Joshua 22

Joshua 22:1-34

Subdivision 2. (Joshua 22:1-34; Joshua 23:1-16; Joshua 24:1-33.)Appended Warnings. Section 1. (Joshua 22:1-34.) We have in the last subdivision of the book what is plainly supplementary. We have no longer the history of the work of divine power by which the inheritance of the people of God is secured to them, nor the account of the land itself, of which they take possession. Out of this we pass into what is manifestly of another and lower order of testimony, -not to the power of God or His grace and gift, but to the people themselves and to their little competency even to hold the gift which has been made their own. In fact, we have already had, even in the history of their first establishment in their land, the record of failure. One of the things most strongly insisted on in the charge entrusted to them was that they should dispossess the Canaanites; and herein they fail conspicuously; not merely for lack of strength, but when they have strength. But even the; of strength meant only lack of faith and of heart. Nor is this merely a negative, a defect: it means always the cherishing of what is contrary to God, and thus a positive seed of evil which springs up and spreads, as we shall find it spreading in the Book of Judges. Thus Israel are no sooner planted in the land than they fail in it; and such failure has been found in the history of all dispensations, and equally from the first. In the Christian Church, above all, as its privilege and blessing have been most remarkable, so have been the failure and evil in it: carefully foretold, moreover, as in Moses’ song that of Israel. God is not disappointed -has not deceived Himself; nor, if we will listen to Him, will He allow us to be deceived. Corruptio optimi, pessima corruptio has been long said: “the corruption of what is best is the worst corruption.” And let anything be entrusted to man, it will be corrupted. Thus, with the completion of revelation has gone on the growth of evil, Jezebel and Babylon of old being only types of worse abominations in Christian times, iniquity developing to the day of harvest, when,fully manifested for what it is, it shall be reaped for the fire that shall consume it. The last three chapters of Joshua are not, however, a formal prophecy of impending evil, such as, for instance, Moses’ song. And the twenty-second chapter is not even a direct warning as to this, as Joshua’s address is afterward. It is but the story of a well-meant attempt to provide against a possible breach, at an after-time, of Israel’s unity. The two and a half tribes, sent back to their inheritance on the east side of Jordan, set up near the river “a great altar to see to,” as a witness that they are of one faith with those upon the other side, and that their children of after generations might not be deprived of a place with them in the worship of their common Lord. It is all well, and their brethren (even Phinehas with his unflinching zeal for God) are satisfied with their explanations. Yet it is plain an uneasy sense of insecurity is already haunting them. The danger may never practically present itself from the quarter they anticipate: we do not read that it ever did; yet the sense of danger may be a true presentiment none the less; and while the door is barred in one direction, it may be wide open in another. They are right in realizing that their one Lord is the bond of unity. They do not anticipate that their danger, in fact, is not from their brethren, but in themselves. Their own slipping away from Jehovah is that which leads to their dispersion and captivity in other lands, after allowing city after city to fall into the hands of Moab. The enemy that they are facing in the west comes up, thus, really from another quarter, and where there is no bulwark erected to keep him out. For us the lesson is all-important. It is not by ability to keep in view the whole horizon of circumstance that we shall be effectually guarded from the approach of evil: it is by that spirit which is manifested in those who are the true circumcision -“no confidence in the flesh.” (Philippians 3:3.) This makes God a practical, continual necessity, and His all-sufficiency our complete safeguard and rest. This is the lesson with which the great altar of Ed impresses us, and a most useful one it surely is.