The city of Jericho was a fortified city, Thick, heavy walls of brick and mortar on all sides. They had undoubtedly in the past, met other kingdoms that had attempted to either scale their walls or bring them crashing with a military-style attack without success.
God gives Joshua and the children of Israel an unorthodox approach to bringing down Jericho. For six days they were to walk silently around the city one time a day. On the seventh day, they were to walk around the city seven times. After the seventh time, the priests would blow their horns and then all the people would shout and the wall would fall down flat! I imagine Joshua giving God’s plan to the people and them looking around scratching their heads because it just doesn’t seem like the pragmatic way to approach this problem.
However, God’s ways are not our ways, In fact, God’s ways are often contradictory to pragmatism. All through the bible people of faith achieve the will of God in ways that would seem unorthodox to the world. That’s why it is so important to be in God’s word and learn how God operates because it a lot of times is contradictory to how the world operates.
It was vitally important that Israel keep themselves from the cursed things of Jericho. God wants to keep his people pure from the wicked things of this world.
So Israel believed God and followed his instructions. and at the right time, they yelled their shouts of faith and the wall did fall. All of Jericho was destroyed besides Rahab the harlot, who was saved with her family as promised.
It seemed like it was important for us to know Rahab was a prostitute. I think that’s to show the kindness and the respect we should give to others even when it seems easy to look down on them for sin that they live in (we should never look down on other). Really we’re all sinners and have no right to judge others. I also think this shows that despite struggling with sin you can still be important to God’s plan. Also I’d say right now reading this Rahab is probably one of my favorite Bible characters. She seemed to be smart, brave, and caring which are all great things that I think many people (and rightly so) strive for.
I should probably say when I mentioned judging others I don’t mean that we should just act like something isn’t sinful but just that we shouldn’t put people down/ be condemning.
I agree that Rahab is a very important person in scripture. In Joshua 2, she makes it very evident that she feared the Lord. She had heard that he had parted the Red Sea for the Israelites and helped them utterly destroy their enemies before they came to Jericho. So, even though she was a Canaanite and a harlot, she was a woman of faith and so God showed his mercy to her. I think it’s also important to point out that she turned out to be the mother of Boaz, who in turn, married Ruth, the widow. Who was also an outsider (Moabite). Both, who are present in the Davidian ancestral line of Christ. It speaks to the inclusive grace of God!
I think greed is possibly one of the easiest sins to commit, but it can also have some of the harshest consequences on both you and those around you.
Psalm 126
What does it mean exactly by “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”?
This Psalm must have been written right when the Jews were coming out of captivity. They had undoubtedly struggled in their captivity for years and years, but they kept their faith that God would deliver them. The verse after gives me more of an applicable meaning of the preceding verse. We as Christians must abide in our faith through trials and tribulation which will undoubtedly come. We must resolve to fulfill the will of God (which is to spread the Gospel) even though it’s not easy to do. It can cause weeping and pain but in the end. It will be more than worth it.