Joshua - Just one thing: Chapter 15

Adolph Hitler read the Bible once but had a low opinion of it as far as religious works go. Commenting on the Old Testament, he said it appeared to be a book about Hebrew cattle dealing. One would have hoped for more transcendent oracles from one's spiritual wellsprings.

I myself confess to giving short shrift to the "cattle dealing" passages of Scripture---those interminable genealogies from 1 Chronicles 1-9, as well as Joshua 15 on real estate subdivisions. But this is very like the situation with yearbooks and elementary school playbills, isn't it? People may skim most of the hundreds of entries and credits in the publication, but everyone searches intently for his darling son's or daughter's name.

It just so happens that every child of God is darling to Him. So He cannot resist featuring all their names. And, like it or not, you and I are supposed to be as excited about all the rest of His kids as we are about our own. (Someday we will be sanctified enough to feel that way.) Ours is not a destiny of union with Brahman by a liberation from individual personality. The Lord---who is a Trinity---celebrates the individual.

Think of the many lists in the Bible as God's Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall, if you will. As you observe the thousands of visitors annually surveying Maya Lin's black granite for the names of loved ones, and tracing their fingers over its Braille, so the names of those warriors who have partaken in the greatest story ever told are etched in His flesh:

"Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. Your builders make haste; your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you" (Isaiah 49:16-17).

Each name is a story. The dust of each conquered town divulges its tales anew to the reader who was there. Look at Hazor, sandwiched between Kedesh and Ithnan in verse 32, as if it were not that city of fame whose proud fortress bestrode the main trading route from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Did she polish her chariots to a shine for battle against the Israelites (11:4-9)? God has a thing about chariots, and a score to settle with those whose trust is in them.

Read the next part in this series.

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