Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. Today, we're reading Joshua 9, which begs some questions about decision-making and deception.

The chapter starts off with an acknowledgement that the Israelites' reputation was spreading.

Remember, they were moving

into the promised land, but people were already living there. The Israelite army, under Joshua's

leadership, had to drive out those groups, and news of their arrival was spreading amongst

the inhabitants. Joshua 9, verses 1 through 2 read, Now when all the kings west of the Jordan heard about these things,

these things being that AI was destroyed,

the kings in the hill country, in the western foothills,

and along the entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Lebanon,

the kings of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Parasites, Hivites, and Jebusites,

they came together to wage war against

Joshua and Israel. One commentator puts it like this. Israel's success led several

Canaanites to ally against God's people. While this alliance was taking shape, the Gibionites

initiated a different tactic. Until now in Joshua, Israel had

chosen its military targets, but now others defined their military objectives. The following chapters

introduced the transition from a victorious people of God whose occupation of the land could

have been the relatively simple matter of defeating those already discouraged,

two, an unending history of battle, bloodshed, and idolatry that would haunt Israel throughout its

history. As in the opening chapters of Genesis, so also in the opening chapters of Israel's

dwelling in the promised land, a single transgression has cosmic ramifications. To put that in my own words,

Aiken's sin, when he took the items and hid them in his tent, when Aiken disobeyed God, his actions

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