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Punishment

Last time we saw how the Israelites (with the help of God) fell an entire wall and conquered a city with little to no effort. Things were going really well, until some people became greedy. We all know people who simply cannot get enough and are never happy with what they do have. Well, these were some of those kinds of people. It was not enough for them that they were able to conquer an entire city, now they wanted some of the plunder. In the last chapter God specifically told to people not to take any of the plunder but to save only the gold and silver for the Lord. However, a few of these greedy people decided to take some for themselves anyway supposing God would not find out. (Ha, ha, ha) This caused them to suffer later was we will soon see.

The Israelites set out to defeat a small tribe of people. They only sent a few thousand people because of their confidence and the small number of enemies. Unfortunately, they were absolutely walloped. It turned out that this was a result of the sin of the men who had taken what was not theirs. Because of this sin they and their household was burned. Now we may think this is merciless but God cannot bear any kind of sin and did not want it to spread in the tribe so they had to be punished. Thank the Lord that Christ paid the penalty for our sin so that we do not need pay the penalty. Even so, I am not really sure why they people had to die for their sin except for the fact that we all deserve to die and if Christ decides to eliminate us, that so be it, who are we to act as God.

So ends this sobering chapter.

~Elisabeth

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