Hebrews Lesson
193 April 8, 2010
NKJ Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of
our God stands forever."
We're going to get into some really interesting things
tonight and first of all we have to go back to Hebrews 11 to see where we were
last time. Hebrews 11:30-31, these
two verses introduce the next 2 examples. We started last week with background
into Joshua.
But here we read:
NKJ Hebrews
11:30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell
down after they were encircled for seven days.
NKJ Hebrews
11:31 By faith the harlot Rahab did not
perish with those who did not believe, when she had received the spies with
peace.
Now if you're familiar with the book of Joshua, what
you will observe when you read those two verses in Hebrews is they’re in
reverse order. In one sense that the spy incident with Rahab happens first and
then (in chapter 2), and the incident with the walls collapsing is in chapter
6. However the focal point in Hebrews 11:31 is that Rahab did not perish. The
focal point here is not on the incident of the spies coming in Joshua 2, but on
the fact that when the walls fell (verse 30) that they did not kill her. She
was trusting in God to deliver her in the midst of the battle, in the midst of
the conquest.
Last time we got started in Joshua. Just thought I’d
give you one more chance to remember it, to have a good visual image to
remember Joshua. It is about conquest. The focus in Hebrew 11 is on “by faith”
– by faith, by faith, by faith. The faith as I’ve said again and again so
you won't forget it is that the faith is always in a specific promise of God.
It is not in some sort of abstract principle or some generalization; but that
what God is reminding us is that their faith was always focused on specific
revelation and in almost all of these examples (at least from Abraham on), the
focus is on the promise that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
So here we have in Joshua 1:3-5 the promise that God
makes to Joshua as he takes over the leadership of the Israelites to lead them
into the land and to lead the conquest.
God states in Joshua 1:3:
NKJ Joshua 1:3 "Every place that the sole of your foot will
tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses.
4 "From the wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river,
the River Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the Great Sea toward
the going down of the sun, shall be your territory.
5 "No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was
with Moses, so I will be with you. I
will not leave you nor forsake you.
This is a tremendous promise to Joshua. Remember
Joshua was one of the two spies that 40 years earlier had refused to be
terrified by the giants in the land, by the walled cities and by the numerous
people. He knew that God could deliver them and so his faith is only
strengthened over the last 40 years; but he has this specific promise to go on
that no matter what they faced, no matter what armies they faced, no matter
what fortified cities they might face God is going to provide for them and God
is going to give them the land that He has promised them. This promise goes
back to passages as Deuteronomy 1:7-8 where in verse 8 God stated to Moses and
Moses stated to the people just before they went into the land:
NKJ Deuteronomy
1:8 'See, I have set the land before
you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers -- to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- to give to them and their descendants after them.'
That Abrahamic Covenant (that Abrahamic promise) is
the basis for the whole book of Joshua. In fact it becomes a foundation for
understanding almost everything that happens to Israel during the subsequent
centuries. I think the Abrahamic Covenant lays the foundation for the rest of
human history since the Abrahamic Covenant because that will then be the basis
for God restoring the land to Israel in the future, establishing the Messianic
Kingdom and the land that God promised to Abraham. So everything goes back to
understanding the Abraham Covenant and its permanence.
Now at the time that Moses dies, he goes up on Mount
Nebo. That is located in the Transjordan area east of the Jordan in what is now
the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Actually it's only about maybe 25, 30, 40
miles from the crossing of the Jordan River. Mt. Nebo is where Moses left, went
up to the top of Mt. Nebo, and where he died.
The Israelites are camped down in this lower area on
the plains of Moab. They will get up, go down to the Jordan as I went over last
time and there God will direct them to be led by the priests carrying the Ark
of the Covenant. The water will not stop flowing until they put their foot down
to actually take a step into the river. That must have called for tremendous
amount of trust in the Lord that He would cause that water to stop because
everything in their being would have told them that water’s still coming. All
the way down as their feet were just above the water, the water receded.
Now there is a possible explanation that some people
go to, to explain what happened here and how this could conceivably have taken
place via a natural cause, and that the water stopped some 15 miles above the
crossing point here.
NKJ Joshua 3:16 that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away
at Adam, the city that is beside
Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea,
failed, and were cut off; and the
people crossed over opposite Jericho.
