WORD STUDY – BE STRONG חזק

Joshua 1:18: “Whosoever he be that doth rebel against thy commandment, and will not harken unto thy words in all that thou commandmandest him, he shall be put to death, only be strong and of good courage.

There is an old Peanuts comic strip where Snoopy is looking so forlorn sitting out in a snow storm freezing. Lucy and Linus are talking to each other and saying: “Look at poor Snoopy, he sure needs some cheering up.” “Yes, let’s cheer him up.” So they walk over to Snoopy and say: “Be of good cheer, Snoopy.” “Yes, be of good cheer.” They walk away leaving Snoopy with a questioning look on his face.

After crossing the Jordan River, the first major battle for Israel is to go against the walled city of Jericho. Their battle plan would not pass our generals in the Pentagon. They must gather in full battle array, march up to the city and then march around the city once and go home. They are to do this for seven days and on the seventh day they have to march around the city seven times. We know from the spies report that the people of Jericho are terrified over the approach of the Israelite army. Terrified people do desperate things. Here the army of Israel is positioning themselves within firing range of arrows, rocks and those big buckets filled with hot oatmeal and cream wheat that they dump on their enemies like you see in those phony movies. In Joshua 1:18 we find that the soldiers must obey or they will get their head lopped off. Yet, what Joshua is commanding them to do is almost certain death as well. Still, each day they marched around the city and return without engaging in battle and not even pulling any arrows out of their kester, they find that their faith in God has been notched up a few more degrees until the last day where their faith has been so strengthened that they just need to shout and the walls come tumbling down.

Such a process of building one’s faith is not exactly my dream date. It seems like sometimes God will wait until that final moment when the furniture is loaded on the truck and then God finally says to the driver, “Ok you can put it back now.” I mean that’s hard on your heart.

Four times in Joshua chapter one are the children of Israel commanded to be strong and of good courage. To be honest when I find myself marching around Jericho I am neither strong nor of good courage, no matter how hard I try to be and no matter how many people exhort me to be strong and of good courage. If just one more person tells me to be strong and of good courage, they are going to have to find a little of that strongness and courage for themselves, because I’m going to overhaul their engine. And worst yet, I seem to have little choice because I am marching around Jericho with the sword of either you’re with Me or against Me sticking out of my back.

But you see, God is not just telling us to be strong and of good courage, He has built within those words themselves how we are going to be strong and of good courage. Note the word for strong is chazak. This strength is a strength that comes from binding oneself to something. The combination of the Chet and Zayin is quite unusual. It is expressing both a joining with God and an involvement with God. The Qof at the end indicates that this binding process is a purifying process. God has to strip us of all our trust in ourselves so the world can see that our trust is in God alone. It is like stripping off a bandage, you know – ouch! The word for courage is ‘emas which also means strength, but this is a strength in resolution. This is being firm in one’s position. The word is spelled Alpeh, Mem Sade which expresses the idea that this courage comes from humbling yourself to the revealed Word of God and being resolute in it. Note in 1:9 where we learn that the revealed Word of God in this case is that He will be with us wheverever we go. If we are firmly planted in that Word, we will have that courage to face our Jerichos.

We may have to march around our Jericho seven times or more, all the while waiting for that bucket of hot oatmeal to drop on our heads, but each time we march around and each time we walk away our faith will be notched up a little higher until we have reached the point of faith that we can simply shout and the walls will come a tumbling down.

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