#30 JOSHUA: LIKE A BIBLICAL RAMBO
Joshua, the first commander-in-chief of Israel, was the son of Nun and a member of the tribe of Ephraim. Born in Egypt, he was selected by Moses when they were still in Sinai as his first chief of security.
Joshua had already showed promise and based on his success in defeating the Amalekites, Moses chose him to succeed him as the leader. He wanted Joshua to guide the Israelites from Sinai into the Promised Land, conquer the new country and divide it amongst the twelve tribes. The sixth book of the Bible describing the Hebrews’ two hundred year conquest of Canaan is called after him. Joshua is remembered most for his first successful battle in Canaan, a well-planned and spectacular siege of the fortress at Jericho.
This life reintroduces an important line of St Germain whose spiritual DNA he relies on whenever the toughest jobs on Earth have to be done.
Conversation with the Gatekeeper
“Gatekeeper, why did Moses anoint Joshua as his successor and not Aaron or one of his own sons?”
“Aaron, his brother, could be a man of dubious judgement as we have seen with the Golden Calf. Joshua, on the other hand, although not a relative of Moses, was his Prime Minister and his most able administrator. He was a graceful swordsman, a brilliant engineer, his most trusted advisor who enforced and translated the law for Moses. Joshua was younger than Moses by forty years, a stocky, nuggetty man, five foot six tall with a broad chest, strong arms, sturdy legs, iron grey hair (he had been grey since his twenties) and a neatly trimmed beard that was rather curly. He was a very square man, and with his grey eyes he looked like an early Roman. He was simply the best there was, infinitely better than any of Moses’ sons.”
“Moses sent many spies ahead into Canaan to reconnoitre the land and Joshua was one of them. Where did he send him?”
“The Hebrews were still camped in Sinai when Joshua left via the Gaza Strip striking out for Jaffa on the coast. He travelled alone and lived off the land as an itinerant herdsman. Later he would skirt the Negev Desert and see a mountain at the end of a rift valley, which was perfect for a fort. Joshua was the first Hebrew to see the site of Jerusalem. He saw the very beautiful forest in the Jordan Valley and was overwhelmed by its grandeur. Over the next twenty-two and a half months that he was away, Joshua collected the intelligence Moses needed to begin the invasion of Canaan.”
“Which began with the crossing of the flooded Jordan didn’t it? Carrying the Ark of the Covenant ahead of them, the Israelites started to cross the flooded river. Joshua stood the Ark in the middle of the river and the gushing waters stopped so all the people could cross. Is that really how it happened?”
“Once the Ark of the Covenant was positioned in the centre of the Jordan, the waters went down in a day. But, of course, there’s a story behind it! Joshua had sent a party upstream to divert the Jordan into a tributary, a canal. He put a floodgate in first to allow the Ark to advance and then built floodgates into the tributary. When he opened the floodgates and the waters fell in the Jordan and he had created a miracle. They took five days to cross and it allowed him to increase his hold over his people as a stronger, less contradictable leader and fill the power vacuum left when Moses died. A simple feat for a man who in a previous life had designed and built a pyramid as…”
“… It has to be Imhotep!”
“Yes, Imhotep!”
“How many Hebrews crossed the Jordan? You said three hundred thousand left Egypt. How many were left?”
“There were forty thousand active males out of a total population of two hundred and two thousand. They lost the older and infirm and the extreme conditions of life reduced the fertility of both the men and the women. They picked up some desert-dwelling hill people, Moabs, and collected them.”
“Why was it necessary for the Israelites to fight the Canaanites? Weren’t they too descendants of Abraham, like the Moabs?”
“It was the Canaanites’ land and it was necessary to dispossess them of it. They were a Semitic people, a sub-stream of the Indo Aryans, who came from the Asian steppes. Go to Afghanistan today and you will see what they looked like. ome Canaanites were Abraham’s descendants but whoever they were, they weren’t about to give up their land easily.”
“We know Joshua for his commanding role in the battle of Jericho when the walls of the city came tumbling down. What did the city look like then?”
“Jericho was a walled city of sandstone. The walls were only eight feet high built to keep out bandits. You wouldn’t call it a major fortification. It acted as a refuge for neighbouring tribes camping on the hillsides and tilling the fields if there was an attack. The Egyptians raided it regularly for plunder and for slaves to work in their mines in Sinai and Gaza. Its population was about a thousand people, big for then, small for now. The walls were an effective barrier when two to three hundred of their men defended Jericho against the raiding parties of slavers.”
“Joshua claimed God spoke to him and told him how to conquer Jericho. Who really spoke to Joshua to give him the battle plan?”
“No one in the literal sense. The battle plan was his own inspiration. Joshua copied Moses; to ensure his own arguments were accepted he claimed they were God-inspired. When you look at this another way, they were God-inspired. Joshua’s governing energy was St Germain and through his prayer and contemplation, St Germain, as an aspect of God, and Joshua’s higher self was able to inspire him.”