There is a way in which God can cause something
miraculous to happen via a natural cause. This doesn't diminish the miracle any
because this happened exactly when the priests were putting their feet into the
Jordan. But there have been known instances when the Jordan has been completely
stopped for a period of time. The most recent time that occurred was back in
the 1920’s when there was an earthquake in the area and it causes mudslides to
occur in the area of the Jordan. The mudslides come down and block the river
and in 1920 there's a recorded incident when this occurred. Mudslides blocked
the river. The water completely
stopped flowing for a little over 20 hours before it broke that earthen dam. So
it is conceivable that that is one of the ways in which God caused this to
happen through an intermediate means of a natural cause. But it’s still every
bit a miracle that it happened at the instant that the priest feet hit the
ground.
I’m not saying that's the explanation. God could very
easily have just stopped the water with an invisible wall and held it for the
time being. But this is an earthquake prone area where in the rift river valley
where the geological plates come together and so this is an extremely
earthquake prone area. I think that might even come to play in how God may have
used an earthquake in bringing down the walls of Jericho.
So the people are then crossing over to Jordan; and
they're going to approach Jericho. Here we have Jericho just here. Jericho is
less than 20 miles from the Jordan.
So as they cross to Jordan the first thing they're going to do is head
north to make camp at Gilgal.
You can be certain that the Canaanites had their spies
out watching the movement of the Israelites as they were coming. They knew all
of the stories about how they left Egypt. They've been waiting for them for 40
years because they have heard the rumors that their land is going to be taken.
They are preparing themselves and fortifying themselves in Jericho.
Now the territory around Jericho today is not very
hospitable. This is a picture taken about 100 years ago in black and white
giving you some idea of the of the background to the area and the excavations
of the Tel on the northern end of Jericho. That's what it looked like 100 years
ago; and you can see some of the walls here that are outlined and were first
beginning to be excavated in the late 1800’s, early 1900’s.
This is another view today that you can see a little
more clearly. The Tel-El-Sultan, which is where the remains are, is located in this
is the area right here. There’s a
little contrast for you to see that. This is the area of the Old City of
Jericho. It wasn’t very large. There were actually two walls. It’s up on a
little bit of a hill. The inner part of the city (the upper city) covered about
6 or 7 acres. Then if you had the whole Tel itself, it covered about 9
acres.
At the time that the Israelites were coming, the
people who farmed who lived outside of the city would have all come inside the
city. So it's estimated that there were just several thousand people all within
the walls of the city of Jericho.
Now as we look at these events, I want to start by
going back to chapter 2 to pick up the initial reconnaissance that took place
with the two spies and Rahab. As Joshua is getting ready to cross the Jordan
and preparing his assault on the land he is going to send out two spies to form
a reconnaissance to see what is going on and to get him some information. Now
he is not making the mistake that the Jews made back at Kadesh Barnea. He is
not sending out the spies to find out if they can do this; he is just getting
information so that he understands the terrain, understands that people, and
understands the fortification that are there. So these two spies come to
Jericho, and it is obvious that they're not Canaanites and they’re not from
Jericho. And they are not very good at going into covert operations.
It is very soon that the King of Jericho is made aware
that these men have come into the city to spy out the countryside and see the
lay of the land. They inform him that he is with Rahab who has called the
harlot. At that time it was common for someone who perhaps ran some sort of a
hostel or inn to provide services other than simply room and board. So that was
her particular role.
These men have come to her seeking her out. Then she
recognizes who they are. She understands something about God. She understands
something about the Israelites and God’s mission for them. So she is going to
protect them.
In verse 4 we’re told the famous lie that Rahab told.
NKJ Joshua 2:4 Then the woman took the two men and hid them. So she
said, "Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.
Now what's interesting and I don’t want to spend a lot
of time on this. I’m just going to throw out a couple of things for you to
think about. What is interesting about this episode is this is taking place in
a military or warfare context where the spies are clearly on a mission for the
army of God, which in this case is the Israelites. In a military context they
are involved in a covert operation, which necessarily calls for a certain
amount of deception to the enemy.
I think it's important for us to put this in the
broader context of the angelic conflict in the warfare that God is engaged in
with the enemies of His plans and operations whether those enemies are angelic
or whether those enemies are human. I think perhaps one of the reasons that God
has revealed things the way He did in the Old Testament. After the death of
Christ on the cross we can go back and we can clearly see a number of things
that were revealed in the Old Testament that are abundantly clear when we look
at them through the lens of what happened at Golgotha. But if you all you had
was the Old Testament and you didn't have the Holy Spirit … even John the
Baptist was asking questions.
“Are you really the Messiah or should we be looking
for somebody else?”
And He is his first cousin. He is heard all the
stories from his mother about the birth of his cousin and miraculous virgin
conception and birth with Mary.
And even he has doubts. So there is this uncertainty that even with all
of the Old Testament, men didn't know quite what Jesus was going to do (what
the Messiah was going to do).
