Year in the Bible Week 13

Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon by John Martin (1816)

Hello everybody, welcome to week 13! This week we read about the Israelite victories over king after king as God cleared away the people who worshipped false Gods in the promised land. Christy found a particularly cool video online about the victory at Ai that you might want to check out:

After so many kings were defeated there was a lot of land to conquer and divide, and God’s wisdom regarding the division of land becomes even more poignant. Because the Levites had no allottment of land for themselves, they were going to be spread throughout the land. Throughout the promised land there would always be a clan nearby who served God full-time. This would keep a single spiritual and legal perspective that would unite the nation in a way that had probably never been tried in all of history.

As Joshua nears the end of his life we get some detail about the work that is left to be done. We will soon see that the next generations of his people will have trouble accomplishing the task. This week we come into the book of Judges, and we will read of Gideon, the Levite concubine, and more violence and drama. This was a very scary time.