Joshua attacked was Ai, but it proved more difficult to defeat. Although Ai was no better defended than Jericho, the troops of Joshua had committed some crimes which angered God, and this bad behavior was punished as a clear warning to what Moses had preached to his people while on his deathbed. Only the faithful will be rewarded and the false at heart will be hurt.
After Joshua resolved the religious problems, the troops appeared to be unbeatable. Thirty-one city-state kings were defeated and Israel’s advance could not be stopped, even when military alliances were formed by former foes. City after city either fell or sought treaties with the invading troops.
After Israel had taken possession of the Promised Land, Joshua then portioned it out to his followers. Having fulfilled his fate and while upon his deathbed, Joshua’s closing words were the same message as Moses … “Live well with the words of our Lord or lose the land you fought to gain”.
A series of judges became the succession of leaders for the next hundreds of years. These deliverers did not function as kings, but were more like crisis management leaders such as Moses and Joshua were. Some are well known and many are not.
God, however, continued to reward those people of pure purpose and even of those who were only halfhearted in their endeavors He would depart his blessings. The well-being of Israel depended upon God’s deliverance from the remaining Canaanites in the country who were reminders to wayward worshipers. Also the enemy nations who still survived and surrounded Israel could engulf the Promised Land if the followers brought misery upon themselves by forsaking the words of God that He gave to them to live by.
It still seems the followers of Moses had a short memories, because during the next several generations God’s words were again forgotten and every man just practiced what was right in his own eyes. Famine next ravaged the Promised Land and instead of flowing with milk and honey, fear and failure now took over the nation.
Eli was the judge during this time, but he had grown old and his sons had corrupted the tending of the tabernacle. One day in the City of Shiloh, Eli heard a barren woman named Hannah praying to God and promised if He would allow her a son that she and her husband, Elkanah, would devote their offspring to the service of the Lord to tend the tabernacle. Her prayers were soon answered and her son, Samuel, served the tabernacle as a child and as time passed Eli took him under his guidance and he eventually became the leading judge of all of Israel.
Later on during a disastrous battle with their neighboring Philistines the Israelites lost and then thought they regained the Ark of the Covenant, which again proved to them that even leading the battle front with the ark would not assure their victory. Only their behavior and beliefs could do so.
After being humbled again the Israelites then asked Samuel to appoint them a king like all of the other nations had, instead of their system of crisis management by raising up a judge to rule the missions. God took their request for a king as a rejection of His leadership, but nevertheless He told Samuel to select Saul. Although kingship was a foreign institution for Israel, the monarchy was regarded as a servant of Yahweh.
Saul was a courageous king, but he only halfheartedly obeyed the commandments of God. Samuel was forced to look for a replacement king because Saul was jeopardizing Israel’s future fate. The judge next told David, who was still but a boy, that he would become the next king. David had doubts about his leadership, but after he downed the giant Goliath with his slingshot, he became a hero to all of Israel except to Saul.
Saul could not rejoice in David’s one-handed victory because he now felt his rule threatened by the teenager. Saul wanted his son Jonathon to succeed him as king, but Jonathon had no qualms about yielding his claim to David. So Saul’s insecurities continued to fuel his foolishness until he was killed in battle by the Philistines.
During the dynasty of David he first called on the twelve tribes of Israel to grieve for Saul’s death. The tribes now knew they had to unite around David to protect their lands. Although God was the ruler of the land, truly no centralized government existed because the twelve tribes operated independently and only used the previous king as a judge for raising missions or resolving conflicts.
After David captured the city-state of Jerusalem he decided to unite the political and religious fractions by moving the Ark of the Covenant and the government to this new capital city. After solidifying his citizenry David continued to defeat or ally with all nations surrounding the Israelites and fulfilled all of the promises of Moses and Abraham and brought the glory of God to all of Israel.
But David was not without his own personal problems. After assuming the throne the king committed adultery and then orchestrated a murder to cover it up. None of the citizenry of Israel challenged him and so God sent the prophet Nathan to David to seek his sentence. Although the king did show remorse in the forthcoming years, the adulterous child died, David’s daughter was raped by one of his sons named Amnon, another son named Absalom had Amnon killed, and then during a long family feud tried to remove his father from the throne.
After many more adventuresome exploits David died and his son named Solomon became king. He succeeded in quieting his brothers and ruled in peace and prosperity for forty years. During these years he completed his father’s plan to build a permanent temple to house the ark on Mount Zion, which still rested within the portable tabernacle built in the wilderness. His kingdom was now considered the center of the world and the construction of this temple was Solomon’s greatest achievement.
His father David had secured Israel’s borders by conquest or treaties and now Solomon had centralized their religious and political parties, but Solomon’s heart and head became divided as he tried to placate and accommodate the other nation’s gods. He even allowed and accepted the cults of his foreign wives and built sanctuaries to honor their gods. The king now even assumed and performed the rites reserved for the Levite priests including symbolic reactualizations of the creation.
As God, Abraham, and Moses had warned the promised people to put no other gods before Him or face the loss of their country, the descendants again forgot these words of warning and at Solomon’s death the nation became divided into the northern and southern kingdoms. The south was ruled by Solomon’s son Benjamin, and the north was ruled by the remaining rebellious tribes.
But because the ark was housed in Jerusalem, which was the southern nation’s capital, all of the religious festivals and animal sacrifices that Moses had instructed must take place were held only there. The northern nation did not want their citizens going to the south’s city-states kingdom to celebrate their faith, so their king ordered that a pair of golden calves be placed at the border and his citizens would worship there instead of the south’s temple. This innovation violated the prohibition against false or foreign images and further aggravated the feud between the divided nations.
Thus, not only was the nation re-divided politically but religiously too. During the following decades many prophets came and went, and many were sent to challenge the king’s authority, but none stopped their self-serving bad behavior. Then the Levites tribe and priests defected to the south and still the situation was not rectified. The fortunes of both nations were predestined to decline and ultimately being split and divided the north was defeated by the mighty nation of Assyria, and about 150 years later in 586 B.C. the south also was conquered by Babylon.
It now seemed as if God’s chosen people were doomed to forever discover, forget and rediscover the presence of God. Man was originally created in God’s image. Although the commandments proclaim us to behave in accordance to right and wrong, and sin always brings the loss of God’s blessing yet we are predestined and doomed to fail because sin is part of the human condition.
To true believers there is no doubt that Satan exists, for in the book of Job the celestial accuser puts to task the man Yahweh was most proud of who maintained his devoted faith despite many forms of cruel and unusual punishment. This Biblical story may prove that even God can be tempted by Satan by one of the seven deadly sins known as vanity. On the other hand, God in his mysterious ways allows that Job loses his children, wealth and is then maimed with ulcers from head to toe because he cannot identify the nature of his crime against God. Even when three of his best friends berate him for not admitting his guilt, he still stands on his integrity. Only when Job