1 Samuel 16-20: David

Now we've reached the part of the story where David enters the scene.  This is a story that I think everybody knows, but it's really pretty fun to read because there's a lot of action in it.  It starts with God telling Samuel to stop mourning for Saul and to go anoint the next king, who turns out to be David, the youngest of eight sons.  At first Samuel thinks that one of the older sons is the chosen one - probably because Saul was a tall handsome guy, and Jesse's oldest son is a tall handsome guy too, but God says that he's looking at the heart.

Right after David is anointed as the next king, Saul has really problematic mood swings.  It says that an evil spirit from the LORD torments him.  I've always been confused as to what this means.  Is it referring to a fallen angel type being, a creature that is evil but is under God's control, as all things are?  Or is it more like the angel of death, a good being but one that causes destruction?  I have no idea.  And if it's a demon, then is it God Himself who's telling the demon to torment Saul, or is it more indirect than that?  Why is Saul getting tormented by a spirit at all just because God's Spirit has left him?  These are my questions.  But anyway, it's pretty ironic that they look for a musician to help soothe Saul, and it turns out to be David, the guy who's just been appointed to replace Saul someday.  By the way, I think this makes an important statement about the power of music and the arts, even the spiritual power of art.

Next is everybody's favorite story: David and Goliath.  When I read this story this time, I was struck by the fact that out of Jesse's eight sons, only three of them are at war.  Now what that says to me is that only those three are of fighting age.  From what I learned reading Numbers, fighting age is ages 20 and up, so there are 4 sons between age 19 and whatever David's age is.  The absolute oldest David can be in this story is 16, and that's like if his mom had a kid every 9 months. My little brother is 17.  I can totally picture him in David's role here.  He is super cute, super smart, and super opinionated.  He would have no problem going up to some hotshot gigantic Philistine and telling him to shut the heck up.  He's the kind of kid who really stands up for what he believes in, you know?  I picture David like that, only not blond.  My brother is blond.

Can you just picture a little 14- or 15-year-old kid who hasn't hit his growth spurt yet, running out to meet this 9-foot-tall Yao Ming on steroids?  Yao growls at the kid, who shouts back at him with his voice cracking, I'm going to cut your head off!  Then everybody here will know that there is a God in Israel! You would think, what a punk!  Goliath probably thought David was a punk, and he probably thought that right up until he died.

Thing is, David didn't give himself credit for what he did to Goliath.  It's clear he was pretty confident - he even told Saul that he'd armwrestled a bear and a lion before and won, but he wasn't claiming credit for those victories either.  He said that God was the one who delivered David from those enemies, and God was the one who would kill Goliath.  David had a lot of faith and a lot of courage, but not in himself - it was all in God.  What a dude.  No wonder all the screaming fangirls of Israel fell in love with him after that day.

Saul now goes through a wicked stepmother, "who's the fairest in the land" phase.  He doesn't like being #2 to this punk kid who can't even fit into his armor.  He tries various methods of getting him accidentally killed - send him on a dangerous mission, make him marry his daughter, throw a spear at him - but none of these subtle techniques seem to work.  That's partly because David has an inside man.  It's Jonathan, the honey-eater from earlier.  Jonathan and David are BFFs.  This is where we get a clue about what a great guy Jonathan is, because he knows full well that David is going to be king someday, and that is the job that he, Jonathan, has been brought up for all his life.  But he doesn't resent David.  In fact, it's his idea to make a covenant with David, swearing allegiance to each other all the days of their lives.  That's pretty hardcore.  So when David is afraid Saul is going to kill him, Jonathan finds out so he can warn David.

David has another inside man, actually an inside woman: his wife Michal.  Michal is Saul's daughter.  At first Saul tried to get David to marry his older daughter Merab, but David didn't feel worthy of the honor of being the king's son-in-law.  But Michal was violently in love with him, and Saul wanted him to kill a bunch of Philistines to marry her, so that made it okay.  Michal also helps David escape one time when Saul is trying to kill him, and I think it's pretty big of her to stand up to her dad when he comes looking for her.  Unfortunately, this is the last good thing I'm ever going to say about Michal.

So back to Jonathan.  Jonathan comes up with a plan to warn David if he finds out that Saul wants to kill him. Saul is really furious with Jonathan for being David's friend, and I kind of see why.  Jonathan is Saul's son; he's supposed to be on his dad's side.  Making Jonathan king after him represents everything they've been working for, all of Jonathan's life.  To see Jonathan so willing to give that up to some kid who smells like sheep is an even bigger blow than the son who doesn't want to go be a football player at his jock dad's alma mater because he would rather pursue a degree in musical theatre.

