The Sound of Silence 

Obeying God’s Unusual Leadings

Over the past 18 months I have felt The Lord has been leading me on a two-track road. One track has been getting me back as close to the original languages as I possibly can; the other has been leading me to the realisation that to understand the good news of Jesus I need to come to terms with the early chapters of Genesis.

This focus has extended through the whole of the Five Books of Moses and on into Joshua, which is intrinsically linked to Torah. Not least in those links is the preparation of Joshua for leadership through his service to Moses – and if you want a leadership lesson this is a big one!

Learning obedience

The Book of Joshua starts with God consciously, consistently and concretely instructing Joshua to be bold and have courage. Joshua will need it as he steps out in faith to realise the journey that he began as Moses’ servant. But he has the promise of God which assures him that he has been given every place that his sole will step upon. Joshua begins that process by sending out spies into Jericho.

He follows it up by moving the people down to the Yarden River. I find it noteworthy that the approach to the river has none of the drama of Israel’s approach to the Red Sea. Because of their history, the people of Israel know that God has got this sea-splitting notion in their heads, and they walk straight ahead without any indication of hesitation.

Any instruction of God, no matter how ridiculous and counterintuitive it seemed, needed instant obedience.

The next step is a bit of a surprise as Joshua takes the people to Gilgal and then breaks the news to the warriors that they are going to have to be circumcised. They were expecting a fight but ended up being wounded by their own! It was probably quite a shock to Joshua, but his time of service had taught him that any instruction of God, no matter how ridiculous and counterintuitive it seemed, needed instant obedience.

Going up into the city

Then we come to the moment of truth - the whole city is barricaded in. The ruler, his nobles, and the ordinary people are all terrified. There’s only one person in the whole city who might be looking forward to what is about to come, and that is Rahab, the lady who had protected the two spies and had been promised redemption by hanging a scarlet chord in her window in the outer face of the city wall.

    “Yericho had completely barricaded its gates against the people of Isra’el — no one left, and no one entered. ADONAI said to Y’hoshua, “I have handed Yericho over to you, including its king and his warriors. You are to encircle the city with all your soldiers and march around it once. Do this for six days. Seven cohanim are to carry seven shofars in front of the ark. On the seventh day, you are to march around the city seven times, and the cohanim will blow the shofars. Then they are to blow a long blast on the shofar. On hearing the sound of the shofar, all the people are to shout as loudly as they can; and the wall of the city will fall down flat. Then the people are to go up into the city, each one straight from where he stands” (Josh 6:1-5).

Note what The Lord says: "I have handed this city over to you, including the king and his warriors”. This is at a point in time when the Israelites are standing outside a massive wall and this generation, the generation entering the land, are encountering something new. They have been trained to fight battles, which they did very well up in Bashan. But these are walls, walls that are reported to be 6 feet wide and around 40 feet high. Walls that sit upon a glacis, a sloping wall that protects the defences from missiles, at the bottom of which is another smaller wall.

Outside the box

So what is necessary is to breach the smaller bottom wall, scale a slippery, steeply sloping glacis and then breach the upper, main city, wall. What I also note from the text is that the instructions are from the Lord to Joshua. It appears that the actual fighting men are being instructed on a daily basis. So, I imagine a scene whereby the Israeli fighters have worked out that this assault is going to come down to one of three options.
 

You need to go outside of the box in war. Just like Jesus went outside of the box with His Sabbath healings.

These were: digging a tunnel, laying siege or undertaking a glorious, but bloody, charge on the walls. However, the men trust Joshua – they know him and they’re aware of his success in war. Therefore, when he explains that on Day 1 they will be marching around the walls once without a word or sound, they are thinking something like ‘You know Joshua, he likes to understand the battlefield, and weigh up the opposition’.

If truth be told, I can also imagine Day 2, ‘Yep Joshua’s just checking he did not miss anything yesterday’. But Day 3 onwards, they are just marching and wondering ‘what on earth?!’. Then come Day 7, the Sabbath, and you’ve got seven laps. But hang on; the Sabbath is a day of rest; there’s to be no work, no marching. No wonder God told Joshua to be bold and have courage. You need to go outside of the box in war. Just like Jesus went outside of the box with His Sabbath healings.

Sense in God’s economy

When I reflect on this sequence of events, I think of two things: -

First, I reflect that when encountering opposition, we need to understand whether this is God telling us to give up, or God telling us that we need to seek His face to understand the strategy to overcome the present obstacle. Far too often, I believe, we Christians down tools at the first sign of obstacles, certain that if God was in it, all would be nice and straight forward. Joshua and the story of the conquest of the Promised Land is an outstanding lesson in seeking God for a strategy to overcome the obstacle.
 

God’s strategies sometimes make no sense humanly speaking, but they make every sense in God’s economy.

Secondly, God’s strategies sometimes make no sense humanly speaking, but they make every sense in God’s economy. Moses was called to go in and tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go in order to worship Him. The false gods of Egypt had no benefit in releasing the people of promise, hence Pharaoh’s hard heart. But Pharaoh’s hardness of heart allowed God to humiliate the pantheon of Egyptian gods.
Silent march

David was instructed to fight the giant when not a single strongman of Israel had the courage to represent the people. But God used David’s faith to defeat the Philistine army. Then, of course, there’s Jesus – He was told to sacrifice His life in obedience to the Father. God used Jesus’s faithful obedience to fulfil the Abrahamic covenant and seal God’s new covenant.

Israel had spent 40 years in the wilderness, with a great many days - if not every day - characterised by talking, which often took the form of grumbling. Now, in the moment that God’s promise given, in Egypt, enabled at the Red Sea, at Sinai, and at Bashan was about to be realised - they are told to be silent! To silently march around the city. I suspect that I know many who have given up after three or four laps, maybe I have myself. I know many who have given up on the seventh lap – come to think of it I know people who have given up on the 12th lap, maybe I have myself.

Yet day after day, lap after lap, the people of Israel marched round, with the priests in front. These are not standard battle tactics. Then on the completion of the seventh lap on the seventh day, the shofars are blown, and the people shout out and the walls blow out. Not only do the walls blow out but they collapse in a way that demolishes the lower wall and leaves debris right over the glacis so that a tricky slippery climb is transformed into a stepped staircase for the people to walk over right into the city!

Early Exodus

It is fair to say that Jericho is a bone of contention within the Israel story. However, it is only a bone of contention for those who subscribe to a late Exodus – c1250 BC. If, however, you subscribe to an early Exodus of around 200 years earlier, the jigsaw pieces fall into place pretty near perfectly. Jericho was destroyed, utterly destroyed, around 1400 BC. It was taken and burnt very quickly, because archaeologists have found jars of wheat/barley that were burnt.
 

If however, you subscribe to an early Exodus of around 200 years earlier, the jigsaw pieces fall into place pretty near perfectly.

Normally armies looted all food, only burning it if they were bringing total destruction to the city. When the walls fell, they fell outwards, creating a staircase up the glacis and demolishing the lower, outer wall. Amidst the ruins excavated, a single piece of standing outer wall has been discovered – apparently an outer facing window. Is it possible that this is the remnants of the home of Rahab?

Similarly, in the city Lachish, an ostracon – a piece of pottery, dated to around 1400 BC - has been discovered, with Hebrew text citing its owner as the slave responsible for the honey.

A people entering the land of milk and honey around 1400 BC; this is a remarkable alignment with the biblical narrative, but only for those who stop and look at the evidence rather than operate on a fixed date.