This is the Bamel Podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Bellings.

Today we wrap up our discussion about Joshua and bridge the gap toward the Book of Judges

as we ponder the mission of God and his choice of real estate for his people.

Yeah, I think we can dive right in this discussion too. After this discussion we can go back to

grab a little review. I think the stage will be set well for reviewing after today's podcast,

at least once. But yeah, we want to wrap up our discussion about Joshua. Last podcast we spent

a whole bunch of time just kind of wrestling with the problems that arise in Joshua,

kind of the ground level, the nitty gritty, the murder, the genocide, whatever you want to call that,

the mass slaughter, the stories of conquest. What I want to do for this podcast, I want to step back,

I want to take like a 10,000 foot perspective. I want to ask the question of what is God up to?

Like the conquest isn't just about victory and triumph. That's how a lot of us read it from our

Western world of triumphal politics. The biblical narrative is more about location. The question is

why this chunk of dirt. Why does God work so hard to give his people this particular chunk of real

estate? That's what I want to pull apart today and see what the implications of that are. We do

have a presentation today. Got some pictures there for you, some maps. We got courtesy of

GTI, follow the rabbi.com, I should say not GTI, follow the rabbi.com. The first picture there,

the map that we have there is a, gives you a snapshot of the civilized world of the biblical era.

Basically, you have all the kingdoms that you're going to deal with in the biblical world represented

on this map. To the left there, you'll notice Rome. It's going to be quite a later date in the

biblical story, but Rome, you've got Greece over there. To the right, you can see kingdoms like a

Syria, Persia, Babylon coming over there to the right, to the bottom left. On the other side of

the Mediterranean Sea, you're going to see Egypt to the bottom right. You're going to see the Arabian

...