The Expositor's Bible
                                The Book of Joshua
                                                            
                                    
                                            William Garden Blaikie 
                                    
                                
                            9781465576859
                                313 pages
                            Library of Alexandria
                            
                            
                                
                         
                        
                                
Overview
                                With a purely historical book like Joshua before us, it is of importance to keep in view two ways of regarding Old Testament history, in accordance with one or other of which any exposition of such a book must be framed. According to one of these views, the historical books of Scripture, being given by inspiration of God, have for their main object not to tell the story or dwell on the fortunes of the Hebrew nation, but to unfold God's progressive revelation of Himself made to the seed of Abraham, and to record the way in which that revelation was received, and the effects which it produced. The story of the Hebrew nation is but the frame in which this Divine revelation is set. It was God's pleasure to reveal Himself not through a formal treatise, but in connection with the history of a nation, through announcements and institutions and practical dealings bearing in the first instance on them. The historical books of the Hebrews therefore, while they give us an excellent view of the progress of the nation, must be studied in connection with God's main purpose, and the supernatural interpositions by which from time to time it was carried out.