I think God intentionally did it that way also to
deceive Satan. Satan thought he had a trump card when he had Jesus crucified
and it came back to bite him and that was his own death sentence that virtually
defeated him at the cross even though he continues to fight on until he is
finally and totally defeated at the end of the Armageddon campaign and then
again when he's released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom and is sent to
the Lake of Fire for eternity.
God uses deception in warfare. I think that's
important doctrine. God uses deception. We've seen this in our studies of 1
Kings 26 when God has the angels gather around Him (the sons of God) and He
says, “Who's going to go out and deceive Ahab for Me? Who are we going to send
that mission?”
We have a tendency (and I’ve taught it this way) where
are these angelic convocations would include both the elect angels (the Holy
Angels) as well as the fallen angels, but it's conceivable that God is sending
an elect angel (not a demon) to exercise deception.
If you look at the book of Joshua there are a lot of
different types of deception in the book of Joshua as they are engaged in
military conflict. After the battle at Jericho in the very next battle when
they go to Ai and they fight the battle there, what do they do? They hide the
majority of the Israelite army back up a canyon somewhere and they send in
seven thousand troops who engage the men at Ai. They come out from behind their
fortification and begin to defeat the Israelites. They fade back in a move that
reminds me of the way the Apaches would often fight in the Southwest; they
would fade back in. And they faded back into the mountains to a point where the
remainder of the Israelite army (the majority of it) would then crush them from
the side and ambush them - just a classic deceptive maneuver. We see God using
deception in His battle in the warfare against Satan and the warfare against
His human enemies.
I think this is an important doctrine to study. I have
a friend who is a naval commander. He teaches military ethics at the Naval War
College up in Rhode Island. He and I were in the Masters of Theology Program at
Dallas Seminary and were also in the PhD Program of Historical Theology
together. Tim has gone on to earn I think 2 more doctorates and 3 more master's
degrees (or something like that) because the military will pay for all of this.
So he’s gotten additional degrees. He teaches military ethics.
I called him up two or three years ago; and I said,
“Tim, how do you handle Rahab as a foundation for covert operations and
military deception and undercover operations?”
He said, “Hmm. I never thought of that.”
He ought to do some thinking about that. That's a very
interesting thing to think about. Unfortunately nobody has really thought about
it or written on this as a as a doctrine or theology; but I think that that is
very much worth exploring because that's the kind of situation that we have
here. This isn't the kind of situation that you and I face on a day-to-day
basis and just living our lives and we have to decide, “Well, are we going to lie
or deceive somebody, or tell the truth?”
This is within a totally different context, the same
type of context that you have with police officers who go undercover on drug
stings, with CIA's operatives who are going undercover, in military operations
and are having to tell lies and completely fabricate everything in order to
carry out their mission.
If you take what I consider to be a sort of a typical
surface approach to this passage, where you look and say, “Well, this lie was
wrong. Lying, deceiving at any time is wrong” – which is what most of us
have heard over the years. Then when you come to a passage like this. If you are
in the military and are thinking about a career in military intelligence or you
want to go to work with the police or with the FBI (something like that) you
have to have a theology that can incorporate deception without going into something
like situational ethics. So this is an extremely tantalizing incident here, and
I don't think that Rahab is doing anything that is morally or ethically wrong. She
is operating within the context of warfare and she understands that.
So she says that the men came and went, and she
doesn't know where they went. She had actually taken them up onto the roof
where she hid them with stalks of flax, which she had laid out in order on the
roof. These are other materials which she would be using in the running of her
inn so to speak.
NKJ Joshua 2:7 Then the men pursued them by the road to the Jordan,
to the fords. And as soon as those who pursued them had gone out, they shut the
gate.
They believed her. That is, the guards that the king
sent out and they started chasing them. But as soon as they go out, they began
to realize that she had not told the truth.
So she then goes up to the men in verse 8 and says to
them:
NKJ Joshua 2:8 Now before they lay down, she came up to them on the
roof,
NKJ Joshua 2:9 and said to the men: "I know that the LORD has
given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us,
…which indicates the fear and panic that had already
set in among the Canaanites.
and that all the inhabitants of the
land are fainthearted because of you.
You’ve already won the main battle, which has to do
with mental attitude and the commitment of the enemy to go to war. They have
given up already. They’re already
defeated mentally.
NKJ Joshua 2:10 "For we have heard how the LORD dried up the
water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to
the two kings of the Amorites who were on
the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.
NKJ Joshua 2:11 "And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more
courage in anyone because of you, for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth
beneath.
So she has a tremendous faith in God, and she is going
to throw her lot in with the Israelites because she is convinced and has the
faith in what God's plan is.
