Divine presence amid violence

They were not revolting peasants!

DIVINE PRESENCE AMID VIOLENCE
Contextualizing the Book of Joshua
By Walter Brueggemann
Paternoster. 82 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-84227-660-0

‘Tomorrow I shall hand them over, slain, to Israel; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.’ Israel obeyed, killed the Hazorites, destroyed their hardware and burnt their town (Joshua 11).

In this chapter, Breuggemann sees downtrodden Israelites overthrowing their oppressor at divine command, so disclosing ‘a God who will invert the historical process and give land to the landless’ (p.62), bringing a challenge today that ‘reliance on arms cannot secure against God’s force for life’ (p.65). He observes that several passages show ‘God’s hostility to horses and chariots, which are monarchic instruments of domination’ (p.43). But Brueggemann is primarily concerned to answer the question, ‘Does God mandate violence?’ (p.39). Here his relativistic approach will be less acceptable to readers of EN (e.g. ‘there is no single meaning for any text’, p.ix). Where he asserts biblical texts present a certain view of reality which is in dispute with other versions, evangelicals affirm that the biblical version is the true one.

By concentrating on Joshua 11, Brueggemann fails to read the chapter in the context of the conquest which required Israel to exterminate the Canaanites, while allowing them to occupy their towns with their contents (except Jericho and pagan images) and thus his exposition is skewed. In attempting to ‘see if this narrative of Joshua is disclosure from God for communities of marginality in our own tme’ (p.63), he makes some worthwhile observations, but by treating the Israelites as revolting peasants instead of invaders, he moves from the biblical narrative into modern hypotheses and tries to turn a unique event in the history of God’s Chosen People into a model that may be applicable today.

Alan Millard,
Emeritus Rankin Professor of Hebrew & Ancient Semitic Languages, University of Liverpool; member, Myton Church, Warwick

© Evangelicals Now - December 2009
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