Joshua 7-8

Joshua 7-8

This year, I plan on reading the Old Testament of the Bible within the 2012 calendar year. Follow me on this journey!

Scripture Thought (What I Learned):

Chapter 7: Disobedience to the Lord

                While in Jericho some of the men of Israel disobey the rules that were outlined by God and took more spoils then they were supposed to. It doesn't detail exactly what the men did, except that they violated the commandment set forth by the Lord. So the Lord punishes them by have the people of Ai, who were very small and outnumbered defeat the Israelites.

                After the defeat, Joshua cries to the Lord and the Lord responds; "...Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face" (Joshua 7:10)... Essentially saying, why are you crying and praying for help... go and take care of the problem. Kind of like a father telling their child that they have legs (after asking them, let's say, to get something from another room.) and telling them to get it themselves. I learn from this, that God will hear our prayers, but sometimes we just have to do things ourselves. We can pray all we want for money, but unless we look for a job and then earn it... we won't have it!

                In the end the Lord causes that the people who disobeyed to be destroyed!

Chapter 8: Words of the Law of Moses

                Joshua is encourage by the Lord to return to the land of the people of Ai and go back to smite them. So Joshua commands his whole army to go and slay the whole people, just as they had done with the land of Jericho. They end up killing over 12,000 people and finally end the killing by hanging the king in the tree, and leaving him there overnight. The entire city and land was burned and left desolate.

                At the entrance to the city, Joshua built an altar to the Lord and their he read from the "Book of the Law of Moses" (one of the lost books of the Bible). From there Joshua read about the blessings and the cursings that come from either obeying the law of Moses and the commandments of God, or choosing to ignore them and disobey them.