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Sefer Yehoshua is read here through the voice of conscience, not as a celebration of conquest, but as a test of moral discernment.When a sacred text attributes land seizure, extermination, and plunder to the LORD, the reader must ask whether the LORD is truly the universal Creator of all peoples, or whether he is being presented as a national deity of one people.
This reflection continues a series of commentaries on the Tanakh, examining selected passages from Sefer Yehoshua through moral reflection and the voice of conscience.
Contents & Key Questions
- Joshua 1:3 — A Territorial Promise
- Joshua 2:1; 6:17–21 — Jericho, Revenge, and the Killing of the Innocent
- Joshua 7:19–24 — Achan and the Question of Plunder
- Joshua 8:1–2, 24–35 — Ai, Conquest, and Religious Ritual
- Weigh the Spiritual Level of the Teaching
- Conclusion — Conscience Above Fear of Religious Authority
- Related Themes in Other Scriptures
Joshua 1:3 — A Territorial Promise
3 Every spot on which your foot treads I give to you, as I promised Moses. *
The LORD as a National Deity, Not the Almighty
This verse presents a territorial promise: the LORD gives one people the lands of other nations.
If this god gives the land of other peoples to one nation, then he is not the God of those peoples. He is presented as the god of one nation, not as the Almighty Creator of all.
And if this is so, then the LORD in this passage cannot be identified with the Almighty. For the Almighty has no chosen and rejected nations.
This is the spiritual problem the reader must weigh: does the command reveal the universal Creator, or a distorted image of divinity used to justify conquest?
Joshua 2:1; 6:17–21 — Jericho, Revenge, and the Killing of the Innocent
2:1 Joshua son of Nun secretly sent two spies from Shittim, saying, “Go, reconnoiter the region of Jericho.” So they set out, and they came to the house of a harlot named Rahab and lodged there.
6:17 The city and everything in it are to be proscribed for the LORD; only Rahab the harlot is to be spared, and all who are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers we sent.
6:18 But you must beware of that which is proscribed, or else you will be proscribed: if you take anything from that which is proscribed, you will cause the camp of Israel to be proscribed; you will bring calamity upon it.
6:19 All the silver and gold and objects of copper and iron are consecrated to the LORD; they must go into the treasury of the LORD.”
6:20 So the people shouted when the horns were sounded. When the people heard the sound of the horns, the people raised a mighty shout and the wall collapsed. The people rushed into the city, every man straight in front of him, and they captured the city.
6:21 They exterminated everything in the city with the sword: man and woman, young and old, ox and sheep and ass.
When Violence Seeks Sacred Justification
If an attack is carried out in revenge against a few citizens, what kind of beastly “justification” is there for the murder of infants, women, and other innocents!
Such acts can only be committed by those who align themselves with evil. Those who fail to recognize this operate on the lowest level of instinct. If all peoples were to follow such “laws,” the world would have long been destroyed by wars, plunder, and moral decay.
If you hear the voice of the Almighty — conscience — then weigh the spiritual level of those who wrote such texts, and compare it with what is being justified today in the conflicts involving Israel, Palestine, Iran, and the wider region.
Those who justify invasions of other nations to secure the lives of their own people are exchanging the Eternal for the Temporal. And this is their choice before the eyes of the Almighty. Each individual must make their choice consciously and independently, guided neither by fear nor by vanity, but by the voice of the Creator — their conscience.
Some dismiss the conscience as immaterial, denying its very existence. But in truth, it is they who are devoid of conscience.
Joshua 7:19–24 — Achan and the Question of Plunder
19 Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, pay honor to the LORD, the God of Israel, and make confession to Him. Tell me what you have done; do not hold anything back from me.”
20 Achan answered Joshua, “It is true, I have sinned against the LORD, the God of Israel. This is what I did:
21 I saw among the spoil a fine Shinar mantle, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels, and I coveted them and took them. They are buried in the ground in my tent, with the silver under it.”
22 Joshua sent messengers, who hurried to the tent; and there it was, buried in his tent, with the silver underneath.
23 They took them from the tent and brought them to Joshua and all the Israelites, and displayed them before the LORD.
24 Then Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan son of Zerah—and the silver, the mantle, and the wedge of gold—his sons and daughters, and his ox, his ass, and his flock, and his tent, and all his belongings, and brought them up to the Valley of Achor.
