Joshua: God's General

Okay, so I don't ever remember going to bible study and being told that Joshua was a general, but that's really the only thing that makes sense when you get down to it. After all, he's the one that lead's Israel into the promised land to take what God has "given" them, which is another interesting point considering the fact that there were other people already occupying the land so they couldn't have been to happy about that.

Anyways, Joshua seems like a competent man. He leads Israel to several great victories. Then they must get a little overconfident because they finally lose a battle, and the people just want to settle in what they already have. However, Joshua comes up with a brilliant plan that ends with his enemies outflanked and their city conquered.

The one image that I can't shake from this book of the Bible is the fact that Joshua seems to be an extremely bloodthirsty individual. I can almost understand killing the men that you've been fighting because they represent a threat to the future kingdom that you are trying to establish, even though you are invading someone else's land, but to kill women and children seems like a cold and heartless attack on the innocent. Hell, it doesn't just seem like, it is.

At what point does a God whose so powerful that he can destroy the entire powerful nation of Egypt simply to prove a point become so afraid of women and children subverting his chosen people that he has the Israelites kill all of them? Can God not simply convert these people with one of the many miracles that he has lying around?

I guess the wierdest part about really reading the Bible for the first time has finally come crashing down on me. The first time that I "read" it, I must have just skimmed through this section understanding only the basic concepts that I had been taught since I was a small child, that God had chosen this land for his people and so everyone else must be evicted. The problem is that in this sense evicted comes to the point of mass genocide, an act that the God I grew up believing in, but a God that is not yet present in the Bible, did not believe in. I am beginning to wonder what else I will find on my more careful reading, and some of the possiblilities, to be honest, scare the crap out of me.