The wars of conquest under Moses and Joshua were supposed to cleanse the land of a competing divine bloodline and install Yahweh’s own children, his inheritance, into the place he had allotted for them. Yahweh’s rule on earth was to be reconstituted in Canaan.
Frankly, it didn’t seem much like Eden.
In contrast to the idyllic beginnings in Eden, the installation of Israel into the land had been violent. Those means were necessary to revive Yahweh’s original vision in a fallen world, a world full of divine and human conflict, of free imagers seeking their own will, not the will of the creator. Yahweh could have just spoken Israel into existence in the land. He could have acted unilaterally as high sovereign to resuscitate his rule on earth. But Yahweh’s decisions in the original Eden meant that he would not overturn human (or divine) freedom in his imagers. Yahweh had chosen to accomplish his ends through imagers loyal to him against imagers who weren’t. This commitment to humanity, his original imagers on earth, is one often-missed reason why, when humanity (Israel) failed to restore God’s rule, God took matters into his own hands by becoming human in Jesus Christ.
Consequently, in a world governed by other gods who had become hostile rivals in the wake of Yahweh’s judgment at Babel, Yahweh’s presence was unwelcome. There would be war. There would be death. The land had to be repossessed and made holy. Canaan would be Yahweh’s beachhead of cosmic geography from which Israel could fulfill its mission. Israel would be a kingdom of priests, a conduit through which the disinherited nations of the earth would see Israel’s prosperity. The surrounding peoples would hear of Israel’s God, see his unmatched power, and seek his covenantal love. The nations would be reclaimed, not by force, but by free imagers choosing to turn toward the true God—the creator and Lord of all.
At least that was the plan.
We know that Israel ultimately failed. The seeds of that failure were sown in the events of the conquest. For whatever reasons—lack of faith or lack of effort, or both—Israel failed to drive out their enemies. They allowed vestiges of the targeted bloodlines to remain in the land in the Philistine cities. They chose to coexist (Judg 1:27–36). The visible Yahweh, the Angel, asks the rhetorical question, “Why would you do such a thing?” and then announces the consequence: “Now I say, I will not drive them out from before you; they will become as thorns for you, and their gods will be a trap for you” (Judg 2:2–3). The name of the place where he uttered these words was thereafter appropriately remembered as Bochim, a Hebrew word that means “weeping” (Judg 2:5).
Not surprisingly, the rest of Israel’s history is a sordid roller-coaster ride. Loyalty to Yahweh—refusing to worship any other god—was of course at the heart of salvation in the Old Testament. Possession of the land is linked to this loyalty as far back as the Abrahamic covenant (Gen 17:1–2, 8–10; 22:15–18). The covenant at Sinai reinforced that connection (Lev 26 ; Deut 4:25–27, 39–40; 11:18–24). It would be due to failure in this loyalty that Israel was sent into exile—expelled from the land of promise.
But Yahweh wouldn’t give up entirely on Israel. The book of Judges makes it clear that he would respond to both repentance and apostasy with equal consistency. The visible Yahweh did show up from time to time, as in the cases of Gideon (Judg 6 ) and Samson (Judg 13 ). But it was only with Israel’s last judge, the faithful Samuel, that Yahweh’s appearances became less rare.
Israel’s monarchy would suffer through Saul and eventually flourish under David and his son Solomon. But the monarchy thereafter crumbled, dragging God’s intended kingdom into centuries of apostasy and civil war before ending in divine judgment.
The terrible end would produce theological lessons: Eden cannot come and survive without Yahweh’s constant presence—as had been the case in the original Eden. The kingdom of God cannot be built with human hands. As Israel reached the final stages of failure, God announced through the prophets that plans had changed. Restoring Eden would require God’s enduring presence in the hearts of his children, and an ideal king who would remain loyal to Yahweh. God himself would supply the second Adam, the son of David, the perfect ruling servant.
Old Testament history after the conquest is the story of what might have been. But the Old Testament after the book of Joshua shouldn’t be read like a protracted obituary. The spiritual war doesn’t end. The biblical writers have messages to communicate against the backdrop of their supernatural worldview. The stories of prophets and kings aren’t just a biblical soap opera. There’s an unseen reality show going on at the same time. What’s playing on that channel will occupy us the rest of the way through the Old Testament.