Jos. 11: More Hineys Kicked.

Joshua 11:20 "For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses."

JRR Tolkien had to have read this chapter and drawn inspiration from it. At least when naming his characters and settings. It's all here...the kings of Shimron, Naphoth Dor, the waters of Merom, Misrephoth Maim.

Anyway, there's a lot of action here, too. It's kind of mentioned in passing, but Joshua takes way more land in this chapter, and exterminates (from the sounds of it) the entire HACPHAJ.

All the HACPHAJ kings come together to fight Joshua after hearing about his Van Dammage back in chapter ten. Probably a big army. Huge. More than has even been seen before. Lot's of nations. 12 groups are listed in chapter 11, but who knows how many men there are. But there goes God again. "Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel, slain. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots." The command to hamstring the HACPHAJ horses is interesting here. It is an "afterthought" it seems. But what it really serves to do is to give Joshua even more confidence that God would deliver the HACPHAJ into Israel's hands. If God was commanding him to hamstring some horses, how could Joshua refuse? How could God give Joshua a command like that without wiping out the owners of those horses first?

And I hear you, man. Hamstringing horses sounds so very mean. Apparently a tendon is cut, rendering the horse crippled. I don't know how crippled. I would imagine very crippled, to the point of being useless. Completely useless to haul chariots, soldiers...messages...to work...

Joshua goes in and wreaks his special brand of havoc, slaughtering and exterminating human beings. Killing them off like they're nothing. Like they are not valued. The humanitarian side of me is sickened by all this. How can you not be? I wonder where God's heart was with all this death and killing. Did these people have a chance? Not really. They were part of another race. Is it possible that there were people that mattered not to God, and whose mere existance was in the context of the nation of Israel? Sounds horrible.

But I guess I am learning about what God is doing with the nation of Israel. So far, there's only been a couple of brief references about God's love for people, even then, only the nation of Israel. I must be overlooking some things here, and I'm not suggesting that couldn't love certain people. That whole business with Adam...but even then, that was the only man alive. Was creation an act of love? Moses describes God as "abounding in love" in Exodus. Deuteronomy could lead one to believe that God loves those who keep His covenant. If that's the case, then maybe at this point, it would be reasonable to expect God to harden the hearts of the Pharaohs and the HACPHAJ. The idea that there could be people (at any point in time) that God just didn't love is an amazing and horrifying thought that never occurred to me. And then I think, well, these nations came to fight against Israel. To attack God, essentially. But would this attack have been necessary to begin with? Could Israel have lived peaceably with these other nations? What would the cost have been? What would Israel have fallen into? Curious, ponderous, unsettling.

Then the land had rest from war. Another in the line of the planet rising and falling as man does. War takes a toll not only on those who fight the war, but the land that has to endure it as well. I wonder if this is the same sense of rest that the land enjoys after being planted and harvest for six years.