Joshua meets the 'Lord'

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Who or what exactly did Joshua meet before the great battle at the capture of Jericho?

The being says ‘I am the commander of Yahweh’s army’. Joshua prostrates himself, worships him and says: ‘What does my Lord ask of his servant?’
The being replies,‘Take off your sandals; the place where you stand is holy.’

So who was this person? Some protestant commentators say it is (1) Jesus Christ, others (2) St. Michael, leader of the Heavenly Host. (3) God the Father.

If (1) could Jesus exist bodily before he was born of Mary? Does he appear elsewhere in OT? Often the term ‘Lord’ is used in OT referring to what?

If (2) humans are not required to worship angels . The ground is not hallowed by an angel

(3) It was not Yahweh since he clearly said he is the Commander of Yahweh’s army(implying he is not Yahweh Himself.)

I find this little passage most puzzling esp. as later Joshua slaughters everyone & everything in Jericho in a terrible blood lust. Is it possible that Jesus ( as commander) woild have join in this genocidical activity? What is the RC understanding of this passage?
 
yes jesus was around befor he was born of the virgin mary he is even in the water that moses gets out of the rock
 
Are you being facetious or serious?

So Jesus (as commander) was quite happy to take part in the slaughter/genocide of all the Canaanites when the Israelites invaded Canaan - none except the treacherous whore & her family were saved? So at that time was Jesus a blood-thirsty ‘god’ like all other primitive gods. When did he (or our human concept of a god) change.

Frankly none of that makes sense. No wonder RCs have stayed clear of OT before VatII!
This is what makes OT Studies so nauseating and faith-destroying
 
Why does this bother you. Whether it was Jesus or not, if God ultimately commanded the death of the Jerochites (?), then Jesus commanded the death of the Jerochites. “I and My Father are One”.

Don’t ever be misled that the God of the Old Testament is somehow less merciful than Jesus.
 
One more thing: Remember that God is more worried about our Spiritual Souls than our mortal bodies (we should take a lesson from that). If He orders the wholesale slaughter causing someone’s untimely death, don’t you think He might grant some kind of mercy on their immortal soul?

With that in mind, think of the Canaanites as symbols of sin, for they worship other things than God (sort of like a sinner does, eh? Money? Power? Sexual deviancy? Illicit drugs?). In ordering the destruction of the Canaanites, God is asking the Jews to rid themselves of the things that will lead them away from God. In the Old Testament, especially Exodus, Joshua, and Judges, we see the Israelites allowing these pagan worshippers to live and ultimately it leads each time to idol worship among the Israelites.

In a similar way, if we allow these sinful things (money, power, sexual deviancy, illicit drugs) to hang around in our lives, then we are most often lead away from God.
 
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tobbias88:
Who or what exactly did Joshua meet before the great battle at the capture of Jericho?

The being says ‘I am the commander of Yahweh’s army’. Joshua prostrates himself, worships him and says: ‘What does my Lord ask of his servant?’
The being replies,‘Take off your sandals; the place where you stand is holy.’

So who was this person? Some protestant commentators say it is (1) Jesus Christ, others (2) St. Michael, leader of the Heavenly Host. (3) God the Father.

If (1) could Jesus exist bodily before he was born of Mary? Does he appear elsewhere in OT? Often the term ‘Lord’ is used in OT referring to what?

If (2) humans are not required to worship angels . The ground is not hallowed by an angel

(3) It was not Yahweh since he clearly said he is the Commander of Yahweh’s army(implying he is not Yahweh Himself.)

I find this little passage most puzzling esp. as later Joshua slaughters everyone & everything in Jericho in a terrible blood lust. Is it possible that Jesus ( as commander) woild have join in this genocidical activity? What is the RC understanding of this passage?
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It could be Jesus; it could be the arch-angel. If it was the latter it should be not a surprise for God often appeared with his angels (remember the three men who came to Abraham). It is possible that Joshua worshipped because God was there but the archangel that spoke to him. It could be Jesus, the Lamb of God or Commander of Yahweh’s army. There is nothing strange about that possibility considering the nature of the second person of the Trinity.

About the blood frenzy killing, looking at it now, it should be a foreshadow of the things to come – the victory over sin, Jericho being its symbol.

Non-Christians especially Muslims like to bring this up – that Jesus killed – a big contradiction to what he preached as a man. I can only look at this at the bigger picture. God is not governed by time and space; and that for Him life includes eternal life which matters more. If innocent children and women were killed in that battle, in fact it was better for them for they would be spared of the sins which they would certainly committed in such environment of their belief and be judged by them. Having to die earlier they would be spared of it and at the same time God’s intention to wipe sin was achieved.
 
