All right, all right, join the Journey family, friends, and guests. You're listening to Join the Journey

podcast with your host, Emma, daughter. Thanks for joining. Today, we're reading Joshua 6 through 9,

and Chapter 9 begs some questions about decision-making and deception. Chapter 9 starts off

with an acknowledgement that the Israelites' reputation was spreading.

Remember, they were moving into the promised land, but people were already living there.

The Israelite army, under Joshua's leadership, had to drive out those groups of inhabitants,

and news of their arrival was spreading amongst the inhabitants.

Joshua 9, verses 1 through 2, read,

Now when all the kings west of the Jordan heard about these things,

these things being that AI or I was being destroyed, or was destroyed,

the kings in the hill country, in the western foothills, and along the

entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Lebanon, they came together to wage war against

Joshua and Israel. One commentator puts it like this. Israel's success led several

Canaanite kings to ally against God's people. While this alliance was taking shape,

the Ghibeianites initiated a different tactic. Until now, in Joshua, Israel had chosen its military

targets, but now others were defining their military objectives. The following chapters

introduced the transition from a victorious people of God

whose occupation of the land could have been relatively simple matter

of defeating those already discouraged to an unending history of battle,

bloodshed and idolatry that would haunt Israel throughout its history.

There's a shift.

As in the opening chapters of Genesis, so also in the opening

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