Joshua - Just one thing: Chapter 11

It is "chariots" that strike me in my "just one thing" from this chapter of Joshua. The word is not dropped idly here by the Lord. There is a vendetta behind this. God makes a point of noting that when Joshua swept the land clean of God's enemies, "he hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with fire" (verse 9).

There is a sense in which the whole Bible is the record of the enmity between God and chariots. The narrative describing Pharaoh's defeat at the Exodus never misses an opportunity to emphasize the chariots that Pharaoh counted on (Exodus 14:7, 17) and the total annihilation of the same (Exodus 14:18, 23, 25, 26, 28; 15:4, 19).

The Lord knows how impressive and fearful the chariot is, so He addresses the issue in a preemptive way when He sets down his laws for warfare:

"When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you. . . ." (Deuteronomy 20:1).

It begins to dawn on us that the chariot is imbued with symbolic meaning for God, representing all the powers of man that vainly vaunt themselves against Him. This is personal. The contest is on throughout the course of history. To the bitter end, the hellish enemies of God that are coughed out of the bottomless pit carry the sound of chariots (Revelation 9:9).

Later, the Ephraimite tribe's two lame excuse for not taking possession of their allotted inheritance will be the forests and the chariots: ". . . all the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those in Beth-shean and its villages and those in the Valley of Jezreel" (Joshua 17:16). Joshua is supposed to be sympathetic to this, but it leaves him cold:

"Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, . . . "You are a numerous people and have great power . . . though it is a forest, you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron, and though they are strong" (Joshua 17:17-18).

Later, in Judges 1 we are told outright that the tribe of Judah was not able to drive out the inhabitants of the lowlands because they had chariots (verse 19). If we weren't aware of the shameful background to this comment, we would almost accept it as a legitimate excuse. But we now recognize Israel's self-defeatism and its inevitable consequences: Because they believe themselves unable to possess the land, they are indeed unable.

Fear of chariots is, of course, a subset of fear of man, whose flip side is confidence in man. These are people who would prefer to take their chances with human help than divine help. Someone endowed with a fascination for the more mathematical features of the Word of God pointed out to me the ultimate thrilling chiastic structure of the Bible---that the very middle verse of the entire book is Psalm 118:8:

"It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes."

The delightful surprise, by the time we meet Elijah centuries later, is that the man who forsakes his trust in human chariots, far from forsaking his protection, now enters the exclusive club of those protected by the chariots of God. Elisha gets a glimpse of them as his mentor Elijah is carried off to heaven (2 Kings 2). The sight so captures his imagination that he is unruffled by the sight of Syrian horses and chariots encircling him and Dothan; he sees the outer ring of heavenly chariots ringing those (2 Kings 6:8-19).

Read the next part in this series.

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