So you can guess what happens: Jonathan warns David, they have a very tearful farewell because they probably know they'll never see each other again, and David takes off running.  He's going to be running for quite some time.

So I think at this point we've seen Saul reach pretty much his all-time low.  I had really really liked him at first, and it makes me sad to see him turn into such a jealous paranoid freak.  I like David though, and Jonathan, and the friendship that David and Jonathan have.  I love the faith that David has in God to protect him in whatever circumstances he faces.  He's going to need that faith for the next several chapters.

Judges 13-16: Samson, or Proof that God Can Use a Doofus

You're going to tell me that I'm giving Samson a hard time, but I have a hard time liking this guy, and it's not just because of Delilah.  All the good things he did were the result of his own stupidity.  Let's look at his life.

So we begin in chapter 13 with the age-old story of Israel doing evil, and the Philistines oppress them for 40 years.  Then an angel appears to a woman who has no children and tells her she's going to give birth to a son who will deliver Israel from the Philistines, but there's a catch: he is to be a life-long Nazarite.

If you remember from reading the Law, "Nazirite" referred to a certain type of vow that a person would take for a period of time, and during that time they could not drink wine or any other strong drink, and they couldn't cut their hair either.  Normally the vow and its conditions were temporary, something that an adult would choose to do.  Samson's the only person I know of who was a Nazirite his whole life.  Pretty cool.

I like Samson's parents, I think.  Or at least, I'm glad that this story's not all about Samson but that we get to see a little bit of them.  After the angel visits the woman, whose name we don't even know, she tells her husband what happened, and he prays to God that the angel will come again so that he can tell them how to raise their kid.  Isn't that great?  First of all that he believes his wife right off the bat, and secondly that the reason he wants to see the angel is not because it would be really cool, but because he wants advice.  This guy's name, by the way, is Manoah.  I like Manoah.

So guess what?  The angel does come again, and Manoah gets to meet him.  He doesn't know that it's the angel of the LORD; he seems to think he's a regular person because he keeps referring to him as "man."  So he asks the angel some questions, which the angel really doesn't answer directly.  Then Manoah asks the angel what his name is, and we get another clue that the angel of the LORD may be the LORD himself, a theophany: he responds, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?"  the "wonderful" there means "incomprehensible."  That immediately brings my mind to Isaiah, where he prophesies the birth of Christ and says His name shall be, among other things, Wonderful.

So then Manoah wants to make dinner for the angel, and he gets some food and puts a burnt offering and a grain offering on a rock, and God sends a flame of fire down from heaven and the angel ascends in it, or something like that.  So then or told them stuff or shown them stuff. Manoah knows who he's just been talking to and thinks he and his wife are going to die for seeing God, but she says if they were going to die He wouldn't have accepted their offerings  Smart lady.

Okay, so now it's Samson's turn.  Samson gets born and grows up.  One day he sees a Philistine girl and without talking to her or anything, he goes home and tells his dad he wants to marry her.  His father says, are the pickings really that bad amongst our own people that you want to marry a Philistine?  Samson's response?  "She looks good to me."  I just have this picture of Samson talking like a stereotypical caveman and grunting.  Whatever happened to people like Isaac who trusted his dad to find him a wife, and loved Rebekah his whole life?

So finally Samson goes back and talks to her, and what does the text say?  "She looked good to Samson."  I don't think he really got much out of talking to her, personally.

Next, we find out that Samson is also kind of a pushover.  He's throwing a wedding party, because he really is going to marry this girl, and he tells all her friends a riddle that they can't guess, promising them new clothes if they can guess, but demanding new clothes from them if they can't.  I think he is purposely trying to trick them so that he'll get 30 new outfits. They talk to the bride and tell her to coax the answer out of him or else they'll burn her father's house down.  So she goes and pesters him for a whole week, and finally he cracks and tells her, so she tells the men, so they can answer Samson's riddle.  Apparently he doesn't have any extra clothes because he goes out of town and kills 30 Philistines so he can take their clothes and give them to his new wife's friends.  And he's so angry that he doesn't even go back to his own wedding, and guess what?  His bride is given to Samson's friend.  Ouch!  Can't say I'm surprised though.

