“Then Adonai gave them rest all around, according to everything he had sworn to their ancestors. Not a man from all their enemies stood against them; Adonai handed all their enemies over to them. Not one good thing that Adonai had spoken of to the household of Isra’el failed to happen; it all took place.“-Joshua 21:42-43
Alrighty folks, we’ve just run headfirst into the most controversial and hotly debated verses in the entire “Old” Testament.
I’m talking about the final verses of Joshua Chapter 21.
In the closing passage, we’re told that Adonai gave Israel rest from their enemies and that everything Adonai had promised to Israel was fulfilled.
Well, if we take those statements literally, we know that just isn’t true.
So what gives?
We could spend literally days talking about this because it’s a complex issue but here’s the bottom line.
The Lord our God is perfect.
However, we are NOT.
Therefore, as much as God wanted to fully keep His promises to Israel, some of those promises were dependent on Israel’s obedience or lack thereof.
Hence, the bottom line answer to this conundrum is that…
...the Lord did His part even if or in spite of Israel NOT fully doing their part.
Got it?
To show you what I mean, let’s just quickly stop, take a breath and see how much progress Israel has made so far in conquering the Canaanites.
FIRST, by this point in time, Joshua and his men had successfully conquered the 2 main alliance forces of the Canaanites.
I’m talking about the coalitions of the northern kings and southern kings.
Both of these Canaanite enemy alliances of Israel had been destroyed and weakened to the point that even if they wanted to, there was no way they would ever be able to launch a successful attack against Israel again.
Don’t get me wrong.
The goal to completely conquer Canaan was far from realized.
There would still be skirmishes to come between Israel and the Canaanites.
But the battles would no longer be between a group of Hebrew soldiers and a group of Canaanite kings.
The fighting would be more localized occurring between one Israelite tribe responding to an attack from a local Canaanite tribe.
We’ll continue this discussion the next time we meet.
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