“The two men had not yet lain down when she returned to the roof and said to them, “I know that Adonai has given you the land. Fear of you has fallen on us; everyone in the land is terrified at the thought of you. We’ve heard how Adonai dried up the water in the Sea of Suf ahead of you, when you left Egypt; and what you did to the two kings of the Emori on the other side of the Yarden, Sichon and ‘Og, that you completely destroyed them. As soon as we heard it, our hearts failed us. Because of you, everyone is in a state of depression. For Adonai your God — he is God in heaven above and on the earth below.”-Joshua 2:8-11
Rahab informs the two spies she has been hiding that her people, the Canaanites, have fallen into a state of fear and depression.
Why?
Because they knew an army of 600,000 Israelites were coming for them and they were terrified and overwhelmed.
Everyone was well aware of how Israel’s God had parted the Red Sea to let Israel pass through and then how the Lord had destroyed the entire Egyptian army when He caused the waters to come crashing back down on them.
They were also well aware of the humiliating defeat Sihon and Og had suffered at the hands of the Israelites.
Hence, they knew if they too were marked for destruction by the Lord, they had no hope.
As a result, Rahab confesses the following:
“Adonai your God,
HE is God in heaven
AND HE is god on earth.”
-Joshua 2:11
Now in our day and age that phrase just slips by us without hardly a notice.
But in Rahab’s time, to say that some supernatural being had authority over BOTH the heavens and the earth was one hell of a statement.
It was an unprecedented confession of gargantuan proportions to put it plainly.
Because in those days it was just understood that there was gods who ruled and had power in the heavens…
…and there were gods who ruled and had power on planet earth.
But never both.
The confession that Rahab had just uttered represented a major theological paradigm shift.
She had just overturned a belief system that had been entrenched in the minds of all people pretty much since the beginning of human civilization.
However, God revealing this to Rahab makes sense.
In order for the idea of monotheism to take root in the world, Rahab’s statement was absolutely necessary.
Because if it is true that there is only ONE God who created the heavens and the earth, then it would logically follow that this one God also ruled over both realms of His creation-the heavens above and the earth below.
Interestingly, according to Greek thought and language, it was required that the heavens and the earth had two separate gods who inhabited each of these realms.
That’s the reason why we’ll see the phrase “god of heaven and earth” continuing to be used in the New Testament.
The Jewish NT writers didn’t use this phrase because they held to the belief there were two separate gods.
And note that even today, we use this phrase in our worship songs and prayers but only in a poetic sense and not as some factual statement.
However, 2000 years ago, when Israel declared that their God and ONLY their God was the “god of heaven and earth”, they meant it literally as a way to defy the current heathen belief system that there were many gods who ruled over many different spheres of existence.
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