Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 169:675 (Jul 2012)
Article: The Conquest Of Jericho: A Narrative Paradigm For Theocratic Policy?
Author: Eugene H. Merrill

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BSac 169:675 (July-September 2012) p. 304

The Conquest Of Jericho: A Narrative Paradigm For Theocratic Policy?

Eugene H. Merrill

Eugene H. Merrill is Distinguished Professor of Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

The purpose of this article is not to undertake traditional literary/compositional analyses of the conquest of Jericho (and Ai) narratives, something that has been done well by others.1 Rather, its purpose is to “work backward,” that is, to view these accounts not just as prime examples from Israel’s early history of the nature of warfare sanctioned by Yahweh, nor as paradigmatic models as to how it should be waged in the future.2 Instead

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the article is concerned with the theological underpinning of these kinds of conflicts and their traceable roots to the very beginning of divine-human relationship. The Jericho/Ai narrative thus becomes from this perspective another—certainly the fullest and most inclusive—in a long line of examples of the exercising of God’s sovereignty over rebellious peoples and nations from creation onward to eschatological finality. The criteria for “holy war” suggested by von Rad in his seminal work on the subject3 may most fully be found in the Jericho account, but their elemental rudiments exist in narratives long preceding the Conquest, thus providing both historical and theological precedents as well as features of literary form that became characteristic of the telling of such stories as the one that is the subject of this inquiry (Josh. 3:1-7:26).4

The “Primeval” Narratives

This article need not delve into matters of the chronology and historicity of biblical narratives in the pre-Mosaic period.5 In line with current approaches to narrative literature, these will be examined as they exist, that is, as texts that make certain claims and that in their canonical settings reveal authorial and/or compositional

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intentionality.6 Whatever else one may say of them, they are parts of a larger historical and theological narrative driven by God’s soteriological response to the human condition.

The Creation Narrative (Gen. 1-3)

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