Joshua: Chapter 9

Open your mouth

bind yourself with your ongue

in a world of tattered objects

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This chapter begins to unpack  some of the implications of the movement from miracles to tactics that took place in the previous chapter.  If in the aftermath of Jericho, the children of Israel venerated Joshua, here there is an underlying tension between the "man of Israel" and the leadership. The local inhabitants also no longer tremble before Joshua. Rather than "melting" in fear as they hear of the supernatural victories, they unite in a federation to fight tactics with tactics. 

The Gibonites take a differnt approach, and rather than battleing Israel head-on, use the same subterfuge and cunning that Joshua used against Ai--this time against him. "Why did you beguile us?" Joshua cries. not undertsanding that deception and play has become an essential part of the world in which he plays, the battles that he fights. 

In a world defined by human action rather than the all-encompaing reality of God's presence--"for the Land is Mine"--there are many objects, and shadows, but few clear cut realities. The leaders of Israel do not "ask the mouth of God", but rather look to the witness of objects as they "take of their provisions" (9: 14). We move from the previous chapter's focus on the "hand" of human action, to the "mouth" that defines the human reality--regardless of the facts. 

If in the battle of Jericho, Israel was told to remain silent, here, after the battle of Ai, human speech becomes definitive. Joshua and the tribal leaders are bound by their word, despite the fact that their oath was given on the basis of a lie.  "We cannot do anything to them"--the human hand bound by the human oath.

There is a subtle counterpoint here to the story of Jericho, which also ends with the commitment to keep an oath: the scouts search out Rahab, and save her and her family as promised. Here, the battle of Ai ends with the commitment to spare the Gibonitesis as promised. Yet in Jericho, the promise to Rahab was bound by faithfulness: she had to complete her part of the bargain, and not give the spies away. Here, the promise was given under deception. At the closing of the story of Jericho, Rahab is accepted within the encampment, and she comes to dwell "within Israel."; the Gibonites, by contrast, remain in a strange liminal state, intimate outsiders who remain forever apart, yet serve within God's sanctuary, The bonds created arbitrarily by human language are not the full equivallent of bonds rooted in reality.]

Joshua: Chapter 4

Recreation. 

Take the inside out,

bring the ourside in

Stable in the swirl

foot sunk in sand--

then disconnect at let the water back in.

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This chapter followes seemlessly from the last: it is the actualization of the plans and commands.  If the previous chapter ends with the announcment that "all the nation passed through the Jordan," this chapter begins at the moment after "and it was, when all the nation passed through the Jordan." If in the previous chapter, God promised Joshua that "I will begin to magnify you in the eyes of this nation, and they will know that as I was with Moses I will be with you" (3: 7),  in this chapter it has become a fact: "on that day God magnified Joshua in the eyes of all of Israel, and they feared him as they had feared Moses, all the days of his life" (4:14).

Continued is the theme of transition, here embodied in the Jordan River, the literal passage between before and after, inside and outside, As in the case of Rahab and her window, there is something sacred about the liminal space, and about the right of passage. The men that Joashua "prepared" before the passage must go back and take stones from the bedrock of the river, by the very feet of the preists. These stones are to be set up in the first "resting place" that Israel finds within the Land (again, an allusion to Moses and his experience at the "resting place" [malon] on his way to Egypt], continuing the presence of the passage. These are to be "speaking stones", arousing testemony. And even as teh Jordan is moved into the Land, the outer edge is moved into the Jordan, as twelve stones are set up within the river, to permenantly link the before and after. Thus, the desert experience is linked into teh transitional space of the river, and the river is moved into the "resting place" at Gilgal.  

Holding the passage open are the feet of the preists, rooted within the watery mud, causing the river to pile up on one side, and dry up on the other. "As soon as the soles of the preists' feet were lifted to the dry land, the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, running between its banks as before" (4:18). The transition from Moses to Joshua, from desert to the Land, revolves around literal movement: around learning to walk in a new way.]

Joshua: Chapter 2

What keeps watch at the doorway, between? 

Are you penetrable,  knowable? 

Shut the door,  yet open the window

Give me a sign.

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This chapter continues the focus on theme of transition, which here is given a tangible embodiment.
 We begin with the transition between Moses to Joshua. Joshua acts as Moses,  sending out spies. Yet this time, in a successful reiteration, Joshua sends only  two--a recreation of the successful spies, Caleb and himself. The other ten spies are forgotten.
We move on to the transition between the Encampment and the Land.  The spies are to scout out "Jericho, and the land", looking both at the countryside and the city. They stop at the liminal space between the two--the house of Rahab, who lives within the city wall itself, straddling the separation. Rahab becomes the key to the spies success in Jericho, straddling metaphorically between Israel and the inhabitants of the land. It is she who gives the spies their information. And saving  their lives, she demands to be saved in turn. Her literal liminality indeed becomes the key to salvation: she saves the spies by lowering them by rope out her window, and is saved in turn by hanging a "red thread" in her window. This thread, tikvat (lit. 'extension' 'hope') hut ha-shani, signals a way forward, and opening for hope.
Rahab not only lives in a liminal space--she herself is a liminal space, an entrance waiting to be penetrated. The language of the chapter is unremittingly sexual.  Rahab is described as a zonah (which means both innkeeper and whore). The spies "come to her" (repeatedly) and "lie there" in her home; she is told the spies have come to "plow" the land; and she repeatedly speaks of "knowing" (the carnal daat) and "not-knowing."  Indeed, there are many echoes of the Sodom story, with its threat of sexual violence. Rahab's advice to the spies to flee "to the mountain" echoes the angels' advice to Lot to "flee to the mountain" (hahara nasu).
Yet it is Rahab and her family who actually play the part of Lot, saved from the destroyed city. In  saving the spies--"sending them forth", as Joshua had "sent" them --Rahab metaphorically opens herself and the city up as conquest. In exchange, she is granted a protection that echoes Israel's protection in Egypt during the plague  of the firstborn. By marking the limen, she is set aside].