Sorry but none of your answers are in the least convincing.
  1. It seems to be a justification for the Israelites’ savage behaviour - ‘God told me to do it.’ Surely the Nazis, Pol Pot and today the Taliban can use the same argument/excuse? The same belief justified the Inquisition & witch-burnings.
  2. OT God and NT God are not the same Being. If* today ‘God’ told you to sacrifice
    your own son or kill all your neighbors, would you do it? Would people or the law say it was okay, that you were sane?*
  3. The concept of a ‘Loving God’ appears seldom in OT; He is a jealous, vengeful Being. Whenever anyone slightly disobeys Him he goes ballistic! Often totally irrational behaviour.
  4. Many many actions (approved/ordered by God) in OT are totally unacceptable today.
  5. Our concept of God seems to have evolved as human civilization evolved.
  6. Today most people if they are honest admit that they fear - not love - God the Father & His justice. It is easy to to ‘love’ God the Son. As for the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to evoke any human emotion. Do we call it It or Him? How can you love a breeze, a gust of wind, etc? (Very very hazy concept.)
If I were forced to accept the concept of the OT God rather than that of NT, I doubt very much if I would be a Christian today,; let alone a Catholic.
 
I suppose that’s why Jesus came so that we are not under the old law but the new. And Jesus paid for it with his own blood. We need to know what happened to the old to aprreciate the new. The old is always there nor we can pretend that it had not happened. It happened because of the sin in the world that being brought by our first father. And how terible was the consequence of sin - even literal death. Before Jesus came, the ancient people were living in a state of Advent - waiting and hoping for the Messiah to appear.
 
tobbias88 said:
Are you being facetious or serious?

So Jesus (as commander) was quite happy to take part in the slaughter/genocide of all the Canaanites when the Israelites invaded Canaan - none except the treacherous whore & her family were saved? So at that time was Jesus a blood-thirsty ‘god’ like all other primitive gods. When did he (or our human concept of a god) change.

Frankly none of that makes sense. No wonder RCs have stayed clear of OT before VatII!
This is what makes OT Studies so nauseating and faith-destroying
Click to expand...
no at that time god was making a place for himself to arrive in the flesh and save your soul, so why would you be bothered at him clearing out the pagans so that even the pagans could be saved? God is love an desires the salvation of all, even the pagans.
 
tobbias88 said:
Sorry but none of your answers are in the least convincing.
  1. It seems to be a justification for the Israelites’ savage behaviour - ‘God told me to do it.’ Surely the Nazis, Pol Pot and today the Taliban can use the same argument/excuse? The same belief justified the Inquisition & witch-burnings.
Click to expand...
Yes, and the victims of these units felt as victimized as the canannites. The difference is, we know God instructed Joshua and them. We don’t know who told Hitler and those clowns. I pretty certain it wasn’t God.
tobbias88 said:
  1. OT God and NT God are not the same Being. If* today ‘God’ told you to sacrifice
    your own son or kill all your neighbors, would you do it? Would people or the law say it was okay, that you were sane?*
Click to expand...
I don’t really care what people or the law thought. People and the Law probably would have though Abraham was insane.

The point is, the God of the OT is the same God as the God as the NT. You’re walking with heretics if you think that God is different in the Old and the New.
tobbias88 said:
  1. The concept of a ‘Loving God’ appears seldom in OT; He is a jealous, vengeful Being. Whenever anyone slightly disobeys Him he goes ballistic! Often totally irrational behaviour.
Click to expand...
How else do you treat a young child than to show it that there are consequences.

Was Jesus very loving towards Peter in Matthew 16, “Get behind me Satan”? How was Jesus towards the Pharisees? “Hypocrites! Fools!”
tobbias88 said:
  1. Many many actions (approved/ordered by God) in OT are totally unacceptable today.
Click to expand...
But God didn’t act according to today’s standards, did He?
tobbias88 said:
  1. Our concept of God seems to have evolved as human civilization evolved.
Click to expand...
Ok. That’s irrelevant, other than the point that God treats us as we evolve. When we (as a human race) were a child, He taught us like a child. When we came to a fuller understanding, He taught us more.
tobbias88 said:
  1. Today most people if they are honest admit that they fear - not love - God the Father & His justice. It is easy to to ‘love’ God the Son. As for the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to evoke any human emotion. Do we call it It or Him? How can you love a breeze, a gust of wind, etc? (Very very hazy concept.)
Click to expand...
Its simply. The Holy Spirit gives us Life! It is the Holy Spirit working in us that gives us the desire to love God.
tobbias88 said:
If I were forced to accept the concept of the OT God rather than that of NT, I doubt very much if I would be a Christian today,; let alone a Catholic.
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You have not read the entire OT in its entirely, but have been subject to piece and parcel, I would hazard to guess. It’s hard to fully appreciate a movie if you’ve only seen a series of trailers, eh?
 
