THE HOLY GOD
Joshua 5 and 6
The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.
Joshua was already prostrate, face down to the ground in reverence; he was in an attitude of submission, asking “What message does my Lord have for his servant?” Yet, before anything else, came the instruction to recognise that the Presence of the Lord requires holiness and Joshua was to remove his sandals; and Joshua did so.
The core meaning of the word “holy” is “set apart” or “consecrated”. It does not directly mean “pure or sinless or righteous” as we often understand it; after all, the ground cannot be pure or sinless. It is, however, no longer merely “ground” because God is there and so Joshua was asked to remove his sandals. Perhaps the simplest meaning we can draw from this is that we must recognise God as someone beyond who we are, beyond anything in all of Creation—the “otherness” of God—and even though it is merely symbolic, we need to express our unworthiness to be there.
The moment we do so, the context takes on a much deeper meaning: we are creatures, in the presence of the Creator.
It is in this context that we understand the slaughter that ensued. It has been ingrained in us after centuries of barbaric wars and cruelty that life is sacred and we must not kill. In fact this is a command enshrined in the decalogue.
But God is not man and as the Creator who gives life, he also takes life away that offends him. We are told, again and again, that God abhors the depths of depravity that man is capable of, to the degree that there is nothing else but to cull in order to stem the slide down to the depths. When bird flu infects a farm, the authorities do not hesitate to kill the animal life and even burn the carcasses. God had judged the people of Canaan and has described their sin as even intolerable to the land “Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (Leviticus 18:25).
Is there any reason to use the Israelites as the sword of judgement? I believe so, because they now know first hand what it means to turn aside from their identity as God’s people.
Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.” (Joshua 24:19-20)