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Divine Presence amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua is unavailable, but you can change that!

Investigating “revelation in context,” Walter Brueggemann examines the difficult text of Joshua 11. Brueggemann seeks to explain the presence of the violence in the Old Testament, perpetrated in the name of the Lord. He addresses the problem by treating these texts as an embarrassment to Christians, dealing specifically with whether violence is at odds with the character of God.

has no access to such technology. The only counter to military technology, according to the narrative, is the powerful liberating voice of Yahweh. Second, as often following “do not fear,” there is a promise of a quite specific kind, introduced by, “for tomorrow I am handing them over all of them, slain, to Israel.”7 Third, after the promise and the assurance is the command, with the word order inverted, forming a chiasmus with the promise for accent: Their horses you will hamstring, their chariots
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