“Adonai said to Y’hoshua, ‘Don’t be afraid of them, for I have handed them over to you; not one of their men will stand against you.'”-Joshua 10:8
Before Israel’s battle against the five kings, the Lord tells Joshua to “fear not”.
Why would God tell Joshua that?
Because he was going to be battling against five kings man!
Who wouldn’t be quaking in their boots just thinking about it?
God being a God who cares about us and always meets our needs and concerns was reassuring Joshua beforehand and letting him know the fate of the five kings and their kingdoms was already decided.
They were as good as burnt toast, so Joshua could be 100% confident in the outcome.
Joshua did his part by simply trusting in the Lord, and it was this child-like faith that would lead to victory.
That last sentence is probably the most important thing I’ll say in this whole blog post, so let me say that again.
Joshua trusted God, and that was why he would be victorious.
Got it?
Onward, let’s take a look at the next verse, verse 9:
“Having spent the entire night
marching up from Gilgal,
Y’hoshua fell upon them,
taking them by surprise.”
-Joshua 10:9
So we see here, Israel used the dark nighttime hours to their advantage, a strategy they’ve employed many times throughout their history
We can also see a kind of an eye-for-an-eye situation unfolding here.
How so?
Because as shocked as the Gibeonites were at their fellow Canaanite brothers from the south coming to attack them, Israel paid back this shock and surprise via their sudden nighttime attack on the coalition of forces led by Adoni-zedek.
Needless to say, the tactic worked like a charm.
Adoni-zedek’s army was immediately thrown into a panic and they began to flee with only one goal in mind: do whatever they can to get back to the safety of their cities so they could be protected by their 30 foot high and 10-foot thick walls.
And of course, Joshua’s only goal was to prevent that from happening by any means possible.
Because if he didn’t succeed and the five armies were able to get back home, Israel would have no choice but to try to conquer the five kings and their cities via siege warfare which as I already discussed was a very time and resource-consuming way to wage war.
So Israel had to act fast and act NOW.
Leave a Reply