CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 6:23. And left them without the camp] Till they had undergone ceremonial purification they would be regarded as unclean, and, as such, they were forbidden to come where the Lord dwelt (cf. Numbers 5:2-3).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 6:21-25
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CANAANITES
In slaying all the inhabitants of Jericho, with the exception of Rahab and her kindred, it cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that the Israelites were fulfilling the will and obeying the command of God. From Deuteronomy 20:10-18, it is clear that although mercy was to be shewn to all cities out of Canaan, the Israelites were to spare no one in the cities of the land itself. The command was, “Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:” the very sign of life was to be the token for death. In carrying out this terrible mission, the Israelites were not to consult any vindictive feelings of their own; they were to act throughout as servants of God. The subject of these verses is not human cruelty, but Divine severity. It is not for us to “justify the ways of God to men;” it would be equally wrong to turn from any of those acts on which God has laid emphasis, because they may not be pleasant to our feelings. God meant us to think on what He does: that is why His solemn works are recorded. In the light which six thousand years have shed on the name and character of God, all His acts should be received with unquestioning trust: His name written under any work whatever should be a sufficient guarantee of its rectitude. When the Judge bears such a character—a character even more Divine than His glorious name—it is good philosophy to argue, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Consider:
I. The grounds for the destruction of these idolatrous people. What is there about the case to assure us that this is no departure from the invariable justness and righteousness of God?
1. It should not be forgotten that God has a right to the lives of all men. That right is being continually asserted. In London alone, some one dies every eight minutes. God claims our little children who are too young to know what sin means, and our aged parents and friends also. Sometimes a dreadful accident sweeps away its scores, or even its hundreds; or it may be that a fearful pestilence takes, in a few weeks, many thousands to the grave. At the back of every death is the will of God. The ancient Persians believed in two gods, Ormudz and Ahriman; the former, the cause of light and good things, the latter, the cause of darkness and evil things. In the very teeth of that mistake Jehovah proclaims, through Isaiah, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” God claims to do the things which wound and break our hearts, as well as the things which heal them. The Saviour dares to stand prospectively by the slain martyrs of His Church, and in view of their shed blood and burned bodies to expound: “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” God claims to stand by every death that occurs from disease or accident: He claims not less the right to employ the sword of man as an instrument for the overthrow of the wicked, and a means whereby He may call even His children home. If diseases and accidents may be the messengers of a just God, why not the sword also? Even men claim the right to destroy murderers. God claims the right to take life in single cases, and we bow in reverence to His demand. Joshua acts as God’s instrument in slaying Achan; but no less does Elijah act as God’s instrument in the destruction of the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. The demand in one case is on a larger scale than the other, the principle is the same in both. It may be asked, Would not the effect of slaying all the Canaanites be morally injurious to the Israelites as their executioners? Could they possibly slay whole cities of men, women, and children, without becoming degraded and brutalised themselves? Probably the effect must be bad, if there were not some adequate reason. If there were a solemn need for this slaughter, in order that myriads might be rescued from the miserable degradations of idolatry, it might altogether change and correct the influence on the minds of the executioners. But no theorizing on that point is necessary: as a matter of fact, the generation of men who did this dreadful work of slaughter were a great deal holier than their children. The lessons of this solemn judgment were written deeply on the hearts of the Israelites, and it was not till after they had passed away that the iniquity recorded in the book of Judges was committed.
2. Apart from the Divine right to human life, the provocations of the Canaanites were very great. (a) They were gross idolaters. For one thing, they worshipped Baal, in which worship the most degraded cruelties were practised. Little children were offered in sacrifice, and, in the time of Jehoshaphat, we find that the king of Moab offered for a burnt offering either his own eldest son or the son of the king of Edom. Another of the idolatries of the Canaanites was the worship of Ashtoreth, the Sidonian goddess of impurity, the lewd rites connected with which warrant the suggestion that the death of these children by the sword was merciful, compared with the life otherwise before them. (b) The Canaanites, who worshipped idols like these, must have known much of the true God. They were descendants of Noah, and with very few intervening generations. Ham, the father of Canaan, was one of the eight persons saved in the ark, and from his lips Canaan could not but have heard solemnly of God’s awful judgment in the deluge. As has been pointed out, if Canaan lived as long as some of the children of Shem, his life and personal influence would have reached on through about half the period between the deluge and the overthrow of Jericho. The Canaanites had also received repeated warnings, which reached backward to the destruction of Sodom. All the pious traditions of Noah’s godliness, and the subsequent warnings given because of the sinfulness of the Hamite branch of his descendants, had been alike despised. We have only to look at this case calmly to see how much reason there was for this sword of destruction.
