Daily Lesson for Sabbath 18th of October 2025
Image © Pacific Press
Read for This Week’s Study: Joshua 5:13-15; Isaiah 37:16; Revelation 12:7-9; Deuteronomy 32:17; Exodus 14:13-14; Joshua 6:15-20.
Memory Text: “There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel” (Joshua 10:14, ESV).
Reading the pages of Joshua, we are confronted with the aggressive military campaigns carried out at the command of God, in the name of God, and with the help of God. The idea that God was behind the conquest of Canaan pervades the book of Joshua, and it is expressed in the assertions of the narrator (Joshua 10:10-11), in God’s own words (Joshua 6:2, Joshua 8:1), in Joshua’s addresses (Joshua 4:23-24; Joshua 8:7), by Rahab (Joshua 2:10), by the spies (Joshua 2:24), and by the people (Joshua 24:18). God claims to be the initiator of these violent conflicts.
This reality raises unavoidable questions. How can we understand that God’s chosen people carried out such practices in Old Testament times? How is it possible to reconcile the image of a “warlike” God with His character of love (for example, Exodus 34:6, Psalms 86:15, Psalms 103:8, Psalms 108:4) without diluting the credibility, authority, and historicity of the Old Testament?
This week and next, we are going to explore the difficult question of divinely commanded wars in the book of Joshua and elsewhere.
*Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, October 25.
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