So Samson waits a few months before thinking he wants to be a husband, and then he goes to visit the girl he is supposed to be married to, and her father doesn't let him see her.  He offers Samson a different daughter though.  So Samson gets angry, but he doesn't want people to blame him for killing Philistines again, so he go rounds up 300 foxes - do not ask me how - and ties two foxes at a time together with a torch between their tails, and lets them go right by the grain fields, which is ready to be harvested at this time.  So the Philistines go to Samson's non-wife and burn her and her father to death.

Samson says "I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit."  What a nice guy.  So he just goes on the rampage and kills we don't know how many of them.  Then he goes and lives in a cave, until the Philistines come looking for them, and then he takes the jawbone of a donkey and kills 1000 men with it.  By the way, click here to see how this would actually have worked.

Next is the story we're all familiar with: Delilah.  But first he goes and sleeps with a prostitute, a Philistine prostitute at that.  Why can't Samson live with his own people and just go kill Philistines on the weekends or something?  Then he meets Delilah, who is also a Philistine, and falls in love with her.  Apparently the feeling isn't mutual because the Philistines pay her to find out the secret to Samson's strength.  You know the story: the first three times she asks him, he tells her something totally bogus, but the fourth time he tells her that his hair has never been cut, and so she cuts his hair off, he becomes normal, and he gets captured by the Philistines.  They gouge his eyes out, which is really really really gross to me, and parade him around at one of their parties.

Finally, finally Samson does something intelligent.  He prays.  In this story, we've seen the Spirit of God come upon Samson to endow him with strength, but we haven't seen Samson acknowledge God, in spite of being a Nazirite and everything.  In fact, he seems to be the most un-Israelite Israelite we've yet met: he doesn't live with his own people, he doesn't appear to have any kind of communication with God, and the only women he's interested in are Philistines, whom the Israelites are forbidden from intermarrying with.  But now, at rock bottom, Samson turns to God and prays that God will give him strength one last time.   True, Samson seems concerned only with avenging himself because the Philistines took his eyes, but God listens to him, and Samson pulls an entire giant house down, killing well over 3000 Philistines - and Samson.

It seems to me like Samson was really motivated by hormones, and that both got him into trouble and caused him to kill a bunch of Philistines, which was what he was born for.  And that brings me to the title of this blog.  Samson may have been a total Neanderthal without an ounce of gentleman in him, and he may have been really hormonal and made stupid rash decisions, but God used those things to do what He had always intended to do with Samson, in delivering Israel from the Philistines.  God can even turn our foolishness and our stupidity into something useful to Him.  Isn't that crazy?

Judges 6-9: The Original 300

Okay, before I start, I just wanted to say about the Spartan 300 that when the Persian army was approaching, somebody said they were so numerous that when they shot their arrows, they blotted out the sun.  One of the Spartan warriors replied to this, "Good, then we will have our battle in the shade."  I love Sparta.

*clears throat* But that's not the 300 I'm talking about in this passage.  No, these chapters are about a little guy named Gideon.

Unlike the Spartan warrior, Gideon does not strike me as a very brave, valiant, "it's a good day to die" type of guy.  When we meet him, he is threshing wheat in a winepress.  What?  Well, it's because the Midianites are oppressing Israel right now, and since the winepress was kind of a pit (maybe like an empty swimming pool?), he was threshing wheat in there to hide from the Midianites.  Normally, threshing wheat was a community event, maybe like a party - we'll see that when we get to Ruth - poor sad little Gideon is all by himself, hiding from the school bullies so he doesn't get his milk money taken.  Okay, so maybe I'm not being fair to him.  I'm just saying all this to make a point: Gideon is not the kill-a-few-hundred-people-with-an-oxgoad warrior, or even the shove-a-tent-peg-through-a-guy's-temple-while-he's-asleep sneaky assassin that we saw in the last passage.  He's just a regular guy trying to thresh his wheat.

So the angel of the LORD appears to Gideon, and it seems he hasn't been informed that Gideon isn't like Othniel and Shagmar and all them, because he says right off the bat, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior!"  Can you picture Gideon turning around to see who's behind him that the shiny man is talking to?  Well anyway, Gideon's response to the angel is really interesting.  He says "Oh yeah?  If God is with us why am I threshing my wheat in a pit?  What happened to all the miracles that we heard about that used to happen?" (my paraphrase)

Note: I don't know if Gideon just hasn't read the Torah or something, but I believe that if an angel appears to you, a miracle of some kind is very soon going to happen.

