At this point in the Scriptures, while Israel may have conquered the major parts of the land of Canaan, there still remained lots to do.
Many smaller pockets of rebellion ruled by minor kings still needed to be dealt with.
Israel may have had gained control over the land of Canaan, but the lengthy goal of driving out all of the remaining enemy inhabitants still remained.
And then the task of settling the land had to be taken care of after the inhabitants were driven out of the land.
Having said that, let’s not lose track of the big picture.
God’s ultimate goal for His people is that they would dwell in peace in the land.
War was NOT to be Israel’s natural state.
But during this time in their history, war was necessary in order to accomplish what God wanted for His People.
The land had been conquered but it had still not been divided up and assigned to the various tribes.
Once that happened, finally the children of Israel would have an established identity as a set-apart nation for the Lord living in a land especially set apart for them.
In fact, that last point is so important that I feel the need to say it again in a different way.
Understand that all of the blood, sweat and tears that had been shed up until this point in time carried just one purpose and one purpose only: to distribute the land to God’s people.
Conquering the land was one thing.
Getting comfortably settled in the land was another thing altogether.
It was now Joshua’s job to divvy up the land and give it to the people.
Historically speaking, this would be another revolutionary event of gargantuan proportions.
Because during Bible times most conquering rulers usually kept all of the land they conquered to themselves.
So what Joshua did was unprecedented for his day.
Also consider this.
In every conceivable case in history up to this point in time, for a leader to be able to accomplish what Joshua did, he would have to already had in his possession a huge army…
…AND…
…a thriving nation that would serve as the base from which to direct operations, grow food for the soldiers as well as collect taxes from its citizens in order to buy supplies and weapons etcetera.
However, this was obviously not the case for the Hebrews.
Israel’s soldiers were just common farmers and craftsmen who had volunteered to serve under Joshua.
Israel also didn’t have factories churning out weapons of war on a regular basis.
And was there wasn’t an established central training center where Joshua’s men could be trained so they would be battle-ready to take the Promised Land.
Israel possessed nothing the world’s logic said was absolutely necessary in order to accomplished what Joshua did.
That’s why I consider the conquering of the Promised Land to be an even greater miracle than Israel’s exodus from Egypt and their being able to survive in a barren desert wasteland for over 40 years.
Hence, the amazing question we encounter is…
…how in the world does a wandering mob of folks with no nation, zero fields to grow food and no factories to manufacture weapons literally overnight transform into an unstoppable military power that conquered multiple kingdoms who held every conceivable military advantage such as…
…being well defended, well funded and in possession of huge standing armies?
The answer?
It doesn’t happen minus the mighty hand of the Lord Himself fighting on behalf of His People.
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