Judges 3: The First Three Judges

There are two things the people of Israel need to teach their children: The story of God delivering them from Egypt, the commandments he gave, and how to follow them. According to Judges 3, the Art of War There are also two things Judges are supposed to do (according to Judges 2): Deliver Israel from …

Joshua 16: Why The Canaanites Were (Almost) Wiped Out

The Canaanites were supposed to be destroyed, right? Like, all of them, gone. Isn’t that what God said? If so, why have I read the following two passages in the last two chapters:  But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of …

Joshua 11: Why Joshua is a Difficult Book to Read

Joshua 11 plays with your emotions. It builds suspense, has intense action, and celebrates glorious victories. Then it beats you down and leaves you questioning everything. Here’s what I mean. Against The Odds It seems that the chances of Joshua’s success decrease with each successive battle. Jericho was a walk in the park. Ai had …

Joshua 10: Joshua’s Best. Day. EVER!!!

Do you ever wish there were more hours in the day? Have you ever thought to yourself, “gee, I have SO MUCH to do today, but there is absolutely no way I am going to get all of it done?” I think we can all remember a time when we had to fight five rival …

Joshua 9: Shrewd Little Buggers

I see what you did there. Oh, you Gibeonites! So crafty. So wily. So clever. Honestly, I gotta hand it to you. You managed to find a loophole in God’s law. And not only did you find it, you exploited that sucker for all it was worth. You knew that the Israelites were coming to …

Joshua 6: The “Battle” of Jericho

Alright! Joshua 6! Another one of those über-famous stories that also happens to be über-weird and über-interesting. I just figured out how to put an umlaut on my “u,” so I plan on üsing it liberally. I’d like to start talking about this battle by acknowledging the difficulty of reading about the slaughter of an …

Deuteronomy 28: The Scariest Chapter In The Bible

14/54 That is a ratio. Can you guess what it is? That is the number of pleasant verses in Deuteronomy 28 compared to the number of, shall we say, UNpleasant ones. If you ever asked yourself while reading Deuteronomy, “Hmm, I know that there have been some warnings about not following the law, but is …

Deuteronomy 21: Five Random Laws

Did you read that title like the 12 days of Christmas? Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive Randommm Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaws! Four calling birds . . . Anyway, I think Deuteronomy is about to get really fun. And by fun I mean “full of laws that I will have no idea what to do with and if taken at face value will …

Deuteronomy 2: Two Thoughts & a Question

Deuteronomy 2 isn’t exactly the easiest chapter to read and “get something out of it.” So I decided to take some of my own advice from yesterday and read it slowly and carefully with as much curiosity as I could muster. And wouldn’t you know it, the results were very interesting. Call & Response One …

Numbers 31: The Cursers Get Cursed

Remember that incident with Midian a little ways back? Well, let’s say that some guys from Israel engaged in some inappropriate hanky-panky with some women from Midian resulting in some rather unfortunate idolatry which resulted in a plague that killed 24,000 people. And do you remember how during that time there were a lot of …