3-Dimensional Literature
Biblical Conception of Human-Divine Agency in Joshua 10
Much of art, especially literature, presents a certain view of reality. The artist uses the medium to communicate in-sights. Just as artists in other media use various techniques to suit their presentation intent, authors employ various devices and methods in their writing to convey their intended meaning. The authors of the Hebrew scriptures wrote from a worldview incredibly foreign to the pervasive Western modernity of today. Because of this, many of their devices and forms of communication are equally foreign to modern readers. However, these literary methods reveal aspects of reality that modern readers do not account for in their worldview, and can not discuss because of their limited language. Scripture often presents a view of the world that comes into conflict with our own. Honest readers should seek out these conflicts, and examine where they reveal fundamental lacunae in vision.
The following passage poses a particularly important worldview conflict with regard to Human/Divine agency. Through examination and a correct shift in understanding, what appears to be a halting and/or fanciful tale will reveal itself a masterfully crafted layering of description. As will be demonstrated, this artistry produces a narrative with dimension most modern prose lacks capacity for.
This is a small account from the book of Joshua chapter 10. It fits within the larger story of the Lord God leading Israel into the promised land and securing it from the hostile nations already there. Joshua is the leader of Israel, who has just been tricked into a covenantal treaty with the Gibeonites. This shift in Gibeon’s alliance prompts the king of the Amorites to rally his remaining allies for a retaliation against this dangerous partnership.
Throughout the book (not to mention the broader cannon of scripture within which it fits), are numerous demonstrations of the character and nature of the god who calls himself “I AM”. The author of this history treats this god as an active participant (albeit a divine and mysterious one) who even enters into his own covenantal agreement with the nation of Israel. He is a distinct person who acts directly within his creation and enters into relationship with men. For the sake of this study, this fact is taken for granted. The aim here is to discover and understand how the author of Joshua intended to present reality and history. Any question of authorial reliability or error should necessarily come after an honest evaluation of the communicated worldview.
6 And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” 7 So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. 8 And YHWH said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands. Not a man of them shall stand before you.” 9 So Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal. 10 And YHWH threw them into a panic before Israel, and he struck them with a great blow at Gibeon and chased them by the way of the ascent of Beth-horon and struck them as far as Azekah and Makkedah. 11 And as they fled before Israel, while they were going down the ascent of Beth-horon, YHWH threw down large stones from heaven on them as far as Azekah, and they died. There were more who died because of the hailstones than the sons of Israel killed with the sword.
12 At that time Joshua spoke to YHWH in the day when YHWH gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
“Sun, stand still at Gibeon,
and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
until the nation took vengeance on their enemies.
Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. 14 There has been no day like it before or since, when YHWH heeded the voice of a man, for YHWH fought for Israel.
15 So Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Gilgal.
Joshua 10:7-15, ESV. I have replaced the ESV’s instances of ‘the LORD’ with the transliterated tetragrammaton to indicate God’s name in scripture.
These are thoughts and connections that I have had during my own very limited study of scripture. I ask you to always compare any interpretation or conclusion with the text first, and then consult other teachers and scholars. I pray that this passage study would challenge you to reconsider your understanding of God’s activity within and alongside his creation. If this can emphasize how awesome the literature and history of the Hebrew scriptures is, then God will have been faithful.
Notice that the story begins by revealing the end. Israel will win and the Amorite army will present no cause for fear. If this was mere foreshadowing, it would not be worth pointing out. Look carefully and see that the author has demonstrated a much more sophisticated revelation. The scripture goes beyond simply foreshadowing the ending to the readers, YHWH is able to reveal the story’s result to Joshua, the character of the history.
“I have given them into your hands,” says the Lord. Not mere foreshadowing, not cheap fortune-telling, not even prophetic insight. The power beyond history acts as a character within it. Here, the writer can artistically demonstrate that YHWH’s promise to Joshua is as good as a statement of fact because the character YHWH is in fact the power by which the history is enacted and written. He who is beyond and above the author of the text is able to meet and act within the written history.
Joshua can have faith in the power above history when he hears this promise. The protagonist has been told the plot, and not in a cruel work of narrative antics, or a lamentation of the uselessness of his action. Instead, it is a demonstration of the total power of YHWH. He is a character who himself powers the book, a God who reassures his servant and fulfills his promises. This is the voice that proves its trustworthiness and requires faith.
YHWH is revealed to be personal, that is, he can act and have agency in history. Clearly though, he is a person in scope and nature our worldview can not fully contain. The story now begins to depict this agency in the account of Israel’s battle with the Amorites. Here is a line of writing so subversive to our conception of agency that we either fail to read the full meaning or dismiss it as a clerical error.
Read this story with the same respect and attention required of any epic literature. That is to say, suspend your pre-emptive conceptions and allow the text to inform your imagination line by line. Remember, ancient scribes did not have the technological luxury for vacuous pleonasms. Time, memory, and resources were precious, each word was literally costly. These men were highly skilled and intentional with how they communicated. An honest reader ought to slow down enough to attend to every line and word.
“Joshua came upon them suddenly, having marched up all night from Gilgal.” The Amorite army was camped in the hill country, gathered for war. A foreign people named Israel had come up from Egypt and destroyed every city and people who came against them. Then, hearing that the mighty Gibeonite people had made a covenantal agreement with this new force, the Amorite king gathered all of his allies to form a united front against the traitorous people. Imagine being an Amorite soldier hearing reports of the mysterious god YHWH stopping the Jordan river. The great walled city Jericho has been razed and your king has assembled the largest defense force possible. “Suddenly,” Joshua’s army appears in the hills surrounding your camp and attacks.