See if this helps:

Hard Sayings Of The Old Testament

To answer your original question (which I suspect was just a segue into your real topic, but I’ll address it anyway): many have speculated that the angel that appears in Joshua outside Jericho is a “pre-incarnate” appearance of Christ. Protestants are particularly attracted to this because they are uncomfortable with Joshua offering worship (or at least reverence) to an angel without, apparently, the angel objecting. If this angel is Jesus or otherwise God, they reason, then it must be OK (they similarly misinterpret a similar scene in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation for this reason).

The problem with this is that the plain meaning of the context of the passage does not support this theory. Simply speaking, Joshua is offering deep respect to someone he intuits is of great dignity – much like we Catholics do with the angels and saints.

In a allegorical or *typological *(having to to with biblical *types *where people, places or events in the OT foreshadow greater realities found in the NT), you might say that this can be considered or looked as at a foreshadowing of Christ. But that is clearly not the literal meaning that the writer of Joshua or his original readers were meant to take from this.
 
Thanks Fedelis,

That makes much more sense.

I believe Jesus (the Man) never ‘appeared’ on earth physically before his Incarnation.
In fact the Jews’ idea of a Messiah and therefore of God is completely outta whack with God the Father’s Divine Plan.

They expected a fearsome creature who would slaughter all round him & place the Israelites as top dogs & world leaders.When the Messiah finally arrives no one recoginizes him - because he does not fit the OT picture of what a God should be.

So in truth we can say the entire OT view of God is completely skewed. They were just fumbling in the dark. Not until God is revealed in the person of a loving, caring forgiving Jesus does humanity finally realize what God is. A loving caring Father, not a nit-picking Judge!

Unfortunately many present day Christians (and indeed Catholics) cling to the vengeful, blood-lust image of the OT. I bet if the truth be know God didn’t like all that slaughter of sacrficial lambs & bulls. What good is a dead rotting animal to God? Only a living breathing rejoicing creature can give joy to the Lord.
 
Fidelis said:
See if this helps:

Hard Sayings Of The Old Testament

To answer your original question (which I suspect was just a segue into your real topic, but I’ll address it anyway): many have speculated that the angel that appears in Joshua outside Jericho is a “pre-incarnate” appearance of Christ. Protestants are particularly attracted to this because they are uncomfortable with Joshua offering worship (or at least reverence) to an angel without, apparently, the angel objecting. If this angel is Jesus or otherwise God, they reason, then it must be OK (they similarly misinterpret a similar scene in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation for this reason).

The problem with this is that the plain meaning of the context of the passage does not support this theory. Simply speaking, Joshua is offering deep respect to someone he intuits is of great dignity – much like we Catholics do with the angels and saints.

In a allegorical or *typological *(having to to with biblical *types *where people, places or events in the OT foreshadow greater realities found in the NT), you might say that this can be considered or looked as at a foreshadowing of Christ. But that is clearly not the literal meaning that the writer of Joshua or his original readers were meant to take from this.
Click to expand...
As an aside, St. John of Damascus also used this story in his defense of Christian use of icons! He reasons that when Joshua prostrated before the angel, (1) he is not offering latreia to the angel; instead, Joshua’s act is merely veneration/dulia, and (2) he is not worshipping the messenger himself as God, but is rather giving homage to Him whose angel is but an ‘image’. 🙂

You must understand that there are different degrees of worship. First of all the full worship which we show to God, who alone is by nature worthy of worship. But, for the sake of God who is worshipful by nature, we honor and venerate his saints and servants. It is in this sense that Joshua and Daniel worshipped an angel, [Jos. 5:4, Dan. 8:16-17] and David worshipped the Lord’s holy places, when be said, “Let us go to the place where his feet have stood.” [Ps. 132.7] Similarly, his dwelling place is worshipped, as when all the people of Israel adored in the tabernacle, and they stood round the temple in Jerusalem gazing at it from all sides worshipping, as they still do. Similarly, we honor the rulers established by God, as when Jacob gave homage to Esau, his elder brother, [Gen. 33:3] and to Pharaoh, the divinely established ruler. [Gen. 47:7] And Joseph was worshipped by his brothers. [Gen. 50:18] That kind of veneration is based on honour, as in the case of Abraham and the sons of Emmor. [Gen. 23:7] So then, either do away with all worship, or accept it in all its different kinds.

===

Joshua saw the image of an angel, [Jos. 5:14] not as he is, for an angel is not visible to bodily eyes, and falling down he adored, and so did Daniel. Yet an angel is a creature, and servant, and minister of God, not God. And he worshipped the angel not as God, but as God’s ministering spirit. And shall not I make images of Christ’s friends? And shall I not worship them as the images of God’s friends, not as gods? Neither Joshua nor Daniel worshipped the angels they saw as gods. Neither do I worship the image as God, but through the image of the saints too, show my worship to God, because I honour His friends, and do them reverence. God did not unite Himself to the angelic nature, but to the human. He did not become an angel: He became a man in nature, and in truth. It is indeed Abraham’s seed which He embraces, not the angel’s. [Heb. 2:16]
 
tobbias88 said:
If (1) could Jesus exist bodily before he was born of Mary? Does he appear elsewhere in OT? Often the term ‘Lord’ is used in OT referring to what?

