Week 9 Joshua
The back-to-back stories of the battles for the city of Jericho (chapter six) and the city of Ai (chapter seven) are contrasting stories.
The big and obvious contrast is that Jericho was successfully conquered; Ai was successfully not conquered.
Another pretty striking and unexpected contrast is between the Main Characters. Rahab was a citizen of Jericho. She was a totally non-Israel-ite Jericho-ite who bafflingly decided – against her own home-city and lifelong-culture – to throw in her lot with Israel. There weren’t a million people in Jericho but if there had been Rahab would be the one-in-a-million. She took an independent chancy life-or-death stand. And she was rescued.
In the battle at Ai the Israelite army was defeated. The key player was a man named Achan. Kind of like Rahab he had bafflingly taken a solitary personal decision – but against the Lord – back at Jericho. There weren’t a million soldiers fighting against Ai but if there had been Achan was the one-in-a-million who stole some booty. He took his chance; paid a high price.
In these conquest battles in Joshua it’s easy to get a sense of the Lord operating in the aggregate, taking a kind of broad brush destroy-that-whole-town approach. But with Rahab and Achan you get another sense of the weight attached to each individual taking her-or-his own individual eyes-wide-open decision.
Note: I checked my January-February reading progress. I’ve read 371 out of a total 1730 pages. Means 21.4% read with 16.7% of the year gone. So far, so good.