Liberal Forum

jerrab » 10 minutes ago » wrote: ↑

10 minutes ago

//////According to the biblical narrative in the Book of Joshua, yes. God instructed the Israelites to utterly destroy the city of Jericho, which included killing all the men, women, children, and animals, while burning the city and its contents.//////

That passage is hard, and it should feel hard. A faithful reading does not need to pretend it sounds gentle. In Joshua 6, Jericho is placed under ḥerem — often translated “devoted to destruction” or “the ban.” That means the city was treated not as normal military plunder, but as something placed under divine judgment. Joshua 6:21 says Israel destroyed “men and women, young and old” and the animals, while Rahab and her family were spared.The meaning in the Joshua narrative is roughly this: Jericho represents a judged order standing in opposition to God’s covenant purposes, and Israel is forbidden to profit from it.

They are not supposed to conquer Jericho for wealth, revenge, or empire. The city is “devoted” to God, which is why the valuables are not private spoils but set apart for the Lord’s treasury.But your deeper question is the important one: why does this seem so different from Christ?There are a few major ways Christians have wrestled with this.One view says: God’s character has not changed, but the historical moment has. In Joshua, God’s judgment is shown through a temporary, national, covenantal event tied to Israel entering the land.

In Christ, God’s kingdom is no longer advanced by ethnic conquest, land possession, or the sword. Jesus rebukes violent retaliation, tells Peter to put away the sword, commands love of enemies, and says His kingdom is “not of this world” in the sense that His servants do not fight to establish it by force.A second view says: Jesus does not erase divine judgment; He redirects how we understand it. Christ teaches mercy, forgiveness, and enemy-love, but He also speaks seriously about judgment. The difference is that in Jesus, judgment is not entrusted to His followers as holy war. Judgment belongs to God. Christians are not authorized to imitate Joshua by destroying enemies.

The cross becomes the central revelation: God’s wrath against evil and God’s mercy toward sinners meet in Christ.A third view says: some of the conquest language may use ancient war rhetoric. Ancient Near Eastern battle accounts often used totalizing language like “destroyed all” even when survivors clearly remained. Joshua itself later shows many Canaanites still living in the land. So some scholars argue that “utterly destroyed” may function as conventional victory language, not necessarily a modern literal census of every civilian death.

That does not remove the moral difficulty, but it may affect how we understand the genre.A fourth, more critical view says: the biblical authors may be portraying Israel’s understanding of God through their ancient context, and Christians should read Joshua through the fuller revelation of God in Christ. In this view, Jesus is the clearest picture of God, so any earlier violent text must be interpreted in light of Him, not the other way around.



The Bible itself moves from holy war under old covenant Israel to enemy-love under the crucified Messiah. Christians are not called to copy Joshua at Jericho. They are called to follow Jesus to the cross.The most important guardrail is this: whatever Joshua meant in its ancient setting, it cannot be used as a Christian model for violence today. Jesus closes that door.

Blackvegatble's hypcorisy summed up in one post: [/size]
Blackvegetable » 7 minutes ago » wrote: ↑7 minutes ago
Very simple questions...

From which you are running...