So then she says to them:
NKJ Joshua 2:12 "Now therefore, I beg you, swear to me by the
LORD, since I have shown you kindness, that you also will show kindness to my
father's house, and give me a true token,
NKJ Joshua 2:13 "and spare my father, my mother, my brothers, my
sisters, and all that they have, and deliver our lives from death."
NKJ Joshua 2:14 So the men answered her, "Our lives for yours,
if none of you tell this business of ours. And it shall be, when the LORD has
given us the land, that we will deal kindly and truly with you."
The men swore to her that that’s exactly what they
would do. Then she let them out by a rope through the window for her house was
on the city wall.
Now I’m going to show you a video at the end of class.
It will take about fifteen minutes that deals with the archaeology of Jericho. I
ran across this video today. I had somewhat prepared to go through the material
myself, but this work was all done by Dr Bryant Wood with the Biblical Research
Associates. I found this great video where he gives all the information. There
is nothing like hearing it from an expert who actually discovered and uncovered
the information rather than hearing it second hand through me. So we'll look at
that. But one of the things he points out when it comes to the end of the
section we’ll listen to this evening, he points out that when the
archaeologists identified the walls of Jericho that there is one section on the
north end where the walls were not destroyed. This is the area where Rahab’s
house would be.
But this phrase “on the city wall” (which is a very
difficult phrase to understand in the Hebrew) actually would mean “against the
wall”. That is how the city was constructed. As they have gone in and they’ve
uncovered this, this house wasn’t on top of the wall. It was up against the
side of the wall.
So she allows them to get out and to escape and to
hide until the pursuers are out of the way. The men then promise that if she
would put out a scarlet rope to indicate her presence and where she was located
then she would not be harmed. That's the introduction to Jericho.
Now what happens in chapter 3 is that the Israelites
cross the Jordan. Then in chapter 5 they go to Gilgal where they are
circumcised which means that this generation is reaffirming the Abrahamic
Covenant. Circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. They're not
going back to the Mosaic Covenant.
This is Abrahamic Covenant. This is a recognition that this land was
given to them by God. The right to the land was given to them in the covenant
with Abraham.
But before they can go into the land, they have to be
as it were positionally sanctified in order to go into the land. This would be
comparable once again to what we think of as salvation phase 1. This is a
positional event. It's not something they would do again and again and again. But
there will be times where they’re disobedient and the nation will have to be
cleansed again. For example, after the disobedience that occurs after
Jericho.
As we stopped last time, I came to verse 12 where the
Commander of the Army of the Lord appears to Joshua. This is the pre-incarnate
Lord Jesus Christ.
NKJ Joshua 5:12 Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten
the produce of the land; and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but
they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year.
Once they got into the land and began to eat from the
fruit of the land, at that instant God ceased the manna supply because now they
had the supply from the land. This is a time we know from within this context
that is just after the harvest, so there is plenty of food for them to eat. They
have a harvest at the end of the winter production because if you remember just
before they crossed over the Jordan they celebrated Passover. They come in to
the land and they are now going to be fed by the fruit of the land.
NKJ Joshua 5:13 And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that
he lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man stood opposite him with His
sword drawn in His hand. And Joshua went to Him and said to Him, "Are You for us or for our
adversaries?"
NKJ Joshua 5:14 So He said, "No, but as Commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." And
Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped, and said to Him, "What
does my Lord say to His servant?"
We know this isn't a creature. This isn't an angel; this is a God
Himself. This is actually the Second Person of the Trinity.
NKJ Joshua 5:15 Then the Commander of the LORD's army said to Joshua,
"Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy." And Joshua did so.
…indicating again this is deity standing before him
Chapter 6 then begins telling us about Jericho.
NKJ Joshua 6:1 Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the
children of Israel; none went out, and none came in.
They had anticipated this. This is a diagram here of
the Tel and what's been discovered through the archaeological digs. There were
actually two walls. The purple line here represents the wall that was in place
at the time that this conquest took place. The lower wall here was down the
hill. It was an older wall and it may not have been in complete condition at
the time. Then you also had a number of people in dwellings that were built
outside of the upper wall in the purple-shaded area in between. We’ll look and
see a couple pictures later on indicating what that looked like.
This area as I said covered about 6 acres or so on
top. When you add the other area it would expand to approximately 9 areas. What
made this such a formidable site and a site to settle – because as you
saw from pictures earlier it is pretty dry. I don't know if it was as dry then
as it is now, but it was still somewhat dry – was they had a spring that
provided water for them. The spring came up inside. Here’s the modern reservoir
of the spring. This spring is what still supplies water for the modern city of
Jericho. So they had water inside the walls and because it was harvest they had
just brought in the grain and all of this food is stored inside the walls. In
fact the archaeologists have discovered huge pots (numerous pots of grain) of
the grain that was stored during this time when the city was destroyed.