In all seriousness, though, I think it's really interesting that Gideon is saying that miracles don't happen anymore, O woe is me, etc., right when God is calling him to do something miraculous.  Gideon seems to have excluded himself from that possibility.  When the angel tells him that God is going to deliver Israel from Midian through him, what does he say?  "Who me?  God is going to make me a mighty warrior like Shagmar the Oxgoad-Wielder and miraculously defeat the Midianites through me? Awesome, I can't wait!"  No, he says "I'm sorry, the warriors are in the third winepress on your right.  I happen to be the resident wimp from a family of wimps.  God must have been mistaken."

I think sometimes we have such grand, idealized ideas about the heroes of the Bible that we put them in a separate camp from ourselves.  It's like we think there's a special "hero pool" that God pulls people from, and we're not in it.  Reading through the Bible so far, though, I've become convinced of one thing: there's only one pool, and that's the pool you and I were in.  Now, there's two ways to look at that: one way is to think that means we're all in the hero pool, and that the same amazing stuff that was in Moses and Gideon is in us, and so we are capable of doing just as amazing things as they were.  The other way of looking at it is to think that all the heroes are in the "regular person" pool with the rest of us, and that they are just as unremarkable as the rest of us, but that God did amazing things through them because He is remarkable, and God can do amazing things through us too if we just get up when He calls us.  You can even look at it both ways; I'll let you decide though.

Anyway, so I'll stop ragging on Gideon because I think the "sign" thing is kind of a cool idea.  I don't know if it's because he was doubtful or because he just wanted to be sure - I mean, just because a guy is shiny doesn't mean they're the angel of the LORD - but he asked God for a total of three signs during the course of this story.  The first one is right now, when he prepares an offering for the angel, which the angel burns up.  The second and third signs are after Gideon has already gathered an army together.

Now, I heard a sermon about Gideon recently, so this next bit comes fromn that pastor, not me.  He said that when you're asking God for a sign, you'd better be already committed to doing whatever it is God's asking you to do.  When Gideon asked for the signs with the fleece and the dew, there were 32,000 people in his backyard playing football or something, ready to go to battle as soon as somebody said the word.  Gideon wasn't about to contest the results of the sign if it proved true.

So then God does one of his plot twists and trims down the army just a little - from 32,000 to 300 men.  I think it's interesting, though, that he didn't just tell Gideon to count off or have them pull straws or something, but that it appears He really was looking for a certain group of people, rather than a certain number.  First, God has all the people who are afraid go home.  Then he has the people who drink water in a more "refined" fashion go home.  I think God is trying to zero in on the people who are really committed no matter what, and ready and raring to go, like they're sitting there chomping at the bit and stuff.  Maybe God was looking for these people so that when He cut the army so absurdly small they wouldn't all get afraid and back out.  I mean, what if God hadn't eliminated the scared people? There might be some fraidy-cats in the final 300, and they would freak out and say "no way are we going to win," and run off.  Or maybe if He hadn't done the drinking thing, there would be some people in the final 300 who were kind of slow and wanted to take their time and enjoy the scenery en route to the enemy's camp.  I dunno.

So we all know what happens - the 300 people surround the Midianite camp, Gideon sneaks down and overhears some guy saying that Israel is totally going to win, and then they get pots and torches and basically just make a lot of noise, and Midian is so jumpy that they think they're being attacked so, in the confusion of night, they all start killing each other.  So Israel wins, but that's not actually the end of the story.

First of all, the Ephraimites get miffed that Gideon didn't invite them to the battle.  Gideon says Ephraim has already done a bunch of cool stuff and his little victory is no comparison, so the Ephraimites feel better about themselves and don't push it.  After that, Israel pursues Midian all over the place.  They are really tired and they stop at a place called Succoth and ask for food.  The elders of Succoth say "yeah right, whatever," so Gideon says that when he comes back he's going to beat the tar out of them.  Then he goes to a place called Penuel and the same thing happens, so he tells them he'll tear down their tower.  So he does - he captures the kings of Midian, whose names both start with Z, and returns to Succoth and beats up the elders, and then goes to Penuel, tears down the tower, and kills all the men in the city.  Now, I don't know that this was really necessary, but it appears that suddenly Gideon has become a mighty warrior - so mighty that he kills the kings of Midian himself, after asking a kid to do it and the kid was too scared - and also so mighty that Israel asks him to be their king.  But Gideon hasn't let all the gore and glory go to his head - he says no way, God should rule over you, not me.

At this point it seems that things are going rather well.  But then weird stuff happens - yeah, it's still not over.  Gideon asks for the people to give him earrings, so they do, and he makes an ephod out of the gold and takes it home with him.  Okay, no biggie, but apparently the people of Israel - including Gideon! - start using it in some kind of idolatry.  Sheesh!  Are there no decent guys in Israel?

