Under Joshua’s leadership God set the pattern for how a nation thrives. First of all, in God’s own words to Joshua, “be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you,” Joshua 1:7, because “Then you will be prosperous and successful,” verse 8.
According to God’s instructions, then, Joshua enforced a Rule of Law, to which the people voluntarily replied in verse 18: “Whoever rebels against your word (Joshua) and does not obey your words, whatever you may command them, will be put to death.”
Also according to God’s instructions, Joshua designated six “cities of refuge,” Joshua 20:2-9, “so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there (3), stand in the entrance of the city gate and state his case before the elders of that city and find protection from the avenger of blood (4)….and he is to stay in that city until he has stood trial (6).” So along with a Rule of Law Joshua set up a Justice system too, to provide a fair trial in cases where a law had been broken but “unintentionally and without malice” (5).
But following the death of Joshua “another generation grew up,” Judges 2:8-10, that “deserted God” and “took up with the gods of the peoples around them” (12). God “raised up judges” (16) to provide some Godly leadership, but the Israelites took no notice of them and “quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the Lord’s commands” (17). So the Rule of Law died. In its place “everyone did as he saw fit” (17:6), which did away with justice too, as we see in the story of the tribe of Dan in chapter 18.
Which is ironic because Jacob predicted his son Dan would be “a provider of justice” (Genesis 49:16). But it was the Danites who, in “seeking a place of their own,” Judges 18:1, set their sights on an area where “the people were Iiving in safety, unsuspecting and secure. And since their land lacked nothing, they were prosperous” (7). And this is when law and justice really died, because the Danites “attacked (these totally innocent folks) with the sword and burned down their city” (27), then rebuilt it, settled there themselves and renamed it “Dan” (28-29).
With Dan the rule of Law and Justice died, with horrible results. But God did provide justice for Israel through one great Danite, “Samson: flamboyant and flawed”….(next blog)
