DIVINE PRESENCE AMID VIOLENCE
Contextualizing the Book of Joshua
By Walter Brueggemann. Paternoster. 82 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-84227-660-0
‘Tomorrow I shall hand them over, slain, to Israel; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots.’ Israel obeyed, killed the Hazorites, destroyed their hardware and burnt their town (Joshua 11).
In this chapter, Breuggemann sees downtrodden Israelites overthrowing their oppressor at divine command, so disclosing ‘a God who will invert the historical process and give land to the landless’ (p.62), bringing a challenge today that ‘reliance on arms cannot secure against God’s force for life’ (p.65). He observes that several passages show ‘God’s hostility to horses and chariots, which are monarchic instruments of domination’ (p.43). But Brueggemann is primarily concerned to answer the question, ‘Does God mandate violence?’ (p.39). Here his relativistic approach will be less acceptable to readers of EN (e.g. ‘there is no single meaning for any text’, p.ix). Where he asserts biblical texts present a certain view of reality which is in dispute with other versions, evangelicals affirm that the biblical version is the true one.
