The Book of Joshua: Are you for us or against us?

This painting attempts to compress and fuse many of the key events in the twenty four chapters of the Book of Joshua into one unified multi-layered image. The key character, Joshua, the fierce warrior, political leader and lawgiver is portrayed on the right, atop a tree stump overlooking the Jordan River, brandishing swords in both hands. Moses has just taken the contentious Israelites to the very edge of the Promised Land. He appoints Joshua, his loyal servant, as successor, and is then enveloped, embraced, and entombed within the misty mystical mountain of God.

It is now up to Joshua to bring God’s promise to fruition; to completely conquer the land, to vanquish all of its inhabitants, and to divide and settle the land amongst the Israelites as promised by God to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If this is not to occur successfully, the miracles that had occurred in Egypt, the Exodus, the parting of the Red Sea, the receiving of the Torah, all would be in vain. The wandering anonymous Semitic tribes would perish in the desert, stateless and homeless, an embarrassment to themselves and to God. They along with their Ten Commandments and God would become a forgotten buried footnote, crushed, scattered and ultimately erased by the sand dunes and desert winds of history. And it would all be the fault of Joshua, the novice leader, the Moses wannabe. Certainly these are the thoughts and concerns weighing on Joshua’s mind and shoulders as he peers into the cascading Jordon River which he must cross.

After crossing the river in chapter V: 13-15, Joshua lifts his eyes and sees a man standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand. Joshua goes up to him and says “Are you for us or against us?” The man answers “I am the Prince of God’s army, I have just now arrived. Joshua then asks him what he has come to say. The Prince answers him “take off your shoes for this ground is holy”. There is no further advice. Joshua will have to make it up as he goes along.

This painting portrays this Prince of God, at the bottom of the painting, as none other than Joshua himself. The warrior angel that Joshua is addressing is his own mirror image summoned forth from the inner depths of his psyche which is projected to, and then reflected back at him, reverberating within the shimmering, rippling Jordanian waters. It is Joshua who is the true prince and leader of God’s army, and he’d better be up for the task that lies before him in the Holy Land. If not, the consequences of defeat are too horrible to bear. This is quite akin to Jacob wrestling with the angel in his dreams who represents the mirror image of himself i.e. Esau, on the brink of battle. The question that Joshua asks the angel/ himself, “Are you with us or against us”, forms the crux of this book, and in fact summarizes most of the book’s military escapades. It is the question every soldier asks himself about every human encounter in this and all other battlefields throughout history. These words are written on Joshua’s belt. The mirror image of these words is written on the angel’s/mirror image’s belt.

Chronologically, prior to crossing the Jordon, two Israelite spies are sent over. They find refuge with the prostitute Rahav who conveys to them the cities’ fear of the Israelites. She hides them on the roof of her home and then lets them escape down a rope through a window. To the left of this painting Rahav is portrayed as an anthropomorphized human castle. One of her red braids is used as the rope to let the two spies, portrayed in the painting, escape in the midst of the night. In exchange for her loyalty, she brokers her own and her family’s salvation from the ensuing Israelite onslaught. It is this same red rope which she must dangle from her window as a sign to the Israelites that the occupants of this dwelling should not be killed. Considering her profession, a red rope hanging out her window would not attract out of the ordinary attention. The Midrash maintains that Rahav later became Joshua’s wife, and that their union led to the eventual birth of the prophet Jeremiah. There does not appear to be any foundation for this in the text proper. On the other hand, it does not make sense that Joshua’s wife and family would not be mentioned, and even less sense that he in fact didn’t have a wife. The Midrash attempts to fill this obvious lacuna.

After the successful spying of the land, the Israelites prepare to cross the Jordan River.