But then we have a short story about Gideon's kids, who are really precious.  Gideon has 70 sons (from many different mothers, thank goodness), and one of them, Abimelech, wants to be king, so he goes and kills all 69 of his brothers - well actually 68, because on escapes - and the people of Shechem make him king over them for 3 years.  But then some other guy named Gaal challenges his authority, and apparently Shechem decides they like him better than Abimelech.  So they go to battle and - get this - Abimelech wins!  And he burns down the tower of Shechem with about 1000 people, men and women, inside!  At this point I'm really just waiting for this guy to die.  But then, the most awesome thing ever happens.He's marching against some tower in a place called Thebez, and as he's standing under the tower, some woman who doesn't even get her name put in throws a milstone at Abimelech's head, which crushes his skull (ouch).  Only he has another guy run him through with a sword so that people won't say that a woman killed him.  But too late! It's already in the Bible!  Man, that Abimelech guy really bugged me.  I'm glad he got killed by a girl throwing a rock on his head.

Then everybody goes home, end of story.

After all the awesomeness of Gideon's story, it looks like no amount of miraculous deliverance is going to cause permanent change in Israel.  It also looks like no matter how great a person like Gideon is, he can't for the life of him raise kids who follow the Lord.  I'm getting really frustrated with these people and their lack of good parenting.  Is it too much to ask for two successive generations of obedience?  But Gideon himself sort of turned against God with that ephod thing, so in spite of judging Israel and having 40 years of peace, it doesn't look like Israel is really following God that closely at any point in this story, after Midian was defeated.

Last night I said to a friend that I think the reason people live so long is because we learn so slowly.  The history of Israel is really a picture of each of us, or at least those of us who are normal.  Maybe some people follow God whole-heartedly and never turn away their whole lives, and are dramatically and permanently changed after witnessing a miracle, but I tend to repeat the same stupid stuff I've always done regardless of what God is doing.  And maybe stories like this one are in the Bible to remind me that I can't slack off after a major victory; I have to stay committed to following God or all kinds of stuff will get in the way, and I don't want that to happen.

Joshua 1-6: We're Goin' to the Promised Land!

Okay, does anybody else read the story of Jericho with the music to Veggie Tales' Josh and the Big Wall running through their mind?  I do.  "You silly little pickle, you silly little peas, you think that walking 'round will bring this city to its knees?"  But more on Jericho later.

We begin with God commissioning Joshua, following the death of Moses, so this book picks up right where Deuteronomy left off.  Then Joshua appears before Israel and they vow to obey him.

What interests me about this chapter, and also about the end of Deuteronomy, is the charge to Joshua to be "strong and courageous."   Including Deuteronomy 31, Joshua is told to be "strong and courageous" seven times - first by Moses, then by God, then by the people of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh.  It makes me wonder if Joshua was really not that strong and courageous of a person.  Do you ever wonder why he was Moses' successor instead of Caleb?  Caleb is mentioned more in Numbers - he's the one mentioned as speaking favorably about the promised land way back in Numbers 13, for example.  He seems to be the strong and courageous type.  But I think Joshua had been prepped to take over Moses' job because he was his assistant, and he even went up to Mt. Sinai with him.  I think God wanted somebody who was as close to Moses as he could get.  Moses wasn't strong or courageous either, and we all know how much that mattered to God.  I think that you don't have to be brave to be brave . . . I think courage is something God can give you, and something that comes when you know you're on God's side.

In chapter 2, Joshua sends spies into Jericho kind of like Moses did earlier, but he only sends in two.  Think that's a coincidence since only two of Moses' spies (including Joshua) gave a favorable report?  I don't.  Anyway, they meet a girl named Rahab; apparently she's a prostitute, although I've read that the word could also be translated as "inkeeper."  Either way, she's hospitable and she hides the men while people come looking for them, and asks that Israel spare her life and the lives of all in her family in return.  So they make a deal with her that if she puts a scarlet cord in her window, then everybody within her house will live, but if she doesn't have the cord in her window, the deal's off.  Interestingly, it says she ties the cord in her window right when the spies leave.

