Wow - this is some really tough reading. Three chapters of absolute genocide. What do we do with that? How do we react to it? Well, we start by remembering that God is good and just and always does what it right. Knowing that about God, we can approach these texts from a better perspective.
10:11 - Pretty weird reminder that God is the one who does all the work. Here he does the work with a bunch of death bringing hailstorms. All followers of God today, we should always do our best to serve Him passionately and effectively, but we can also put our trust in the fact that God is the one really doing the hard work. God is gonna fill in where our weaknesses would bring failure and God is going to do so much more with our lives and ministries than could ever be imagined.
10:13-14 - The Sun stands still so the Israelites can have more time to kill their enemies? Whoa. What happened there? Well, to be honest, we have no idea. Some people think that God just stopped the rotation of the earth, but scientists have never been able to find any discrepancies in space that would support that. Maybe He just slowed the earth down enough to make the day really long, yet it didn't cause any noticeable cosmic changes. Maybe God refracted light from the other side of the earth to make it seem like day stayed the whole time. Maybe God just created another source of light for the day - he can do that if He wants to. We just don't know for sure - we weren't there. What we do know is that Joshua didn't really care about the sun standing still. That is not what impresses him...what impresses Joshua is that God listened to him. Joshua prays for victory and it says that something happened that had never been experienced before or after - God fought on the side of human beings. He sided with Joshua and fought for him. That's what blows Joshua's mind!
11:4ff - When are these people going to learn? How many nations and kingdoms need to be wiped out before they figure it out. Thus far in Joshua, only one group has tried to make peace with the Israelites and those people are the only ones still living. It reminds me of us. When are we going to learn. We know how destructive selfish, sinful stuff is to our lives, but we keep going back to it. When are we going to give up trying to go our own way and offer ourselves humbly to God?
11:19-20 - It says that God hardened the kings hearts so that they would attack the Israelites. Why would He do that? If He left them alone, would they have maybe tried to make peace. I don't think so - remember that God is just and righteous. I believe that God is simply speeding up the timetable on their future rebellion so it fits within the time frame of His plan. If He can slow down the sun or make it stop, then I bet He can speed up the descent through which somebody utterly rebels against Him.
* So far in the book of Joshua, we see that every people group who have fought against the people of God are utterly wiped out. The one group that sought peace with His people are left alive. God is not randomly setting people up for genocide - He is protecting His people and doling out judgement. When people groups attack God, they pay for it (Later we see when the Israelites betray God and rebel against Him that they pay for that too).
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