When Joshua and the army of Israel marched around the city of Jericho, when the priests blew the trumpets, when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, the text says Joshua said:
Shout! For the Lord has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction . . . Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword everything in the city—men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys . . .
Josh 6:15–21
I don’t know about you, but I have trouble saying “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God” whenever I read something like this. It’s hard for me to stomach that this proactive violence is part of our Holy Scripture.
When we read these stories in the church’s Scriptures, we are forced to deal with troubling aspects of this narrated violence; especially troublesome is that violence is said to be sanctioned by, even commanded by, God . . .
We may well ask what do these violent, ancient stories . . . have to do with us?
For one thing, these stories cause us to remember that this is our shared human story. Violence is a part of who we are; atrocity is what all us humans are capable of. We must remember that basic tragic truth and we must not forget how tempting it is for every one of us humans to sin against shalom.
We cannot and should not try to explain away the reality of the ugliness of some of these stories from our past, but it does challenge people of faith to rethink how we will reread these texts and how we can rethink and repent our human bent for violence . . .
Read more at Charlotte Vaughan Coyle. Living in The Story: A Year to Read the Bible and Ponder God’s Story of Love and Grace (pp. 243-245, 252-253). Resource Publications. Kindle Edition.
Living in The Story readings for Week 20