This is to be no less momentous a crossing then the parting of the Red Sea. In order to part the waters, Joshua instructs the Priests, the Cohanim, to carry the Ark of the Covenant. As soon as they place their feet on the stones within the Jordan River, it overflows and the waters that came down from above stand up in one column, and the waters that came down are completely cut off, allowing all the Israelites to cross. Portrayed in the relative center of this painting is the Ark of the Covenant, its top adorned with male and female crouching cherubim whose fluttering wings create oases of dry land paths amidst a waterfall, consistent with the description of the water standing like walls. Both the cherubim and the emerging land masses are bright yellow symbolizing divine light directing the Israelites on their proper path. Crossing the Jordan in the painting are four regiments of soldiers (four for the tetragramaton) that are crossing east, northeast and southeast. This also symbolizes the forty thousand troops mentioned. They are all brandishing their fierce swords. The multiple battalions and directions of their crossing are symbolic of their conquering the entire breadth of the land.

As the waters are being parted by the power of God emanating through the cherubim of the ark, the Priests, are elevating the ark, and the swordfish, dressed in battle uniform are also joining in this miraculous assault, representing that all of nature is participating in God’s plan.

After the successful crossing of the Jordan, Joshua circumcises all the Israelites, creating a mountain of foreskins. The place was called Gilgal, because God rolled away (Galah) the shame of being enslaved in Egypt. This mountain of bloody foreskins is surreptitiously portrayed to the right of Rahav in this painting.

After crossing of the Jordan, Joshua asks the princes of all twelve tribes to each carry one of the twelve stones from the Jordan upon which the Priest’s feet were standing and to place them on dry land. I presume that six priests were carrying the ark (2 feet/Priest X 6 Priests = 12 stones). The twelve stones carried by the twelve princes are portrayed surrounding the feet of Rahav in this painting. These stones were to serve as a remembrance of the miracle for future generations just as Matzah serves as a remembrance for the Exodus. To further emphasize and temporally unite these miracles, the Israelites at this point celebrate Passover.

The first city to be conquered was Jericho. For God to miraculously conquer Jericho, seven priests surround the city’s walls every day for seven days. Included in this entourage was the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day the Priests blow their ram’s horns and the walls fall down. This is portrayed in this painting beneath the sky, and above the waters.

After the walls are toppled, the Israelites enter the city, and upon God’s command, kill every man woman, child, and beast, then set it aflame. Portrayed in the painting are a series of bloodied corpses of men and women surrounded by bloodied crumbling walls, and the city partially aflame. This city also symbolizes the multiple cities throughout the land that were similarly defeated throughout the book of Joshua.

The other great miracle portrayed in this painting is Joshua’s mighty control over nature. To defeat the Amorites Joshua commands the sun to remain still (Dome, in Hebrew i.e. be silent, be red) in Gibeon and the moon to remain still in the Valley of Ayalon. Portrayed in this painting on the right side is the sun remaining still. In order to accomplish this, the forces of God, symbolized by hands, are fiercely preventing the sun from rotating, defying the natural laws of physics and gravity. The emanating ripples surrounding the sun represent the vibrant yet failed attempts of the sun to rotate along its natural axis. The sun is portrayed anthropomorphically with its face and eyes covered for its own good so as not to witness the awesome actions occurring up in heaven or down on earth. Of course, the sun manages to sneak a peek. Likewise the moon on the left is also frozen in the sky. The blue hands of heaven are covering the anthropomorphized moon’s face. The struggling reverberations of the sun and moon on opposite sides of the sky are colliding and clashing with each other in the center.

At the beginning of the book, God repeatedly tells Joshua “Chazak veamatz”, “be strengthened and have courage”. These words are written on the two swordfish above the angel. Clearly the super human task of wholesale conquest and land settling requires extreme physical strength and courage. The battles as outlined in the text were certainly not for the faint of heart, body or spirit. It took no small measure of callousness and fanciful reinterpretation of “thou shalt not kill” to achieve military success. War never has been for the weak of heart. Unfortunately compassion is not the human trait required to win the land, but rather brute force and will power, the qualities every single people have mustered from time immemorial to wrest and claim every inch of land ever won for themselves throughout the annals of mankind.

Having accomplished his mission, in the end, Joshua dies humbly and is buried in his tribal Ephraimite land not far away from his ancestor Joseph who is buried in the land of Israel as he requested on his death bed. The burial of Joshua alongside Joseph seamlessly links early Israelite patriarchal history with the resettlement and conquest of Israel in the time of Joshua.