Now the text on the side, I'll read to you. This is a
picture of what is called the 4th city. There are various different
levels and so this is the 4th city. All scholars agree that it was
violently destroyed, but there has been a lot of debate about this. There was a
man back in the 30’s named John Garstang a British archaeologist who did a tremendous
amount of research. He dated the remains of city 4 around 1400 to 1500 BC and
identified the remains that he found as the remains of the wall that fell down
at the time of Joshua.
Then in the 1960’s or so, there was some conflict on
this. They also found signs of fire. A lot of places areas had been burned
tremendously as a result of the collapse of the walls. Then in the 50’s and
60’s along came Kathleen Kenyon who reexamined Garstang’s evidence, dug in
another area, the area marked area B here. Area A was Garstang’s dig. She’s
over here in B. Her conclusions were that this destruction was about 1550 BC. So
this would be a 150 years before we would date the conquest. According to her
evaluation of data, this was too early for the Israelites and nothing else is
happening. Her conclusion was that there is no evidence anywhere of the walls
falling down or the story Joshua Fit the
Battle of Jericho. None of that was there. That is what you'll see.
I remember back in 1979 in the fall of ’79 taking a
biblical archaeology class. Randy Price sat next to me. We were studying under
Dr Barker at Dallas Seminary and were studying the archeology of Jericho.
He goes, “Well, we’re uncertain. There's no evidence
based on Kathleen Kenyon’s findings. There's no evidence that the walls fell
down because of the dating. We don’t know what the issues are." She had
completely challenged Garstang’s evidence and that was the accepted scholarly
opinion back in the 70’s.
This is a picture of the Tel itself from the air so
you can see a little bit of the perspective on the general size of the city.
It's not very large. Then this is an artist's depiction of what it would have looked
like. The houses there are probably a little too far apart. They were much,
much closer together. But you do get some idea of how some of these houses
along here were right up against the wall. Then out here you have the
Israelites marching around.
When God gave the instructions to Joshua, they were
completely contrary to any kind of military advice and strategy that anyone
would give in all of history. God told him that instead of organizing his
troops in terms of strength, in terms of their weapons, in terms of the most
value warriors out front, that instead they were to march around the city; all
the men of war. Some suggest that this was just a representative number. Others
say it would be all the men of war. If it was all the men of war, it was
probably around 500,000. It would take some time for them to walk around the
city even though it's not very large. If it’s just a small group that’s
marching (a representative group), then they could walk around the city in
about 30 or 40 minutes.
The instructions from God were that they would march
around the city once a day for six days. During that time they would not make
any noise. They would be led by 7 priests, who would carry 7 shofars (7 ram’s
horns) before the Ark. Then on the seventh day they would march around the city
7 times. Then and only then would they make a noise. The priest would blow
their shofars and then at that point the people would shout with a great shout
and the wall of the city would fall down flat.
NKJ Joshua 6:5 "It shall come to pass, when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when you hear the sound of the
trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of
the city will fall down flat. And the people
Notice:
shall go up every man straight
before him.
What is interesting is that there was a lower wall,
which is the older wall, and then the upper wall around the upper part of the
city. If those walls fell down, they would collapse and bricks would roll down
and basically turn a hillside into a ramp that would allow the Israelites to
make it up the hill. We'll see in the video how that’s described in a
minute.
That's exactly what Kathleen Kenyan herself conformed,
even though she denied that this could be dated in the period of 1400. Her
charts from the rubble from the wall confirm that the walls had fallen down and
that they had fallen down a certain way. We have her charts, which confirm this
kind of thing. It’s just that she was off on the date for various reasons, as
Dr. Wood will explain in just a minute.
So Joshua’s condition here is that he has to believe
God. This is what the writer of Hebrews is focusing on: that he believed God
and trusted God.
He goes back to his generals and gives them the
instructions. The generals don't balk at all. These are the men that were born
and raised during the time in the wilderness. This generation has a trust in
God. They are not like their parents who came out from slavery and so they don't
question the orders. They just trust in what the Lord has instructed them. They're
the ones who've been living daily on manna day-in and day-out for the last 40
years, so they are going to follow God's instructions to the letter. They began to carry out that
instruction and each day they march around the city.
Then the last day comes and we read down in verses 15
and 16:
NKJ Joshua 6:15 But it came to pass on the seventh day that they rose
early, about the dawning of the day, and marched around the city seven times in
the same manner. On that day only they marched around the city seven times.