No Repentance for Bloodshed, Only a Question of Spoil
After the destruction of Jericho, the narrative does not center on repentance for the killing of the city’s inhabitants. Instead, the focus turns to whether someone kept forbidden spoil for himself. This creates a false image of righteous people, distorted by misleading descriptions.
If righteousness is portrayed as obedience to rules of conquest while the suffering of innocents disappears from view, then the conscience must resist that image rather than submit to it.
This is one of the main lessons: neither a text’s sacred status nor its religious framing should be treated as proof of Divine truth.
Joshua 8:1–2, 24–35 — Ai, Conquest, and Religious Ritual
1 The LORD said to Joshua, “Do not be frightened or dismayed. Take all the fighting troops with you, go and march against Ai. See, I will deliver the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land into your hands.
2 You shall treat Ai and her king as you treated Jericho and her king; however, you may take the spoil and the cattle as booty for yourselves. Now set an ambush against the city behind it.”
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24 When Israel had killed all the inhabitants of Ai who had pursued them into the open wilderness, and all of them, to the last man, had fallen by the sword, all the Israelites turned back to Ai and put it to the sword.
25 The total of those who fell that day, men and women, the entire population of Ai, came to twelve thousand.
26 Joshua did not draw back the hand with which he held out his javelin until all the inhabitants of Ai had been exterminated.
27 However, the Israelites took the cattle and the spoil of the city as their booty, in accordance with the instructions that the LORD had given to Joshua.
28 Then Joshua burned down Ai, and turned it into a mound of ruins for all time, a desolation to this day.
29 And the king of Ai was impaled on a stake until the evening. At sunset, Joshua had the corpse taken down from the stake and it was left lying at the entrance to the city gate. They raised a great heap of stones over it, which is there to this day.
30 At that time Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal,
31 as Moses, the servant of the LORD, had commanded the Israelites—as is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses—an altar of unhewn stone upon which no iron had been wielded. They offered on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and brought sacrifices of well-being.
32 And there, on the stones, he inscribed a copy of the Teaching that Moses had written for the Israelites.
33 All Israel—stranger and citizen alike—with their elders, officials, and magistrates, stood on either side of the Ark, facing the levitical priests who carried the Ark of the LORD’s Covenant. Half of them faced Mount Gerizim and half of them faced Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded them of old, in order to bless the people of Israel.
34 After that, he read all the words of the Teaching, the blessing and the curse, just as is written in the Book of the Teaching.
35 There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua failed to read in the presence of the entire assembly of Israel, including the women and children and the strangers who accompanied them.
Can Altar and Sacred Language Make Violence Holy?
Does the Almighty love some nations less than others? Is it not the LORD who, in this text, incites one people against other nations by tempting them with a false sense of special status, fear, and greed, and by encouraging them to rob other nations? Is it not obvious that such instructions urge vile actions?
Can ritual, altar, and sacred language make violence holy?
Each reader must look beyond the outer authority of the text and examine the spiritual level of the cruelty even if it is wrapped in religious language.
Weigh the Spiritual Level of the Teaching
Some researchers attempt to decipher hidden meanings in letters and words of sacred texts, yet rarely examine the moral and spiritual level of the teachings themselves.
Only through spiritual sight can one discern what truly comes from God and what is the result of distortions.
Conclusion — Conscience Above Fear of Religious Authority
You have been shown through examples how to draw conclusions about texts that are treated as sacred, armed with the voice of the Almighty — the conscience. When you read the continuation of the Book of the Prophets, check the level of your soul — will you be able to consider the voice of the Creator, the conscience, higher than your fear of religious authority?
* The text of the Nevi’im (Prophets) is quoted from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, published by JPS (1985). ↑ back
Related Themes in Other Scriptures
The moral questions raised in the conquest narratives of Joshua also appear in other scriptural traditions and related reflections in Part Two and Book Guide.
- Numbers 31 — Moses and the Sanctification of Violence
- Quran 2:51–61 — False Prophets, Violence, and Moral Discernment
- The Trinity of God’s Law — Love, Conscience, Reason
- Rules for the Protection of Society — Principles and Foundations
- To Millions of Believers
- A Call to Believers of All Religions and Denominations
- Appeal to Humanity: Purpose of Our Civilization & Time of Choice
Choose Another Chapter:
Part One
Part Two