“Why were his soldiers told to circle the city for six days with priests blowing ram’s horns? Were the walls unstable to vibration or was there an earthquake on the seventh day when they were to shout together so the walls would collapse?”
“Joshua’s strategy was to make the army of Israelites seem bigger than it was to destroy any hope of resistance. It was not an organised procession, the men came and went and it created the effect that there were far more than there were. The horns were war trumpets, which sent the message ‘we’re bigger than you’. This was psychological warfare.”
“I presume his tactics were effective?”
“The people panicked and fathers buried their daughters to save them from rape and capture. They didn’t have enough water or food because they couldn’t risk sneaking out for supplies. When the assault came on the seventh day there was almost no resistance. The Israelite losses were very small. The assault on the city and the street fighting only took four to five hours. Joshua then offered everyone the right to join them, he enslaved the fitter, younger men, took several hundred as free citizens, particularly women and children. They left the ill, the old and the wounded and pulled the walls down before they burned the city. At the end of the battle, Jericho had five Israelites put to death who were involved in attempting rape after he had expressly forbidden it.”
“How accurate is the biblical account? Was any of the Book of Joshua written by him?”
“At least eighty-five percent of it is true. It was a bare bones account written by a scribed called Ephraim, sixty years later. He assumed people would know the details from their family storytelling. Ephraim based his account on the description of eyewitnesses. It would be edited and embellished two hundred years later but Joshua had no part in writing it.”
“About when was the Battle of Jericho?”
“You know I hate dates! You have so many calendars the Hebrew, the Julian, the Gregorian, the Chinese, the Mayan… my helpers say it was about 1462BC.”
“Was Joshua a great leader? Was he charismatic?”
“Yes, but in a terse, brief, non-nonsense, matter of fact way. His smile, oh his smile, it illuminated his face showing his very white teeth. He didn’t smile often and when he did it was like a blessing. He was a man with a great gift for leadership but he was no orator.”
“Why did St Germain select this life?”
“It was one of his how-can-I-resist-it lives! He had a chance to be an explorer of the Promised Land and to be a judge, a general and a leader of an emergent nation. Yes please!”
“What was his life’s purpose?”
“It was to establish the nation of Israel, to settle and grow its colony and to unify these disparate people into a new nation. His spiritual purpose was to learn to handle power by overcoming his own desires for more power and more wealth. The exercise of power is so enjoyable that it is an addiction. He had to be a servant of his people and his God.”
“What characteristics of St Germain did he inherit?”
“His exploring nature, his personal magnetism, his huge intelligence, his grace… he was an incredibly graceful swordsman and he had grown to the attention of Moses and then to prominence by his prowess with a sword! He had that Germanic flair for languages and spoke Hebrew, Egyptian, Syrian, Hittite and Phoenician.”
“Where did his administrative capabilities come from?”
“St Germain is an excellent administrator. Joshua was a neat and tidy man who carried with him a collapsible desk made for his wax tablets. Before the battle, Joshua thoroughly scouted around Jericho and recorded everything including his battle plan. He was meticulous in everything he did. He wrote in hieroglyphics and in early Hebrew which was almost runic in form, very crude, but he used Egyptian for any of his complex ideas. Remember he is Imhotep from the technocrat line.”
“For such an important life was he given any special gifts?”
“He was given all the gifts of logic, together with cool judgement and incredibly good organisational abilities which made him a good delegator and a good overseer. He was a prayerful man who connected easily with guidance.”
“Did he die an old man in his bed with any regrets?”
“Joshua was as organised in death as he was in life. At one hundred and three years he made his peace with God, expressed contrition for his faults and died of heart failure. He was a man who poured his energy into his duty; he had no wife, a few concubines, no children and absolutely no regrets.”
“Did he leave a detailed strategic plan for the conquest of Palestine?”
“No, the Hebrews took the land as they went. Joshua’s purpose was to found a colony and he built the rudiments of it and developed the plans for three settlements.”
“What did Joshua have in common with Imhotep?”
“They shared engineering genius together with being logical organisers and inspirational leaders. They could get men to do their will gladly. Imhotep was a non-imposing figure while Joshua was a charming, tough guy. When his line of St Germain incarnates it produces remarkable but largely unappreciated men of destiny. One exception was Emperor Trajan about whom history and reality do agree that he was an exceptionally good emperor of the Roman Empire and Trajan’s column; it is so Imhotep, a precise and beautiful record of the Emperor’s remarkable life.”
“It seems like this Imhotep line is saved for special occasions.”
“Yes. He is one of God’s A Team! Watch out for whenever he is used; something very important and very difficult has to be done! Now it’s time for a life of Mary as a Judge of Israel when we will see Nefertiti, the beautiful promoter of monotheism, returning as Deborah. ”