Then on the 7th time in verse 16:
NKJ Joshua 6:16 And the seventh time it happened, when the priests
blew the trumpets, that Joshua said to the people: "Shout, for the LORD
has given you the city!
At that instant the city walls collapsed. He says:
NKJ Joshua 6:17 "Now the city shall be doomed by the LORD to
destruction, it and all who are in
it. Only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we
sent.
NKJ Joshua 6:18 "And you, by all means abstain from the accursed
things,
You have to pay attention to the orders here.
lest you become accursed
…or come under discipline
when you take of the accursed
things, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.
NKJ Joshua 6:19 "But all the silver and gold, and vessels of
bronze and iron, are consecrated to
the LORD; they shall come into the treasury of the LORD."
Everything else was to be destroyed.
NKJ Joshua 6:21 And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman,
young and old, ox and sheep and donkey, with the edge of the sword.
Why are they having to kill all the animals? This is because
these are the domestic animals. God is showing that they weren’t going to be
living off of the proceeds of the pagan culture. That was the order for
Jericho. It differs in different places. People did exactly what God said to
do.
NKJ Joshua 6:23 And the young men who had been spies went in and
brought out Rahab, her father, her mother, her brothers, and all that she had.
So they brought out all her relatives and left them outside the camp of Israel.
NKJ Joshua 6:24 But they burned the city and all that was in it with fire. Only the silver and
gold, and the vessels of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the
house of the LORD.
After the walls go down, they go in. They burned the
city. They take out all the silver and gold and bronze and iron and that goes
into the treasury in the House of the Lord, and the promise to Rahab was
fulfilled.
Now this is one of the most interesting episodes I
think in all of Scripture because it teaches about how God is faithful, and we
have good archaeological evidence which substantiates this.
I want to play about 15 minutes (so our timing is
good) of this video. We’re going to need to turn the lights out because the
illumination of the projectors isn't all that it should be. But this is Dr.
Bryant Wood. These men with the Biblical Research Association are very
conservative Bible believing creationists. They take the dates and the numbers and all the data in
Scripture to be absolutely accurate and true. Up until his work in the late 80
and early 90’s everybody in Christendom believed that there was no evidence at
Jericho. He just did a fabulous job of demonstrating the truth of Scripture.
“It's still only about 9 acres and as we’ll see later
there were people actually living on the embankment. Here is a cross-section
through that fortification system, the purple-blue here showing the
embankment. Today it's preserved
only up to about this height. The rest of it all eroded away. Then there's a
brick wall at the top of that embankment about six feet wide and we know there
was a wall there from an earlier phase of this fortification and Kenyon
uncovered that earlier phase and it had a wall up there about six feet
wide.
Down here we actually have found portions of this
lower wall at several places around the Tel and we know it was about six feet
wide. That means the height of the wall would have been around twenty feet -
approximately three times as high as it was wide. Then finally we have this
stone retaining wall here which goes right down to bedrock and that held this
embankment in place. Here is ground level and this is where the Israelites were
walking around the city each day for seven days. You can imagine the thoughts
going through their heads as they were looking up at this massive fortification
system and thinking, ‘Wow, how can we ever take this city?” But yet they
followed the Lord’s direction and they marched around it one time each day for
six days and then on the seventh day they marched around seven times and then
those walls came down.
Here's the description of the walls falling down as we
have it in Joshua 6:20. It tells
us the people shouted. The priest blew the trumpets and when the people heard
the sound of the trumpet, people shouted with a great shout and the wall fell
flat. That's what all of our translation say - the wall fell flat. But when you
look at the Hebrew text, there is a Hebrew word used there that does not mean
“flat”, but rather means the wall fell beneath itself. Well, you saw that cross
section diagram. When those walls fell, what would happen? The mud bricks would
just tumble down that embankment and be deposited at the base of that retaining
wall. So literally the walls fell beneath themselves.
It is interesting that the critical scholars will tell
us that this story was written hundreds of years later. In fact most biblical
scholars say the Old Testament was written during the exile period. Well, when
we look at something like this we must wonder how would they know in the exile
period that the walls fell beneath themselves. Obviously they would not know
and obviously it wasn’t written then; it was written by someone who observed
the walls falling down. It's an eyewitness account and that is what our
Scripture is. It's something that was written at that time. It's not something written down
hundreds or thousands of years later.
