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  • “Israel Served the Lord”: The Book of Joshua as Paradoxical Portrait of Faithful Israel by Rachel M. Billings
  • Shaina Trapedo
Rachel M. Billings, “Israel Served the Lord”: The Book of Joshua as Paradoxical Portrait of Faithful Israel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2013) 192 pp.

Rachel M. Billings’s impressively composed and focused book, “Israel Served the Lord”: The Book of Joshua as a Paradoxical Portrait of Faithful Israel, is a valuable addition to the University of Notre Dame Press’s Reading the Scriptures series, as it offers a learned study of a significant yet understudied text from the Hebraic canon. Based on her Harvard dissertation written for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization, Billings’s monograph takes a multidisciplinary approach and will be of interest to scholars of biblical studies, ancient languages, early Jewish civilization, and Ancient Near Eastern history and culture. Unlike the majority of critical readings of the Book of Joshua from the past century—which have either treated segments of the text or approached Joshua as an “informative historical relic” of Deuteronomistic History—Billings aims to read Joshua as a holistic literary composition without relegating the its tensions and ambiguities to acts of exaggeration, oversight, or irony by the redactor. Billings’s inquiry arises from a wholesale declaration made toward the end of the Book of Joshua: Israel “served the Lord during all the days of Joshua” (24.31). Early incidents in the narrative (including the population’s mass circumcision, their supernatural crossing of the Jordan, and their miraculous victory in Jericho) portray the first generation to enter the land as committed to YHWH through the covenant that constitutes their national existence. However, Billings’s study follows a series of “moral dilemmas” in the story that depict the Israelites struggling to fulfill their Deuteronomic obligations and acting tribally rather than cohesively as a chosen people. How, asks Billings, are we to understand the text’s varying accounts of failures and civil disputes in light of its affirmative statements, purposeful sequence, and rhetorical objective?

Billings presents her analysis in four tightly focused chapters framed by an informative introduction that considers Joshua’s scholarly reception within Deuteronomistic History and a concise yet compelling conclusion. In chapter 1 Billings offers her theoretical framework and argues for reading the compendiary statement of verse 24.31 as a “hermeneutical key” that, instead of whitewashing Israel’s indiscretions, challenges the reader to view moments of seeming failure as didactic occasions meant to expand the notion of what faithful service to YHWH truly entails. Through a series of careful close-readings, Billings uses the text’s summary claim that “Israel served the Lord” as a critical spade to excavate the Israelites’ expedition into the “unfamiliar territory of both land and Torah.”

In chapter 2 Billings examines two of the four major episodes in the text in which Israel acts questionably in relation to YHWH’s commands: the account of the spies oath to Rahab (Josh. 2) and Achan’s violation of the herem decree which forbids taking the spoils of Jericho (Josh 7). While these stories are often read together, Billings pushes for a deeper consideration of the text’s narrative structure, vocabulary, and variety of conventions in order to demonstrate the possibility of “fidelity without and treachery within” reflected in the actions of the Canaanite woman who facilities Israel’s triumph and the Israelite who betrays his God and his people. While Israel’s inheritance of the land remains [End Page 208] contingent on their collective faithfulness, Billings argues that these juxtaposed stories affirm that YHWH not only works through unexpected channels to keep His promises, but also affords His people room for accommodation, error, and repentance within the scope of divine service. After Moses’s death, the Jewish people continue to rely on written and verbal instruction from the Lord as a guide for daily living. Yet as the fledgling nation encounters unprecedented situations in the Promised Land, a heavenly voice is not always offered to resolve conflicts between their Deuteronomic obligations and lived experience. Whereas YHWH plays a vocal role in in the case of Achan’s sin (identifying the violation and prescribing the...

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