Gods OT Strategy (21) - Joshua
God commanded Israel to drive the people of Canaan out of the land and destroy their idols and temples (Deut 7:1). If Israel had obeyed God, the Canaanites would have carried all their evil spirits out of the land with them. If they had destroyed the shrines and idols, the evil spirits working in them would have fled to the people who had created them. God’s plan was to bring an evil-spirit-free people into an evil-spirit-free land. Unfortunately, Joshua disobeyed God and killed many of the Canaanites instead of driving them out. When the Israelites killed the Canaanites, they the evil spirits move to the people doing the slaying, as their fear and anger made them vulnerable. Contrary to God’s plan, the Israelites allowed a host of evil spirits to remain in the land.
This was an immediate setback to God's plan to re-gain more authority on earth.
2 comments:
Do you put any credence in Douglas Reed's thesis, in 'The Controversy of Zion,' that Deut. was a political control book written by the Levites during the Babylonian captivity? He posits that Deut. was written, along with, later, the four other books of the Torah, to give the Levites the ability to enforce their separatist, superiority rule over Judah. He posits that the Levites mixed the long-standing, peaceable, all-loving God traditions of the northern Israeli tribes with new racist, blood-thirsty, God-only-for-us myths of southern Judah (such as your Caananite story) as they composed the Torah.
To me, his thesis makes great sense, as to my layman's eyes, the bloodthirsty God of the O.T. bears no resemblance to the example and words of Jesus in the N.T.
Thank you!
I do not agree with this Douglas Reed's approach, as it destroys and distorts Deuteronomy, which is wonderful. The God of Deuteronomy is not blood thirsty. This error has been created by bad translation and interpretation.
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