"There Is No Chronological Order in the Torah": An Axiom for Understanding the Book of Joshua (2008)

INTRODUCTION The rabbinic axiom that is no chronological order in the Torah [en mukdam u-me'uhar ba-Torah] (1) can be an effective tool for revealing the purposes of prophetic books. One always must ask why a narrator would deviate from the historical order. The deviations from the chronological sequence of events in the Book of Joshua are particularly instructive for unlocking the inner meanings of the Book. In this essay, we will consider some of the more significant departures from the historical sequence of events, and how they help elucidate the narrator's purposes. CHAPTERS 1-2 The Book of Joshua begins with God's encouragement and exhortation to Joshua (1:1-9), followed by Joshua's preparing the nation to cross the Jordan. He addressed the officials of the nation: 'Go through the camp and charge the people thus: Get provisions ready, for in three days' time you are to cross the Jordan ...' (v. 11). He then exhorted the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh to fulfill their promise to help their brethren in the conquest (vv. 1218). Chapters 3-6 then resume the action from Chapter 1: Three days later, the officials went through the camp and charged the people ... (3:2-3). Joshua 2, which describes Joshua's sending two spies to scout Jericho and their encounter with Rahab, does not seem to fit into its surrounding context. It interrupts the flow of the narrative. The chronology militates against the position of this chapter within the framework of Chapters 1-6. Chapter 1:10-11 has Joshua informing the elders that they will cross the Jordan in three days, and 3:1-5 continues this point of reference. Meanwhile, the spies of Chapter 2 needed an extra day to return--they spent one day in Jericho, and then hid three more days before returning to the camp: She said to them, 'Make for the hills, so that the pursuers may not come upon you. Stay there in hiding three days, until the pursuers return; then go your way' (2:16). The spies heeded Rahab's advice and hid for three days before returning to the camp (2:22). If this story were in chronological order, they should have found Joshua and the nation on the west bank of the Jordan having already crossed the day before. (2) Addressing the chronological problem, Ralbag (on 1:10-11) suggests that Rahab's telling the spies, 'Stay there in hiding three days' means 'stay there until the third day.' Alternatively, Yehudah Kiel suggests that in three days' time (1:11) could mean 'in three more days,' thus referring to the fourth day. From this point of view, the crossing of the Jordan took place on day four, shortly after the spies had returned. (3) A number of commentators, though, do not reconcile the order of events with the narrative sequence. Instead, they assert that Joshua sent the spies prior to Chapter 1. (4) Assuming that Chapters 1 and 2 are not in chronological sequence, what might have been the narrator's reasons to favor a literary over an historical ordering? One might ascertain a negative dimension in this literary sequence. Moses opened Deuteronomy with a condemnation of the episode with the spies: 'I said to you, You have come to the hill country of the Amorites which the Lord our God is giving to us. See, the Lord your God has placed the land at your disposal. Go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. Fear not and be not dismayed. Then all of you came to me and said, Let us send men ahead to reconnoiter the land for us and bring back word on the route we shall follow and the cities we shall come to' (Deut. 1:20-22). Moses encouraged the people to enter the Promised Land, but the people demonstrated their lack of faith by sending spies to scout the land. Similarly, and surprisingly, God had encouraged Joshua, do not be terrified nor dismayed (1:9), but he too sent spies anyway. (5) If the events of Chapter 2 in fact occurred before Chapter 1, then Joshua was taking an initiative by sending spies and was not ignoring God's explicit encouragement. …