Then we read the people - these are the Israelite
soldiers around the city - on that 7th trip around (that 7th
day) they went up into the city. Here again, how would a later writer know that
they went up? Why didn't they just run straight in? Well again, the person who
wrote this down was observing what happened and they had to go up over that
earthen embankment to get up to the city. Every man went up straight ahead and
they took the city - just another artist’s reconstruction of those events.
Down at the southern end of the site of Jericho,
there's been a recent expedition in the late 1990’s undertaken by a team from
the University of Rome. They cleared quite a long section of the retaining
wall. Kenyon had previously dug a trench up to that wall; but she did not go
beyond the wall to the area outside of the retaining wall. So the Italians as
part of their work cleared a section of the wall. As you can see, it's a very
high. I am standing at about the level of - ground level at the time of the
Joshua and so you can see just this stone facing. This retaining wall is a huge
barrier for the Israelites to get into the city. It's how high? 18 or 20 feet. Then
on top of that of course the mud brick wall.
This is a view kind of looking down on that and you
can get such a view because there is now a cable car that goes from the parking
lot at the southern end of the town of Jericho up to the Mount of Temptation
where there’s a monastery up there kind of clinging to the cliff. This cable
car will pick you up if you want to visit that monastery. But it passes right
over that Italian excavation area. You can see the length of their dig there
where they’ve exposed the retaining wall for that distance there.
Notice the buildings here outside of the wall. When
they constructed this wall they cut through the buildings that were there right
along this line. We clearly see
that cut where they dug a trench down to bedrock; and then they built their
stone retaining wall from bedrock up to support that earthen embankment.
Well, this is important archaeology here because we
know the sequence. First we have these buildings and then after that (after
they went out of use) we have the construction of this massive wall.
The pottery in the buildings here dates to the very
end of the Middle Bronze Period or very early in the Late Bronze Period, in other
words right around 1500 BC. So again this is disproving Kenyon’s date of some
50 years earlier for the destruction of the city. They were just building their
final fortification system around 1500 which means the destruction happened
sometime after that. From the pottery it would be about 100 years later than
the construction of the fortification system. That is very important evidence
that the Italians have provided for us.
Here's a view at the end of Kenyans west trench that
she dug through the fortification system. Before she cut through this retaining
wall, she cleared it off and took this nice picture and then she completed the
trench and cut right through that retaining wall. But we can see again the
great height of that wall. The
meter stick is what? One, two, three, four meters high. So you can kind of calculate the
overall height. Maybe it's two meters – it’s hard to tell from the
picture.
Anyway the important thing I wanted to show you here
are the remnants of the mud bricks up here. It is the first course of the mud
brick wall that once stood there and that’s the wall that fell. When the
Italians first exposed that retaining wall there were chunks of mud brick on
top of their wall as well. Here I'm putting my hand right on those mud bricks. This
was taken I think in 1997. Since then the winter rains have washed these bricks
away and they’re not there today unfortunately. But they were there when they
first opened up that area.
Here's a cross section through Kenyon’s west trench
– what we would call a bulk drawing. It gives us the details again of the
fortification system with the yellow showing the earthen embankment. Here’s our
retaining wall. Here's ground level. Notice what Kenyon discovered when she dug
beyond that retaining wall, a great pile of what she calls fallen red bricks.
Isn’t that interesting? A pile of fallen red bricks. And what does she say
about it? In her excavation report she tells us the first tip line (that's this
sloping surface here) was fallen red bricks piling nearly to the top of the
revetment (that's what she calls this retaining wall). You can see the bricks
go nearly to the top of that retaining wall. These probably came from the wall
on the summit (She's talking about the mud brick wall up there) of the bank or
the brickwork above the revetment. Isn’t this interesting? She is saying that
that pile of bricks came from the city walls. That's where the bricks were
deposited when the walls fell down.
For Kenyon it had nothing to do with the biblical
account because of her incorrect dating. For her, this happened 150 years
before Joshua. But once we get the dating straightened out and we know that the
city was destroyed in about 1400 then we realize this is evidence for the
fallen walls of Jericho.
And this isn't the only example. Every place around
that Tel where archaeologists have dug they have found a similar pile of
bricks. Let me go back and take one more point before we leave that section
view there. Well okay, the walls
fell down. How were the Israelites going to get up over this retaining wall,
which was very high? Well, notice how those bricks fell. It was in such a way
as to form a ramp. So the Israelites could just scramble over that pile of
collapsed mud bricks and go up into the city just as the Bible tells us.
Down here at the base of the retaining wall and in the
bulk of the Italian dig you can clearly see the same pile of bricks piling up
against the retaining wall as Kenyon found just a short distance away in her
west trench. Everything at the base of that retaining wall is all collapsed mud
brick that they left there - some of that mud brick.