If we permit humor into our reading of scripture, we would laugh at the following line. So far, the text has directed us to imagine Joshua’s mighty men of valor streaming down into the unaware enemy camp. Yet the next line says, “and YHWH threw them into a panic before Israel.” Is it not obvious that the surprise attack on an unsuspecting army is the cause of the panic? Why does the story credit YHWH with panicking the Amorites? When we are willing to laugh at scripture, our humor is able to reveal where the text conflicts with our expectations.
Our worldview interprets what we read to form our mental picture. Here, we expect that human and divine agency are mutually exclusive. Therefore, when we read that YHWH caused a panic in the enemy we are likely to imagine some sort of additional action on the part of YHWH. In order to resolve the tension that our imagination has with the story’s description we may even unconsciously imagine YHWH’s help as a sort of divine intervention alongside Israel’s physical attack. This type of resolution consists only of speculation. Instead of admitting our imaginations fundamentally differ from the scriptural worldview, we modify our imagined picture to include a “supernatural” cause of the panic for which we can credit to God. This “supernatural” modification to the story is without textual evidence, comes from worldview assumptions that do not align with scripture, and is in fact dissonant with the story’s construction and communication.
We allow ourselves to laugh at the strange competing credit for confusing the enemy. We recognise our instinctual mental resolution as inappropriate, and are left to face the now quite clashing description. Line after line, the depictions of Israel and YHWH’s actions sit uncomfortably across and upon each other. Joshua leads an ambush but YHWH throws the enemy into confusion. An ambiguous pronoun “strikes a great blow” and routs the Amorites, but then the author writes that in fact Israel chased the army down. The sons of Israel were victorious but actually YHWH killed more with hailstones. Then, the seemingly most miraculous aspect of the story is flipped on its head when we read that it was Joshua who spoke directly to the sun and moon (but also speaking to YHWH?) telling them to stop in the sky. Someone wrote this, someone decided to construct the story in such a way. Our interpretative process aims now to discover a writer’s intent that could justify this cross-heap narrative.
As clearly shown before, a reader’s prior worldview interprets the literature before her. All art, not to mention reality, is necessarily understood through interpretative lenses that reveal meaning and significance. Differing physical lenses direct and filter light to inform the image just as worldviews filter and inform interpretation. Both physical and meta-physical lenses are judged by how well they appropriately correspond to reality. An otherwise good magnifying glass makes a poor camera lens, and do not bother trying to read with a telescope. Our interpretative dissonance with Joshua chapter ten is a result of our worldview’s interpretative failure; we have been trying to watch a 3D movie without our glasses.
The genius of stereoscopic cinematography is that it can simultaneously show altering red and blue images to portray a picture with depth. Worn stereoscopic lenses mimic real depth perception by presenting only one of the images to each eye. Jarring, discordant red and blue overlays are revealed to be extensions of the artistic portrayal only when viewing the film appropriately. Similarly, we have failed to view this passage of scripture as what it is, 3D literature. The inappropriate worldview lens, the incorrect assumption, was that supernatural reality exists as intervention to what we see. When corrected, the “cross-heap” is revealed to be masterful layering of realities to reveal the story in a new divine dimension. Interweaving the narrative is the human and divine agencies that are intended to complement instead of contradict one another. The light of scripture can reshape our lens, our worldview is corrected as we learn that supernatural reality exists as depth to what we see.
Now the story reads in vibrant image and the significance of the narrative appears all the more clear. In terms of the film metaphor, the human and divine agency layers fully overlap, literally come into focus, in verse 10. A third person singular masculine pronoun indicates the agent of the central action. “He struck them with a great blow… and chased them…” Remember, the nation under Joshua’s lead is called by the name of Israel, which is the singular masculine name given to Jacob by YHWH. Because of this, the “He” does not clearly belong to one of the two agents of the story. In fact, it belongs to both. This small word conducts the most profound literary construction of the passage. Israel and YHWH’s agencies are here portrayed completely overlapping. The artistry of the account rips open our restricted view of human/divine activity. By singling the agent of destruction, the author unifies the human-divine will in the action; the act of God’s people is his act, the will of God’s people is here completely unified with his.
Israel’s battle with the Amorites is not only unique in literature, scripture says it is also unique in history. “There has been no day like it before or since.” One last time, scripture reveals a new divine depth of history. Joshua, the man named “God saves”, stands before the people of God and speaks to the sun and moon to still. The story begins with YHWH assuring his servant of victory, and the story ends, “YHWH heeded the voice of a man, for YHWH fought for Israel.”
Human-Divine agency does not overlap again in the same way until hundreds of years later. Surprisingly, three first century historians wrote about another Joshua who spoke to still creation (Matthew 8:23–27, Mark 4:36–41, and Luke 8:22–25). This Joshua claimed to not only be a holy leader, a speaker for God, and a representative of God’s people, Joshua of Nazareth said “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). As a Jewish boy, he surely would have read Joshua 10 and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures. This carpenter’s son claimed to be YHWH who had spoken to Joshua so long before.
If true, the greatest divine agency had condescended to exist not just to extend but to be a human agency. An infinite divine depth crossed all dimension in the greatest recorded act of love. YHWH, the power of history, lived as a man. He carried the reality of divine depth to it’s ultimate end. Joshua 10 narrates that the human-divine agency focused uniquely on Joshua (leader of Israel). Over a thousand years later, God’s salvation is ultimately clarified in the person of Joshua of Nazareth.
There is a depth to reality usually hidden from regular sight. Clearly, scripture demonstrates that close attention and divine revelation can unveil divine purposes in otherwise seemingly “normal” things. Ambushing an enemy army is quite “natural”, but it is supernatural when YHWH fights for you. Salvation belongs to God, the power of history assures it, and he has entrusted it to his son Joshua who lives today.
Such a wonderful in depth explanation. Love your writing and insight Corban.