Chapter 6: Holy Ground

When the kings of Canaan heard that the Lord had dried up the Jordan for Israel to cross, their hearts melted and their courage failed.

Israel camped at Gilgal, on the plains near Jericho. And there, before any march on the city, God gave Joshua a command that made no military sense.

GOD“Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.”

An entire generation born during the forty years of wandering had never been circumcised. The covenant sign God had given Abraham had not been carried out in the wilderness. Before God would give them the land, He required them to bear the mark of the promise.

So Joshua obeyed. Every fighting man underwent circumcision on the open plains, within sight of a fortified enemy city. For days, the army that was supposed to conquer Canaan could barely stand. If Jericho had attacked, Israel would have been defenseless.

But no attack came.

When it was done, God spoke.

GOD“Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.”

That is why the place was called Gilgal. It means rolling. The shame of slavery, the failure of the wilderness, the identity they had neglected for forty years. All of it, rolled away.

There they celebrated the Passover, the annual feast that remembered the night God had delivered their ancestors out of slavery in Egypt.

The day after, they ate from the produce of the land for the first time. Unleavened bread and roasted grain, grown in Canaan soil.

And the manna stopped.

For forty years in the wilderness, God had provided food every morning. The people would walk outside their tents and find it on the ground, enough for each day. Now, the morning after they ate from the Promised Land, God stopped feeding because the land could.

Meanwhile, people inside had sealed the gates.

Joshua went alone to survey the city. And when he looked up, a man was standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua walked straight up to him.

JOSHUA“Are you for us, or for our enemies?”

THE COMMANDER“Neither. I have come as commander of the army of the Lord.”

Joshua fell facedown to the ground. This was a divine being. The Commander told him to take off his sandals, because the ground where he stood was holy. They were the same words God had spoken to Moses at the burning bush.

The battle for Jericho did not belong to Joshua. It belonged to the Lord.