Joshua 10:1-5 – Think carefully before we act

We are told that Gibeon was not a small city. It was, in fact, greater than the city of Ai and had great warriors. Hence, the coalition of five kings, namely Adoni-Zedek of Jerusalem, Hoham of Hebron, Piram of Jarmuth, Japhia of Lachish and Debir of Eglon, regarded Gibeon as a traitor city. Her defection to Israel stirred up animosity from these five kings. To them, they had lost a powerful ally. In chapter 9 we saw how it all happened. The Gibeonites through deceptive means duped Joshua into signing a peace treaty with them. The mistake Joshua made was that he was too hasty to make a pact with Gibeon, without checking the facts the Gibeonites gave to him concerning where they came from. The impression they gave to Joshua was that they came from a faraway country when in fact they were located nearby. The lesson for our spiritual journey is that we should always make sure before we make an important decision. Always check with God’s Word to make sure we don’t violate any instruction given by the Lord. When we are uncertain of God’s will, it would do us no harm to wait. It is better to err and being right with our delay, than to make a serious error in timing by jumping into something that will burden us needlessly for life.

Joshua 10:1-5 give us an account of the five kings of Canaan forming a coalition force to come against Gibeon because of her peace treaty with Israel. In Adoni-Zedek, the king of Jerusalem, we see a person of strong influence. Here we learn that a person with character and charisma can lead others into an irrational and needless conflict. It behooves us to be careful who we are being influenced by in our journey with God. However, the one positive thing we learn from the foolish actions of this coalition of the kings is that they had unwittingly played into the hand of Joshua. For instead of fighting five times to defeat five enemies, he could now finish all five off in one battle.

But from Israel, we learn what burden one will need to bear by making one wrong move in life, by wrongly entering into a pact with the Gibeonites, they now had to fight needless battles that they could avoid. For they had to make good their promise to help the Gibeonites because they were their allies. There is a lesson here. If we enter into a needless alliance, we have adopted an excess baggage. And we may have to bear that burden for life. Hence, be careful with the decision we make so that we will not have to bear a burden for the rest of life.