Then Israel crosses the Jordan River, only they cross it by God cutting off the water upstream so the people can cross it on dry land.  This seems like a completely useless miracle because we just saw mention in the last chapter of fords, meaning there is a part in the river that is really, really shallow and can be crossed without a bridge.  I don't think that the point of the miracle was practicality, though.  I think the point was to remind the Israelites of what happened at the Red Sea.  I've noticed that God often does things in pairs (you'll hear more about this after I finish Judges) - for instance, Jesus feeds 5000 people, then he feeds 4000 people.  I think it's a way of reinforcing or confirming the message.  Joshua is new in charge, just as Moses was new in charge when he led the people out of Egypt 40 years ago.  Both miracles were signs that the power of God was on this chosen leader, only Joshua didn't have 10 plagues already under his belt, which makes this miracle even more important.  This is a way for God to show people that Joshua is the guy to follow.  It's also, I think, a miracle for the sake of the people who didn't see the Red Sea parted - since, remember, that was 40 years ago.  They've grown up hearing about it, and maybe this is a way for them to experience what it may have been like to see it happen.

Chapters 4-5 are more religious and less actiony.  In chapter 4, God has Joshua make a memorial pile of stones taken out of the Jordan River - a stone to represent each tribe of Israel - so that in future generations, the descendants of these people will ask their parents why that pile of stones is there, and they'll tell their kids about the crossing of the Jordan.  It says that the pile of stones is still there "to this day."  More on that later.

In chapter 5, God tells Joshua to circumcise all the males in Israel.  For some reason, nobody has been circumcised for the last 40 years while they were traveling.  I'm really not sure why that is.  Like, Moses didn't circumcise his kid either until an angel appeared on the road to Egypt about to kill one of them, and even then his wife did it. Did Moses just have a thing about circumcision, so he never told the people to do it?  I don't know.  Or was it like a travel concession - while you're on the road you can put it off.  I have no idea.  Anyway, that's what they do in chapter 5.  But then something really cool happens.

Joshua goes outside one day and sees a guy with a drawn sword.  Joshua asks him whose side he's on, and the guy says he's not on either side; he's the captain of the LORD's army.  Cool!  You can give me battle strategy advice, right? says Joshua.  Well not really.  Joshua falls on his face - which, for future reference, is the appropriate response when you're in the presence of the LORD, as it appears was the case here, because the angelic captain has Joshua remove his shoes.  Then (moving into chapter 6) he tells Joshua how to win the battle.  Basically he doesn't have to do anything except look weird, and God will take care of the rest.  So that is what they do.

Pause for a second.  Did the captain of the LORD's army just say he wasn't on Joshua's side?  Now maybe by that he meant that he wasn't an Israelite, and that probably is what he meant.  But I always felt like it meant something else too, that God is above the temporal divisions we humans make between ourselves.  Just like we say today that God isn't a Republican or a Democrat, He's not an Israelite either, and he certainly isn't under Joshua's command.  I think that it is not so important to have God "on our side" as it is for us to be on God's side.  Think about that for a bit and see if those two perspectives lead to different conclusions.  I think they do.

I love it when God's instructions don't make sense.  Here, walk around this fortified city, as if you haven't been walking enough over the last 40 years.  Walk a complete lap once every day for six days.  On day seven, lap it seven times.  Then blow trumpets and yell.  Trust me, it'll work!  Um . . . are the walls sensitive to sound waves?  But they do it, and it does work.  When they start shouting and blowing their trumpets, the walls fall flat - that's what it says, like "timber!" fall down flat.  They've found Jericho, by the way.  It looks like it suffered from earthquake damage is what archaeologists say.  Except for this one little spot along the wall which was left intact when the rest of the walls fell.  That would be Rahab's house.  Back to her.

So Rahab kept her promise, which means that the spies (and therefore all Israel) kept their promise, and when they destroyed everything in Jericho, they let Rahab and her whole family join up with them, not as slaves but as naturalized citizens.  We later find out that Rahab marries a guy named Salmon and has a son named Boaz.  We'll meet him later.  Pretty cool, huh?  And it says that "Rahab has lived in the midst of Israel to this day."

Now, you will find the phrase about something being somewhere "to this day" repeated a lot in this book, but we don't get any sense of when "this day" is until just now when it is used of Rahab.  Notice that Rahab is a living person, so if she has lived in Israel to this day, it means "this day" is during her lifetime, dating the book of Joshua to within a few decades of this event.  Also, I think I take back what I said about Joshua not writing the last part of Deuteronomy.  Among other reasons, the wording about "to this day" is a repeated phrase that I've only seen in this book.  So maybe Joshua did write it after all.

So that's where chapter 6 ends.  I'm going to stop on the high note, because there's bad news and I want to save it for next time.