned with actual events, and applies to them fictional people, numbers, names, etc. This method was used by the biblical authors to in effect flesh out the biblical narrative and give it a point of view. Because the authors are concerned with story-telling, the chronicle "X people died at the battle of Y" is expanded upon to yield a richer story. Little if no fictionalized history has cropped up yet, but it will become more and more common as the biblical story moves through the years toward modern day.

My Journey
I started this blog the day after my college graduation - the day I entered to so-called "real world" of living with my parents while searching for a job. It has been a long journey so far - but the majority of the text lies ahead.. I first posted to this blog Sunday, May 23, 2010. 127 posts and 486 page views later, i'm still writing, but much has changed.

Four months later I landed a full-time job as a staff writer in the Provost Office of Stevens Institute of Technology, which means that most of my day is spent writing or otherwise communicating in one way or another, whether it is through text, video, images, or web development. I blog every morning on the train ride into Hoboken and if my eyes do not fail me by the end of the day I try to blog a little more on the way home.

One of my original goals was to present a non-gender specific image of God, which I see now imposes my own view on the bible. In fact, the God of the Hebrew bible is portrayed as male. I adopted the language of the bible, referring to God as "he" in order to better represent the language and ideas of the biblical authors. A number of other changes to style and content have been made. This blog will surely evolve as I write more and learn more about the bible.

This was my first time reading completely through the rules and regulation, and I am sure at times that the tedious nature of some of these passages seeps into my writing. I don't expect everyone to find the bible fascinating. However, if there is something you like or do not like, please let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear what you think of the blog, and am open to suggestions for improvement.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy this blog as it continues to grow.

Leviticus Wrap-Up

On the Bible as Literature

Leviticus was a very difficult section of the bible to cover. I was considering this as I drove up to Ithaca the other day, listening to the Interfaith Voices podcast. Lo and behold, the podcast featured an analysis of Judaism. While this blog is not about analyzing religion, it did give some excellent food for thought.

Host Maureen Fiedler spoke of the Torah:

"There are lots of laws. Anybody who's ever looked at the book of Leviticus can go blurry-eyed at the number of minute laws and regulations, many of which would have no application in the world today or some of which would appear incredibly harsh."

I hear ya. And if you've been following this blog with blurry eyes, you hear her as well. The context of the quotation fits into a discussion of Judaism as a religion of story and law. Its scripture, too, is all story and law. Leviticus just happens to be a book that concerns law. In future books I might treat this differently - I don't seem to have maintained many readers through this exercise. I don't blame anyone for dropping off. This was a difficult section for me to read and relate, and surely difficult to relate to.

In any case, Fiedler's gues, Stephen Prothero, brought up some great points in the discussion of Judaism that when tweaked can help to elucidate a reading of religious scripture as literature. Stephen Prothero is the author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter. He is also a regular contributor to the new CNN Belief Blog.

Prothero sought what problem Judaism as a religion is trying to solve, and what is the solution:

"My take on it is that Judaism is the way of exile and return. The problem is exile. The problem is that we are apart from God, apart form our community, and we have to return. We have to get back to God, get back to our community. This has antecedents in the exile of the Jews from the Promised Land, the exile of the Jews from the Temple."

This helps to explain the biblical story, and those dialectical tensions I have been writing about. The divine contract of Leviticus 26 really helps to sum up the reasons for exile. It is like the plot of the entire bible is here revealed. If humans follow God, they prosper. If they do not, they will find themselves in exile. The biblical authors set up a story of people disobeying God and then returning to worship him, just as people are exiled from a land and then return. The exile coincides with a loss of faith as the return coincides with a renewal of faith. The exile and return are the religious messages, which are derived from the messages of obedience and disobedience established in the texts.

Obedience, of course, hinges on law. Therefore there is a lot of legal material in the bible. Without these laws, the Israelites would have nothing to obey or disobey. Without these laws, there would not be cause and logic in the story. The bible is a very well-crafted piece of literature, even without a religious context.

Exodus 40.1-38 / Exodus Wrap-Up

The Tabernacle Erected and Its Equipment Installed / The Cloud and the Glory / Exodus Wrap-up

The Tabernacle Erected and Its Equipment Installed: Exodus 40.1-33

The completed construction of the tabernacle represents the beginning of a new era in the history of the Israelites. The tabernacle is to be set up on the first day of the first month (of the second year). The new year symbolizes a new beginning, a new iteration of life for the Israelites. Instead of the various altars before, they now have a single place from which to serve God. More importantly, God is always with them, his earthly dwelling always carried from one location to the next. Though they seek the promised land, they are continually in God's presence. This does not make them ritually holy, but it does set them apart from the other peoples inhabiting the wilderness and, in fact, the people of the past, who were not constantly in God's presence. To be constantly in the presence of God creates a different way of living that had never been seen. Yet the close proximity will not ensure an end to dialectical tensions. In fact, it will highlight them in chapters to come.

God commands Moses to set up and anoint the tabernacle and everything in it. Aaron and his sons shall then wash themselves and be dressed as prescribed.