3. God’s purpose was to remove this idolatry from the land. We need not regard the whole of the inhabitants of the land as destroyed. They evidently had the alternative of flight, and God’s fear is said to have been sent in advance of the Israelites to induce the idolaters to escape (cf. Exodus 23:27-30). It is a matter of history that many are known thus to have fled to other lands. Those who chose to remain were to die, lest the Israelites should be corrupted. It might be asked, Might not the women and children have been spared? This, also, needs no consideration as a theory: some were spared, and the result was the gross idolatry of the Israelites themselves. The very history of the generations which followed, vindicates with painful sufficiency the necessity for this terrible command.
4. While we mark here the severity of the Lord, we should also think on His longsuffering and His justice. The covenant with Abraham, that his seed should inherit this land, was made more than four hundred and fifty years before, and God had then said, “Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age: but in the fourth generation thy seed shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” God waited for four centuries and a half; He would not consume these idolaters till the measure of their guilt made it imperative, nor would He allow Israel to take possession of the land so long as its original occupants were suffered to live. While we stand in awe before the severity of Jehovah, we are also compelled to behold that He is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”
II. The lessons which God, through this terrible judgment, would impress upon the contemporary and after world.
1. His unwavering determination to punish sin. Longsuffering does but make wrath seem more awful: it shews that there was no viudictiveness in the Divine anger, but it lays terrible stress on its deliberateness. God “will by no means clear the guilty.” Our sin must be borne personally, or be confessed by faith, and put away in Jesus.
2. God’s peculiar hatred of the sin of idolatry. This deliberately proposes other gods, and He alone will be worshipped. Israel was to be punished for this just as severely as Canaan (cf. Deuteronomy 13:6-16). This also was in mercy. There can only be One God for eternity; idolatry could not but lead to everlasting spiritual ruin.
3. Emphatic assertion was to be given to the fact that Divine anger is not fictitious. Even good men, and some of these especially, have ever been wont to lean to the side of Divine love, so as to lose sight of the realness of Divine wrath. The need for these terrible records is proclaimed by nothing more earnestly than by the readiness of men to blot out, or interpret feebly, the sternest words of Scripture.
4. We are to learn the importance of taking heed to occasional warnings. The overthrow of the cities of the plain, and of the Egyptians, the wonders of the Red Sea and the wilderness, and the dividing of the Jordan, are preliminary to the destruction of a nation.
5. God would teach the world, through all time, the awful meaning of His own silence. It is not enough that we do not often behold the judgments of the Lord; the only place for safety is to stand where we can hear Him speak in love. These four hundred and fifty years were, notwithstanding some warnings, years of comparative calm. It would be only too easy for the Canaanites not to hear much of the voice of the Lord in judgments as far back as Sodom, and as far off as Egypt. But the silence of God was only such stillness as often precedes the storm. Ought not some to interpret prosperity and calm in the same way now? It has been written for our admonition, “These things hast thou done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.”
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 6:21. “Every living thing in Jericho—man, woman, child, cattle—must die.” Our folly would think this merciless; but there can be no mercy in injustice, and nothing but injustice in not fulfilling the charge of God.
“The death of malefactors, the condemnation of wicked men, seem harsh to us; but we must learn of God that there is a punishing mercy. Cursed be that mercy that opposes the God of mercy.” [Bp. Hall.]
“The destruction of these Canaanite cities followed upon an immediate Divine direction (Exodus 17:14; Deuteronomy 7:2; Deuteronomy 20:16; 1 Samuel 15:3); at another time the Israelites vow the same (Numbers 21:2). Again, in other cases, the devotement, in its inward direction and in its outward, takes place in consequence of appointments of the law (Leviticus 20:2; Deuteronomy 13:16 ff.). By this a limit was set to all caprice; for the holiness of Israel, in rigid separation from everything of a heathen nature, and from every abomination of idolatry (Exodus 23:32; Deuteronomy 20:18), was to be the only ground of the ban. Otherwise every murderer might with hypocritical mien have appealed to such a devotement of his neighbour. He who seized upon anything for himself that had been devoted paid the penalty with his life (Joshua 6:18; Deuteronomy 13:17; Joshua 7:11 ff.).” [Lange.]
Joshua 6:22-23. THE DELIVERANCE OF-RAHAB AND HER KINDRED.
I. The sacredness of representative acts is as great as that of personal acts. Joshua made the promise of the spies as binding as if it were his own act, and the Lord bad regard to it no less than Joshua; for Rahab’s house, though built upon or against the wall, stood safely after the wall had fallen. Representative acts are common all through society, and practically society often holds them to be imperatively binding. “No man liveth to himself.” We are always committing other people to responsibilities by our deeds, even though we do not act officially on their behalf. Thus, too, we suffer in the sin of Adam, and are saved in the obedience of Christ.
