Imagine a presentation by a Bible translator who has, over decades, successfully produced a new translation for a people group that did not previously have one in their own language. In the presentation, the translator describes the miraculous events God orchestrated, overcoming obstacles, shepherding the project to completion, and the rejoicing of the translators and the people receiving Bibles they could read for the first time. To God be the glory! – a moving recollection of events in which God rightly receives honor and credit for an awe-inspiring and truly worthy accomplishment.
In this telling, God’s miraculous interventions overshadow the years of difficult daily work of the translators and native language experts, which every listener understands were necessary. The translators attended years of university training in diverse subjects including theology and biblical languages, interviewed with a ministry organization, trained for translation work and for life in the country they would live in, adapted to a new culture and lifestyle, developed relationships, navigated cultural differences and barriers, identified translation partners – experts in the new language who could advise them and approve their translation work – and worked with them for many years, shepherded their manuscript through the publishing process, oversaw the logistics of publishing and delivery, perhaps taught people to read.
Each of these steps required massive effort over a long period of time, yet we learn little about them in the translator’s presentation. Its focus is God’s miraculous, inspiring work.
Biblical Warfare
In Genesis 4-11, we find examples of men who acquire political power by founding cities, make famous names for themselves, and pollute the land with their violent oppression (Cain, Lamech, offspring of the sons of God/Nephilim, Nimrod). In Exodus, we meet a pharaoh who is an ultimate instance of this paradigm. In contrast, the paradigmatic Israelite warrior is one “with a different spirit who follow[s God] fully” (Numbers 14) who meditates constantly on the Torah (Joshua 1) and spends time in the presence of God (Exodus 33:11). In the battle accounts of Exodus - Joshua, God goes before the Israelites and drives out or militarily defeats the peoples in the land. Yet God also commands the Israelites to drive out and defeat those peoples. How should we interpret this apparent discrepancy?
I submit that in Joshua, we are reading an account much like the Bible translator’s presentation. God did miraculous work on behalf of the Israelites, but a reasonable reader, especially one from a time close to that of the text’s writing and editing, will understand as we do when listening to the translator, that alongside God’s supernatural work, many people were doing natural, hard work of their own.
Biblical scholars who lack a military background (if accepting any degree of historicity of the battle accounts) may find it easy to overlook the complexity and difficulty of the Israelite armies’ activity, even to dismiss it as non-existent or irrelevant.
In the late Bronze Age, swords and other weapon components were cast bronze, which must be mined, refined, poured into molds, and hand scraped and polished. The quantities necessary to equip an army would have been overwhelmingly costly in time and money.
The Vulture Stele, which likely pre-dates Abraham by a couple of hundred years, portrays a military formation with shield-carrying men aligned shoulder to shoulder to maximize the effectiveness of their shields and consolidate their collective weight and power to overwhelm a less disciplined enemy. If armies in the region fought this way, the Israelite army likely did too when fighting outside cities. Archaeologist and former Israeli Army General Yigael Yadin, in The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands writes about the Conquest era, “The chronicles of war and many illustrated monuments show that in the imposing battles in open terrain, large military formations took part, well organized in the phalanx, charging each other in hand-to-hand combat.”[1] In The Military History of Ancient Israel, military historian Richard Gabriel suggests some Israelite soldiers specialized in this kind of heavy infantry warfare.[2] Maintaining an effective, ordered formation in the chaos of battle requires intensive drill over many iterations.
By Sting, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Walled cities appear to have been the primary targets of Israelite military action during the Conquest. Ramses II’s temple in Thebes includes a depiction of an Egyptian assault on a city at a time roughly contemporaneous with the Israelite Conquest of Canaan. In it, the Egyptians use swords, clubs, shields, and bow and arrow in the assault on the city. They scale the walls with a ladder. The sword, shield, and bow appear in the biblical accounts. Ladders rather than some form of siege engine or tunneling appear the best fit with Israelite capabilities and resources given the speed with which the Israelite armies, especially Judah, take cities in Joshua.
Scaling walls on ladders with archers as fire support while under defensive fires is certainly a skills intensive task, requiring extensive training and preparation with specialized equipment to be consistently successful as Joshua portrays the Judahite army.
By Unknown, published in 1879 - German lithography published in 1879, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
Warfare spanning time and distance is a monumental task of strategy and tactics; logistics, manufacturing, and food production; navigation; individual and unit combat arms training; medicine; and numerous other disciplines performed under the threat of enslavement or death, even extermination.
God or the Israelites?
As God makes a covenant with the Israelite nation in Exodus, he expects them to act with him to fulfill his purpose. In Joshua, that purpose includes taking the land of Canaan, a fruitful land, where he will dwell with them. To achieve this goal, God goes before the Israelites to ensure their victory, but a perceptive reader will recognize the role the Israelites played and the natural work they invested in it.
[1] Yigael Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands Volume I (Jerusalem: International Publishing Company), 111-112.
[2]Richard Gabriel, The Military History of Ancient Israel (Westport: Praeger Publishers), 93.