Into the Promised Land Part IV

by Elaine Poproski

Over the last month we’ve been reading and thinking about the journey of the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. This week we’ll be reading Joshua 5. It’s one of those stories that offers a stark reminder that God’s ways don’t always seem logical at first read.

The fledgling nation has experienced the miracle of crossing the river on dry ground. It wasn’t a quiet miracle. Word of it had carried all through the Promised Land and everywhere the story was heard, the people’s “hearts melted, and there was no longer any spirit in them” (Joshua 5:1). In other words, the land was primed for an easy invasion. With kings and villagers alike cowering in fear behind their walls, surely the land would quickly belong to Israel!

Earlier in the story, in Joshua 2, Rahab is reported to have said to the Israelite spies she harbored, “dread of you has fallen on us, and…all the inhabitants of the land melt in fear before you.” That was even before the Jordan River miracle! Anybody with even a sliver of military acumen would tell you the time to invade was now.

But that’s not what God instructed.

Instead, God told them to make knives and circumcise the Israelites. All of them (at least, all the men and boys). All the warriors. All the male leaders. Everyone who would be picking up a sword or axe or slingshot. Circumcise them all.

What was God thinking?!  Can you imagine a more vulnerable people than one in which every single boy and man had been recently circumcised? Talk about wasting a prime opportunity to take what you’ve been waiting 100s of years for! But that is what God said to do so that is what the people did.

As you prepare for Sunday, I invite you to read Joshua 5 and then continue through chapter 6 as well. Read for yourself how it all turned out. I expect you’ll notice that even though God’s idea must have seemed nonsensical to the Israelites at the time, God clearly had a plan and His plan clearly wasn’t wrecked by this weird instruction and it’s even weirder timing. Perhaps there have been times in your life when you were convinced that God was asking something really weird of you. How did it turn out?

As you prepare for Sunday, maybe spend some time meditating on the words from Isaiah 55:8-9 which read this way:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.