Having entered the land and assumed their circumcision, that order of sanctification which suited the inheritance, and the presence of the God of Israel, the subjugation of the land begins.
The Lord now puts Himself at the head of the army, that He may order the battles, as Israel’s Captain, as through the wilderness in the cloudy pillar He had put Himself at the head of the camp, that He might order their journeys as Israel’s Guide.
Here, however, I would look around me for a few minutes.
The Lord stood as a soldier under the walls of Jericho, and in the presence of Joshua. But Joshua did not discover Him. This was like Gideon afterward in Judges 6, and like Manoah in Judges 13 Joshua had to inquire after Him as they had to do in their day. But it had not been thus with Abraham in Genesis 18.
He discovered the Lord at once, and bowed before Him, treating Him as the Lord. But Joshua has to challenge Him and to ask Him as One who did not know who He was, “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?”
But this will never do. Christ cannot go on with those who have depreciating thoughts of Him. It was thus with Martha in John 11. She said, “Whatsoever Thou askest of God, God will give it thee”— This would not do. And Jesus lets her know at once that it will not do. “Thy brother shall rise again,” He says to her in reply. Not in answer to His asking of God should Lazarus rise, as Martha’s words suggested, but on His own personal authority, as in the exercise of His own proper rights, He pledges this, that Lazarus her brother should rise again. And so, when in the darkness of her own thoughts she spoke again and said, “I know that he shall rise at the last day,” the Lord, again resenting her, says “I am the resurrection and the life.” He would have Martha’s mind right towards His glory. And so here with Joshua. “Art thou for us or for our adversaries?” says Israel’s leader. “Nay,” says Christ, “but as Captain of the Lord’s host am I now come.” He resents Joshua’s thought respecting Him, a thought which regarded Him as possibly on the side of Israel, but knew Him not as the head and in the front of Israel. He must have a right mind in Joshua as in Martha, touching His glory. Yea, in all of us, beloved. And surely we may each of us pray—“May we ever apprehend it without a cloud, and confess it without a falter.”
And happy it is to see how quickly the mind of Joshua gains its right place. He worships the Stranger whom just before he had challenged. He is now the Captain of salvation in his eyes, and He is trusted as the One that would lead the sons of Israel to victory. We may need instruction in the various glories of the Son of God, and wait to have them unfolded to us, but every saint carries a mind prepared for them, and at once, or instinctively is quick to rejoice in them.
But this, as we pass on. The battle being now the Lord’s, it mattered not what the weapons of war were. An ox-goad, a sling and a stone, lamps and pitchers, or jaw-bone of an ass would do. And so the shout of the soldiers and the blast of a trumpet of ram’s horn shall now prove sufficient; the walls of Jericho fall, and that city, as the first-fruits of the land, is taken. Faith did it and not force (Heb. 11:3030By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. (Hebrews 11:30))—faith which brings God in, and bringing God in, faith, if need be, cannot only pull down walls, but remove mountains. But the world must be judged. The kingdom must be cleared of all that offends and does iniquity, before it can be taken and ruled by Christ. Jericho is devoted to the sword. It stood forth as the sample of that which was to be judged, and all that were in it, or that belonged to it, except the household of faith which was under the shelter of the scarlet line, were to be cut off. That household, but that alone, was redeemed in this day of judgment in Canaan, as the house of Israel themselves had been in an earlier day of judgment in Egypt (Ex. 12).
But further. All the gold and silver was to be the Lord’s, the vessels of brass and iron. Does this surprise us? One wedge of gold was enough to defile a whole tent, and bring the judgment of God in awful, mighty ruin upon it and all that were of it, while the Lord Himself could take and put into His treasury all the gold that might be found in the city. Again, I ask, does this surprise us? Well, God is God and not man. Christ can touch a leper; no Israelite, let him be who he may, priest or king, or even Nazarite could. The wrath of man shall praise God. God can use it, but we are not to exercise it. Even those who preach Him in contention and Christ can use, but we are to cleanse ourselves when we take His Name upon us to publish it.
Jericho is now the representative of the world to the camp of Israel, of that thing which was to be judged; let every man of the camp keep himself apart from it, and all that belongs to it. And therefore, further, as we read here, the people are warned not to touch anything that was of that place, even, as I may say, though it was as “a thread or a shoe-latchet.” It was to be as Sodom in the sight of Abraham. And further still, as marking it, like Sodom again, for perpetual burning, Joshua adjured the camp at that time, and said, “Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho.” For that indeed would be a Nimrod-act, a defiance of the God of judgment, an Amalek-act. It would be acting again the part of the Cain of Genesis 4, returning to the earth which God had cursed, reviving what God had sentenced and doomed to destruction. The cursed thing, however, in defiance of all these solemn words, is taken. It was, of a truth, a presumptuous sin. No sacrifice could stand in atonement for it. “There is a sin unto death; I do not say that you shall pray for it.” A wedge of gold and a Babylonish garment are coveted and taken, and hid in the midst of Israel; and Israel, the camp, becomes, in the sight of God, for a time, a Jericho. The curse which had of late rested on that city of the uncircumcised, now rests on the camp of the people of God. The leprosy of Naaman is put upon Gehazi—and by righteous reason of all this, Israel is defeated in their second battle at Ai.