Chip is going to go to Israel in August and he's got
to jump down in that trench and he's going to bring us back one of those
bricks.
Okay, evidence is still there today and this just
shows some of the places around the city where they have excavated up against
that retaining wall and found similar evidence.
Well, if the walls fell down, what about Rahab’s
house? We mentioned the spies going into her house and when she hid them and
the king's men left, then we're told that she let them down by a rope through
the window for her house was on the city wall so that she was living on the
wall. Now other translations might have something slightly different - maybe
her house was in the wall or corner of the wall or something like that. In fact
the translators really don't know how to deal with the Hebrew that we have
here. But now that we have the
results of the excavations, we can more precisely translate the Hebrew
here.
The Hebrew actually says that her house was built
against the vertical surface of the city well. Qirah chomah – chomah
is the word for the big city wall. Qirah
is the word that usually means small wall; but in this case it means the
vertical surface of the wall. That is a meaning that we encounter sometimes in
the Old Testament and so her house was qirah
against the vertical surface; chomah,
the city wall. So the city wall was actually kind of the back wall to her house
and she had an opening there to let in some light and fresh air. By letting the
spies out of the window of her house, they were able to go down over the city
wall.
Then she said, “Flee to the mountains.” And that was quite close by.
Then later the Israelite spies went back to her house
and rescued Rahab and her family. You remember they have made that covenant. If
she would hide them from the king's men and save their lives, they would save
her life when they attacked the city.
They said, “Put this red rope out the window of your
house so that we will know which house is yours.”
Well, if the city fell, how would her house survive? Well,
archaeology gives us the answer. Up at the northern end of the site, all of the
expeditions excavated the trenches through that fortification system and they
found that the wall was still standing at the northern end of the site. The
Germans found it still standing to a height of about 9 feet.Can you imagine
after 3400 years still standing to a height of 9 feet?
Garstang found a similar situation maybe not quite as
high as the Germans but still quite high and Kenyan found just a bit of it here
but enough to show that it was still remaining there to some extent. But that wall did not fall. That is what we're determining from
these remnants that are remaining there.
Here's Garstang’s dig and we see again our retaining
wall here. Then here's what's left
of that brick wall. It’s 8 feet
wide. It looks like it's even
higher than 6 feet. But it shows
that in the northern part of that Tel the wall did not fall for a short
distance.
Here is a plan looking down on the findings from the
German dig with our retaining wall right here and our mud brick wall running
along here. We see that houses are built on the slope right up against the
lower brick wall. This must be the area where Rahab’s house was located. I
don't know which one is hers. We don't know her address so we weren’t able to
figure out which house she lived in. But it must've been one of these houses on
the north side of the Tel. Of course the north side is the closest side to
those mountains and these spies could easily escape from there to the mountains.
That explains how Rahab’s house was able to survive
because God preserved it. And He preserved the wall there on the northern side
for that short distance. Here again we can see our retaining wall and then
here’s the mud brick wall this is from the German dig. Notice all the houses
there on the embankment. This must have been a poor part of town – sort
of the overflow from the upper city and this is apparently where Rahab
lived.
Here is an artist’s reconstruction of that. The houses
were much smaller, more tightly packed than what he shows here but it gives you
an idea of the situation there and where Rahab’s house was located. Her house
would have looked something like this with flax drying on the roof, the hole or
opening there where the spies escaped.
Today you can still walk around the site of Jericho
and every little ways you can see the top of that stone retaining wall kind of popping
up through the earth. If you care to walk around it takes about a half an hour
to go around the site of Jericho.
Now we’re going to go over to the southeast slope
where they found the evidence for the burned the city. The area here to the
south…
Well I thought you would enjoy hearing him go over
that material. That is still today not fully accepted by a lot of liberals
because their presupposition is that God really didn't do anything supernatural
– "you can’t prove that. There were no miracles". Then of
course you have the minimalists who try to say that there's no evidence of Jews
at all in the land until much, much later. They want to say that the House of
David was mythical and all these other things.
So these guys have done a tremendous service I think
in demonstrating how archaeology done correctly really does show (demonstrates,
substantiate) the claims that we have in Scripture.
Now back to the beginning we saw that by faith Joshua
and by faith Rahab… So their faith was in the promise of God to give the land
to Israel and so they were willing to trust God no matter what the difficulties
in life might be. The challenge to the readers of Hebrews (the challenge to us)
is to do the same thing; that whatever the difficulties we may have no the
matter how insurmountable they might appear that we are to trust in God who is
more powerful than any difficulty that we perceive in life.
Let’s bow our heads and close in prayer.