Moses does all this apparently by himself, on the first day of the first month of the second year.

The Cloud and the Glory: Exodus 40.34-38

The cloud comes to cover the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord fills the tabernacle. This cloud is the same cloud that covered Mount Sinai, where it was for a time "homeless" until the construction of the tabernacle and the mercy seat, where the divine presence could reside. The divine presence is so strong, so holy, that even Moses is not able to enter the tent of meeting (the innermost tent) when the cloud settles upon it.

The cloud is related to the pillar of cloud and fire that initially led the Israelites out of Egypt; just as the pillar of cloud becomes a pillar of fire at night, the cloud is filled with fire at night. Also, the Israelites follow signs from the cloud, just as they followed the pillar. The cloud leaving the tabernacle is a sign that the Israelites should be moving on. This is the angel of the Lord that God has promised would lead them.

Exodus Wrap-up

Exodus ends with movement, a suitable (and almost cinematic) ending to a story of escape and preparation to be led through the wilderness. We are in year two of the forty year wandering.

The dialectical tensions between the Lord and the Israelites are brought into the foreground in this chapter more than in Genesis. Genesis does contain the greatest of all dialectical tensions, the first display of human desire defying God's commandments. And there is no doubt that many people die in Genesis because of their actions contrary to God's will. Exodus, however, narrows the focus to God's own people, and the situation becomes more complicated. It is one thing for Abram to plead for the salvation of Lot's family in Sodom and quite another thing for Moses to plead with God to continue leading God's people to the promised land. The Israelites will not survive without God, but they lack faith in God. More troubling is the golden calf incident, in which another god replaces the true God so quickly after their leader disappears, seemingly taking his god with him. Here the Israelites seem to want their own God, rather than the one they were born with. But without faith in God, the Israelites will struggle.

Isn't that interesting? The more the Israelites need God, the more they need to trust in God, but the less likely they are to have that trust because they are in need. That is the scene played over and over throughout Exodus - one of its strongest themes.

The next book, Leviticus is a book largely comprised of instructions for the priests - its early rabbinic name was "Priest's Manual." It is an instruction manual stuck in the middle of a story. But there is literature in it yet!

Genesis Wrap-Up

The beginning has come to an end. Soon we embark on a new journey. But first let's recap a few arbitrary points about Genesis that I thought important to bring up. Feel free to suggest more!

When the Firstborn is Not Heir

While the firstborn is traditionally the favored son, frequently this is not the case in Genesis. The writers seem to be saying, “Hey, this is unique; this is different. Check out what we’re doing here by supporting the underdog.” Examples:

God favors Abel’s offering over Cain’s.

• Though the only child of Sarah, Isaac is the second-born of Abraham.
• Though Esau is born before Jacob and is his father’s favorite, Jacob manages to steal his brother’s birthright and blessing.
• Joseph is the firstborn of Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife, but is not Jacob’s firstborn child.
• Perez (of Tamar and Judah): Though Zerah’s hand comes out before his twin Perez’s, it is Perez who is born first.

Jacob the Builder

Jacob is the great builder of Genesis. He works with stones and makes pillars all over the place. Here are some examples with which you may do what you like:

Dreams at Bethel and erects a pillar (28.18)

• Moves the stone at the well near Haran (29.10)
• Sets up a pillar at Galeed as a sign of a covenant with Laban. In an alternative interwoven version it is a heap of stones (31.45)
• Erects an altar in Shechem, called El-Elohe-Israel (33.20)
• Erects an altar at Bethel (35.7), specifically a pillar (35.14)
• Sets up a pillar to mark Rachel’s grave (35.20)

Herd the Word

As Joseph’s brothers explain to Pharaoh in Genesis 47.4: “Your servants are shepherds, as our ancestors were.” Indeed this seems to be a preferred occupation of these people. Who was the original sheepkeeper? Abel, of course! He was favored over his brother the farmer. And though Cain killed Abel, this passage sets a precedent for favoring future shepherds.

Barren Women

For some reason, a high percentage of matriarchs are barren, a paradoxical state of affairs when you consider the divine promise of progeny. However, if God controls a woman's fertility, any child of that woman is God-given. The children come according to God's actions. These children have a history with God that most children do no have - and are therefore better members of the divine line. The procession from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to his descendants is very controlled. Births are meaningful because they are a blessing from God.

Up the Down Staircase

A common theme of Genesis that will resonate in the following chapters is the idea of descent into Egypt and return to Canaan. Characters frequently are driven “down” into Egypt due to famine or other reasons, and then come back “up” into Canaan.

At the end of Genesis the Israelites are all in Egypt, loved very much by Pharaoh. But something must change as the next book is ominously titled…Exodus. [Okay, it is not exactly fair to say that the book is ominously titled “Exodus.” That is the Greek title, a later addition that concerns the thematic content of the article. The Hebrew title translates to “These are the names,” referring to the first few words of the text, which is how the books of the Pentateuch (first five books) is named in Hebrew.]

But seriously, we’re going to have to follow people upwards out of Egypt at some point in the near future.