Friday, January 13, 2012

Joshua 12 One, One, One, One....

It's too early in the morning for me to confronted by strange literary devices or I should probably call them numerical devices.  I don't know... I have never seen such a way of counting in literature:  one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one = thirty-one.  It's just weird!  What was wrong with using one, two, three, four... and, actually counting those kings for us?  The translation I am using has the "one's" all lined up in a column after the names of the kings.  My eyesight is not so good and my mind works a bit slower at 5 a.m. so it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what all those "one's" were doing all lined up like that that.  There must have been a point to the way the number of kings conquered by Joshua is presented to us.  But, I don't get it! 

Yesterday, our Bible Study Group was working on Matthew 1.  There were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the deporation to Babylon, and 14 generations from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah.  But, they did not number or count each ancestor, you have to do that on your own if you want to check that they are right (I haven't really figured that one out, either.  Go ahead and try putting the number one by each name in Matthew 1 - see how many ones you end up with)
 
Today... we are basically reminded of the two kings who are conquered on the east of the Jordan by Moses for the 1-1/2 tribes and of the list of 31 kings on the west of the Jordan by Joshua who are conquered for the other 10-1/2 tribes.
 
The best think I can say about this chapter is that I think that at least for the time being, it signals an end to the killing and conquering.  Tomorrow we begin checking out the property descriptions of the various tribes.

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