An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 40: Joshua Drinks A Bottle of Cherry Coke (Joshua 6-10)

Joshua 6-10
Joshua Drinks A Bottle of Cherry Coke.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Joshua 6

“And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.”

So, Joshua fights the battle of Jericho and the walls come a-tumblin’ down. This is, I think, one of the well-known bible stories that everyone raised in a nominally Christian country will have heard something about (perhaps less than the Nativity and the Flood, but as much as Jonah and the Whale or David and Goliath).

I must say, I wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon into the book of Joshua, perhaps used as I am now by the endless procrastination since the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. However, yes, the ark, trumpets and shouting are used to bring down the walls of Jericho, and the Israelites proceed to slaughter and plunder. I was pleased to see the Rahab and her family were allowed to live; I was expecting them perform some kind of infraction and be punished, but no, they live happily ever after.

I like the veiled reference to the “accursed thing” that is not to be plundered. I’m assuming that this is KJB English for “accursed things”, plural, and not an Accursed Thing singular. It’s obviously so accursed and terrible that it is not described further, which would have been useful since exile and possibly death is the punishment for touching it. I’m also making an assumption that it must be something connected to the bad-wrong religion of Jericho, maybe we will learn more later.

Last thing to note is that I seem to have become acclimatised to God speaking to people and genocidal slaughter – it’s become just a thing that happens now. Every so often, however, I will come out of the narrative and consider the dubious morality of all of this.

Actually, that wasn’t the last thing to note. The last thing to note is that the Gustav Doré engravings are back. He’s always at his best when dealing with destruction and chaos, so it seems fitting that he has returned to illustrate these chapters.

No, wait, one last thing (says Lt. Columbo); the subtitle for this one comes courtesy of my wife mishearing a gospel song whilst dosed up on elephant-strength painkillers after getting knocked of her bike. See also "Thank the Lord for Cheeses".

Joshua 7

“But the children of Israel committed a trespass in the accursed thing: for Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took of the accursed thing: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against the children of Israel.”

Oh, you knew that they would, didn’t you? I mean, a prostitute from an enemy city is better at following instructions. How many times, Israelites? You never learn!

Joshua attempts to attack the city of Ai next, and fails, and God tells him that the reason that they failed is because somewhere in the camp someone has plundered an “accursed thing”. No, the reason the attack failed was that a ridiculously small force was sent, 3000 out of potentially 40000 men to take a city.

But anyway, a search is made, and the guilty party is found to be a man called Achan, of the tribe of Judah. He has taken a “goodly Babylonish garment”, some silver shekels and a lump of gold. Now, last chapter we were told that “But all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD”, so it must be the clothes, even though the gold and silver are considered cursed as well. Dunno, inconsistency. Maybe Achan was supposed to declare the gold and silver to the Levites?

So Achan is stoned to death, and it sounds like his entire household are as well. Then the bodies are burned, then covered with more stones. And there we end the chapter; I suspect another go at Ai is on the way.

Joshua 8

“And the LORD said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be thou dismayed: take all the people of war with thee, and arise, go up to Ai: see, I have given into thy hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land”

As I predicted, Joshua leads another attack on Ai, and this time uses adequate manpower and tactics to defeat it. This time he uses 30000 men, and places them in hiding around the city. Then using a skeleton force he lures the army of Ai out of the city; the king of Ai sends out all of his fighting men and leaves the gate open. You idiot. Because the rest of the Israelites forces enter the city and set it on fire, and the army of Ai is trapped on the plains and wiped out. The Israelites gain plunder, cattle and the king of Ai as a captive until he is hung and then buried under a cairn by the ruined gates of his city. Why the whole ark and trumpets thing wasn’t repeated I don’t know, maybe the walls of Ai were not as impressive, maybe it was a once-only offer.

At the end of the chapter Joshua builds an altar of stone and recites the works of Moses, which I really hope we don’t have to go through for a fourth time.

Joshua 9

“They did work wilily, and went and made as if they had been ambassadors, and took old sacks upon their asses, and wine bottles, old, and rent, and bound up”

The other nations have heard of the fate of the Amorites, and Jericho, and Ai, and begin to band together. The city of Gibeon sends some envoys disguised as pilgrims who travel to Joshua and claim to have come from far away to join him because of the wonders that they have heard, and Joshua welcomes them in and offers protection.

Three days later he discovers that they are actually Hivites, but now he can’t harm them because of the guest right he has given them. The Hivite ambassadors explain that they feared utter destruction (quite rightly), and offer to work as servants (hewers of wood and drawers of water). And in this fashion the Hivite cities of Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth and Kirjathjearim become servants of the Israelites rather then get destroyed, which, although they lose their liberty seems like a better option and a moderate triumph for diplomacy over violence. I can see this being pitched as cowardice – better to die free than live a slave, so we will see how this develops in future chapters.

Joshua 10

“Therefore the five kings of the Amorites, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon, gathered themselves together, and went up, they and all their hosts, and encamped before Gibeon, and made war against it”

The Amorite kings are not happy with Gibeon making peace with the Israelites and decide to attack them, whereupon the Gibeonites appeal to their new protector and ruler Joshua for help. Joshua attacks the Amorites, and there are two miraculous occurences – one is that the Amorites who try to run away are destroyed by a rain of stone (or possibly hailstones, both terms are used), the second is that Joshua commands the sun to stand still in the sky until the battle is won. There’s an intriguing reference to this event being mentioned in the “book of Jasher” as corroboration which makes me wonder what the Book of Jasher might be.

After this inevitable victory there then follows a condensed description of further conquests of Joshua as he takes city after city in formulaic text until, it seems to imply, he has conquered the whole of the promised land. And left a lot of ruins and corpses behind him.