II. The hope which comes from faith in God is as certainly salvation to the very sinful as to those who are outwardly righteous. “By faith Rahab the harlot perished not with them that believed not.” Having acknowledged in heart and by her deeds that the God of Israel was the only God, her safety was in Him whom she trusted, and not in her past life. This woman, who was a sinner, was as safe in Jericho, though God Himself fought against it, as righteous Daniel in the lions’ den. God loves all men; and when they accept Him by faith, it is He who is their Saviour, not their character. A young woman in Scotland left her home, and became a companion of the street-girls of Glasgow. Her mother sought her far and wide, but in vain. At last she caused her picture to be hung in various places of public resort in the city, which her daughter might be likely to frequent. Many gave that picture a passing glance. One lingered by it, and could not break away. It was the same dear face that looked down upon her in her childhood. Her mother had not forgotten her, nor cast off her sinning child, or she would never have sent her portrait to hang pleading with the wandering one from that wall. The very lips seemed to open, and to whisper, “Come home: I forgive you, and I love you still.” So thought the poor penitent, and bursting into tears she hastened back once more to the home and the life in which mother and daughter could again be one. So God here seems to pourtray His own heart for the Rahabites of all time. He, too, is saying, through this pardoned woman of Jericho, “Come home: I forgive you, and love you still.” Those who hear His voice and do His bidding, are as safe in His forgiveness as any other of His children.
III. The salvation of the soul comprises the salvation of everything else that is necessary, so long as it is necessary. Both the book of Joshua and the Epistle to the Hebrews lead us to hope that Rahab was spiritually as well as temporally saved. That being so, her very house stands so long as it is necessary to shield her. The Lord throws down the rest of the wall, but not this part. Presently, when Rahab is delivered, the house may be burned in common with the other houses of the city. If we love God, all that we have is safe so long as it is wanted to assist in shielding us. When this is no longer the case, we need not mourn over our burnt dwelling-places, out of which the owner has been so graciously delivered. We might often sing over our saved selves, where we foolishly weep over our destroyed or removed belongings.
IV. The saved member of any one family should mean, at least often, a saved household. Rahab and “all that she had” were delivered. It seems very dreadful to think of one member of a large family loving Christ, and living with them for years on earth, and yet at last going to heaven alone. It seems as though there could be neither love nor humanity in the creature who was delivered; or hardly a promise in the Bible, and only a God who gave no heed to prayer.
V. Those whom the Lord saves are not only to know deliverance from outward danger and death, they are to seek an inner and actual life. These ceremonially un clean ones were to tarry without the camp till they had been purified. Proselytes were thus taught to feel that none of the old heathenism must be brought in to defile the children of the Lord and they themselves must be separated from their former lives ere they could dwell before the Ark of the Divine Presence. Those who only come to the cross, must never expect to reacl the crown. We need not only justification, but sanctification also. Nothing that defileth entereth in before God above.
VI. The salvation of the Lord has not only forgiveness of sin, but forgetfulness of it also. Salmon, at ancestor of David, afterwards married Rahab. God thus graciously suffered her name to have a place in the gene alogy of the Saviour; in addition to which, honourable mention is made by the Holy Spirit of her faith. It is as though Divine mercy would not only save the worst, but also hold before them hope of the highest honours. David did not speak vainly when he said, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.”
“It troubleth me not to conceive how, the rest of the wall falling flat, Rahab’s house, built thereon, should stand upright; seeing Divine power, which miraculously gave the rule, might accordingly make the exception.” [Fuller.]
“Judgment and mercy shewn by the devotement of Jericho on the one hand, and on the other by the deliverance of Rahab.
“The rescue of Rahab considered in reference
(1) to her character;
(2) to the conscientiousness of Joshua, who would have the word which had been given kept;
(3) to the future of the kingdom of God. Rahab the heathen woman is received into Israel, that through Israel the heathen also might be saved.” [Lange.]
Joshua 6:24. God would have us blot out even the traces of past iniquity. Sin is the abominable thing which the Lord hateth; where He exposes it, it is but that He may hide it for ever. Calvary reveals human sin only “to cast it into the depths of the sea” forever. The Scriptures continually represent God as “covering sin,” “blotting it out,” or as “casting it behind His back.”
God takes of the gifts which men have obtained, not because He has need of them, but because they have need to render Him honour, and to acknowledge that by His strength all has been won. That which God takes as His own, He still leaves for the help of His servants.
Joshua 6:25. “I. God’s promises are as certain as if they had already been fulfilled and gone into effect. II. God thinks also of compassion when He is most angry, for in the midst of wrath He is gracious. III. What God curses no man must bless, and what God blesses let no man curse.” [Cramer.]