And here, let me say, this has been done under every trial of man—the cursed thing has been again and again and ever taken.
God’s creature, His responsible creature, has linked himself with pollution, that is, with the very thing he ought to have judged. Such an one was Adam in Genesis 3—such is Israel now, and such again in Judges 1 —such was Solomon in Judah, and such Jeroboam in Israel—and such is the Church or Christendom as in 2 Timothy 2.
This occasion tells us of this. Joshua ought to have known the secret of Israel’s defeat. He ought to have known the mischief to be lurking within, and that Israel was not straightened in God but in themselves. “For this cause,” as an apostle speaks, for the cause of something within—doors, “many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” And also from chapter 6:18 he ought to have known where the occasion of this disaster was to be found. But he seems to charge and challenge the Lord, and, like David in the day of his bad temper because of the breach upon Uzziah, Joshua has to learn that the fault was all his own. Instead therefore, of the victories of Israel, the purification of Israel must take place. Instead of going on from strength to strength, first works are to be done again. If we do not judge ourselves, the Lord will, that we may not be condemned with the world. The camp of Israel shall not be as a Canaanitish nation, though for a moment it may be as Jericho. The sin and judgment of Miriam had once delayed the progress of Israel through the wilderness, the sin and judgment of Achan must now delay the progress of Israel through the land. But it is only delay. Discipline does not revoke grace; it only maintains holiness. The valley of Achor is a door of hope (Hos. 2:1; 51Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ru-hamah. (Hosea 2:1)). (So now, judgment upon Israel, all through this present parenthetic age, has again delayed or interrupted the orderly history of the earth and of Israel. But the age of judgment will end and Israel be Israel again.)
And happy to know, a restored soul is always a blest soul. So is it here. The camp go a second time against Ai, and Ai is taken, not indeed with the ease and honor by which Jericho had been reduced; but still it is taken, as in the experience of our own souls, for though pardoned and restored, and put on the way even to richer, higher blessings, still the soul finds some new elements in its history. It has exercises to go through which might have been spared it had it walked more evenly. But in the end, most surely, Israel is blest. Ai falls and its cattle and spoil are the property of the people, as the gold and the silver, the brass and the iron of Jericho had already been the property of the Lord.
The altar is then erected. God is at once owned, as He had been by Noah when he stepped out from the ark upon the new world—and as Abram had owned Him, when he reached the place which the God of glory had told him of—as Israel had owned Him as soon as they had got beyond Egypt and the Red Sea—and as Solomon owned Him when he took the kingdom. Whatever the mercy, the pillar and the altar are to follow—the mercy is to be the occasion of testimony and of praise.
At the end of these chapters the covenant which put Israel under law is inscribed on its proper pillar, and read in the audience of the people; for the law was the condition on which the inheritance which had now been entered was to be secured and enjoyed, as we may see, by-and-by, under chapter 23.
And in glancing back at these chapters for another moment, let me say, if the Lord judge this in the world, He will surely not pass it by in His saints. If the cursed thing of Jericho be found in Israel, the hand of God shall rest on Israel as on Jericho. A difference there is, while the controversy of holiness is alike judged in both, for in the saint, sin is judged as by discipline for purifying; in the world it is judged for destruction. And all this is exhibited here. Jericho is destroyed, the camp is purified. Jericho is no more, the camp is on its way to fresh conquests. In the case of the saint, the valley of Achor is always a door of hope. Tribulation works hope through patience and experience. The Lord does not leave His people in that valley. We are judged of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.
But here, I would suggest a truth which I hold to be morally of great importance, and which we ought always to have in remembrance when following the course of Joshua’s victories, namely, that those victories were the judgment of God upon a people who had been borne with for centuries, and who had now, before the sword of Joshua was unsheathed, filled up the measure of their sins (see Genesis 15). The iniquity of the Amorite was full, and judgment was executed. The sword of Joshua was one of judgment, rather than of victory. He is to appear before us as a judge, not as a conqueror; and it relieves the heart, when surveying the slaughters of this solemn history, to have this in remembrance, that the wars of this Leader of Israel are never to be regarded as the mere invasions of a weaker country, by the unprincipled and unbridled strength of a superior army. Joshua was God’s minister, and “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.”