Friday, August 18, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Onward Yahweh’s soldiers
Joshua gathered together all the tribes, who stood in ranks before God, and then he addressed all the people.
A lot has happened between Thursday and Friday of the lectionary, between Joshua 3 and the first half of Joshua 24, the last chapter. Canaan is no longer Canaan; it is now named the new name of Israel. Yes, the Israelites have enemies, but they are kept at bay. God’s chosen people might now be allowed to develop the civilization for which God laid the foundation with the Levitical laws, traditions, festivals and feasts.
Above all perhaps, God gave his chosen people their Sabbath, binding them to keep it holy resting every seventh day, and the Year of Jubilee, which freed his people (hopefully) from greed and inequity, as the land returned to its original owners every 49th year.
I gave you a land which you did not till, and cities that you did not build to live in. You have eaten from vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.
You’d think any reasonable people would be nothing but grateful, learning to love and serve each other with share and share alike, always remembering their Source, giving thanks to Yahweh their Lord.
Gives thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
His mercy endures forever.
He led his people through the wilderness and slew great kings.
He made their land a heritage for Israel his servant. He has freed us from our foes.
His mercy endures forever.
Things are never quite that simple for the children of Adam and Eve. There have always been farmers and ranchers, fighting through the barbed wire invented just to keep them apart. Cattle and corn, or in the old days, sheep and wheat. Who will offer right sacrifices to the Lord?
Perhaps not the farmers or the shepherds, since what God requires is justice, mercy and humility (Micah 6:8) – not the blood of rams, not the sheaves of wheat. Cannot both the hunters/gatherers and the settled farmers offer what Moses, Isaiah and Micah called for in the name of God, the Lord, Yahweh, the Father?
Well, no.
They fight about everything, forgetting how to grow up, if they ever knew. Among other conflicts, they become mired in the battle of the sexes. Moses must hear what God told him to say about this. Jesus too, was listening. Jesus interpreted the words of Moses, as he often did, not leaving well enough alone but making a “midrash” of things instead.
Then why did Moses permit the man to divorce a woman and dismiss her?
(Sounds like Moses was doing a midrash, a riff of his own on Genesis 2, you know, the part about leaving your mom and dad and cleaving to your husband or wife? In Hebrew, the word translated “cleave” means “stick to like glue.”)
Jesus had plenty to say about this, and it was not friendly.
Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed this, but it was not so from the beginning. I say unto you, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.
He who has ears to hear …
Like the Pharisees before us, some of us Christ-followers take this absolutely and literally, therefore refusing accept any “midrash.” This is part of the joy and misery of being a Christian. We will not feel connected either with God or ourselves without listening intently and constantly to God and ourselves, in the Bible, in our experience, in our hearts.
Moses and Joshua have much to teach us, just in how to live our lives day after day with God.
(Joshua 24, Psalm 136, 1 Thessalonians 2, Matthew 19)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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