If (2) humans are not required to worship angels . The ground is not hallowed by an angel

(3) It was not Yahweh since he clearly said he is the Commander of Yahweh’s army(implying he is not Yahweh Himself.)
Click to expand...
Joshua’s vision is actually consistent with other angelic apparitions in the OT. There, the mal’ak YHWH (the messenger/angel of YHWH) relays the divine message exactly without any ‘thus sayeth the Lord’, talking as if they are God, and at times are even described as ‘God’ in the narrative! Here are some examples:

Genesis 16:7-13: An angel appears to Hagar, makes a promise that only God can make (where Hagar’s descendants will increase to the point “that they will be too numerous to count”) and speaks on his own without any prefacing. Hagar then gives “a name to YHWH who spoke to her”: El-roi (God of my seeing), and asks herself: “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Genesis 22:9-18: The angel that stops Abraham at the last moment from sacrificing Isaac speaks for God in the first person and swears by himself, saying “YHWH” for his name.
Exodus 3: Verse 2 mentions that “the angel of YHWH appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush”, yet the angel also speaks in the first person, tells Moses to remove his sandals, and says Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I am that I am) for his name. Later in the narrative, the speaker is no longer referred as an angel but is spoken about as if he is God Himself!
Judges 2:1-5: The angel that went up from Gilgal to Bokim also talks as if he is God: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers…”
Judges 13: An angel appears to Manoah and his wife foretelling them about Samson’s birth. Later in the story, the wife fears they will die because they have seen God.
I find this little passage most puzzling esp. as later Joshua slaughters everyone & everything in Jericho in a terrible blood lust. Is it possible that Jesus ( as commander) woild have join in this genocidical activity? What is the RC understanding of this passage?
Click to expand...
This rather long article might give you some good insight on the “God of mercy allowing the slaughter of the Canaanites” ‘problem’.
 
Patrick.
Thank you for referring me to that (long) article. It certainly throws a different light on some of the more simplistic readings of the story. A long long time frame was involved.

If as you say ‘sexaul deviation & depravity’ were some of the keys in triggering God’s judgement in these matters, then it looks like the West (US & Europe) who have legalized/officially approved such behaviour is asking for trouble…big time! Presumably this is because such sexual activity so upsets the Natural Order & harmonious balance of things.
 
I’ve got to say, I don’t think it’s difficult at all for anyone to love God the Father who has grown up with a good father (or mother for that matter) who loved them most dearly but at the same time

a) made them do things they didn’t like, such as brushing teeth, eating vegetables, getting painful vaccination needles and enduring the pain of braces; and

b) punished that child at times when it did wrong

As St Paul says, ‘God chastises those whom He loves’ - just as a good parent should do on occasion. His act of chastising the Canaanites was surely an act of love for their immortal souls and for those of the Israelites.

As for the God of the OT not being loving - His love gleams through its pages, starting right from the fact of His creation of Eve purely so Adam wouldn’t be lonely. It goes through to His loving repsonse to their sin - instead of thundering forth against them He first asks them what they’ve done, giving them the chance to repent, and only punishing them when they choose instead to blame each other and the serpent.

His love shows forth in His salvation of the nation of Israel from slavery, even giving them quail when they asked ungratefully for meat, already having sufficient food in the manna. And His sparing of them after they worship the Golden Calf. His gracious granting of their request for a king when they ungratefully reject His chosen judges. His gracious forgiveness of David after his heinous sins.

It shows forth especially in the way in which, time and time again, the people of Israel turn from Him to worship false Gods and time and time again He forgives them for their unfaithfulness and restores them to their land.
 
"“I shall give you another testimony, my friends,” said I, “from the Scriptures, that God begat before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave (Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves…Listen, therefore, to the following from the book of Joshua, that what I say may become manifest to you; it is this: ‘And it came to pass, when Joshua was near Jericho, he lifted up his eyes, and sees a man standing over against him. And Joshua approached to Him, and said, Are you for us, or for our adversaries? And He said to him, I am Captain of the Lord’s host: now have I come. And Joshua fell on his face on the ground, and said to Him, Lord, what do You command Your servant? And the Lord’s Captain says to Joshua, Loose the shoes off your feet; for the place whereon you stand is holy ground. And Jericho was shut up and fortified, and no one went out of it. And the Lord said to Joshua, Behold, I give into your hand Jericho, and its king, [and] its mighty men.’ “””–St Justin the Martyr c AD 110 Dialogue with Trypho Chapter 61

However other did think the angel was just Michael
 
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