The Right and Wrong Way to Fear God

Joshua and the Israelites razed the cities of Jericho and Ai, leaving none alive and “forever a heap of ruins.” Fearing the same destruction, the Gibeonites tricked Israel into forging a covenant — which the latter, upon discovering the deception, nevertheless, honored.

Joshua sealed the Amorites up

As penance, Joshua assigned the Gibeonites as the “hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord.” The city’s people willingly accepted the assignment because they had achieved their end: protection and a powerful ally. Moreover, Gibeonites had been grafted to Israel’s fate and, therefore, into God’s covenant with His chosen people.  

The five Amorite kings from surrounding cities — Adonizedek of Jerusalem; Hoham of Hebron; Piram of Jarmuth; Japhia of Lachish; and Debir of Eglon — took a different course of action, uniting to not merely withstand the Israelites, but to openly attack Gibeon.  

Gibeon appealed to Joshua to defend the city. He obliged, and the Israelites thoroughly thrashed the allied Amorite forces as God “threw down great stones from heaven.” Indeed, more men “died because of the hailstones than the men of Israel killed with the sword.”

The kings fled and “hid in the cave at Makkedah,” a city southwest of Jerusalem, where Joshua trapped them by “roll[ing] large stones to the mouth of the cave” to deal with them later. After achieving total victory, Joshua and the Israelites returned to enact rightful retribution. As the Book of Joshua describes:

…[he] struck and killed the kings, and hanged them on five trees, where they remained hanging until evening. At sunset Joshua commanded that they be taken down from the trees and be thrown into the cave where they had hidden; over the mouth of the cave large stones were placed, which remain until this very day. 

Jesus Christ rises and escapes from His grave

Thousands of years later, Jesus Christ — the king of kings — would be executed, nailed to a tree, and buried in a cave. While the Amorite kings suffered a permanent death, Christ was resurrected, rolled back the stone blocking his grave, taught and ate with his disciples, and ascended into heaven after 40 days. 

The two Biblical passages bear remarkable similarities, further solidifying God as an author, one who establishes setups and payoffs throughout Scripture. As St. Augustine acknowledged, “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New.”

Yet Christ “makes all things new.” His death and resurrection inverts the Amorites’ execution. As sin entered the caves in Makkedah and the tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, life walked out of the latter. Indeed, if Christ is a pioneer, his resurrection foreshadows the fate of all who strive for God. As St. Paul writes, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.” 

To be a follower of Christ, we need to have a healthy dose of fear of the Lord. As Father Mike Schmitz has preached, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” adding: 

We must cultivate the fear of the Lord in our lives. If we do not, then we will have only a partial vision of who God truly is. If we do not cultivate the fear of the Lord, then we will never have the proper relationship with God that we are made for. 

God does not require the cowering fear of slaves

Fear does not mean to cower before God into a life of slavery, but to take Him and His commandments seriously. (At the same time, Christians are called to “be not afraid,” but that is a call to trust in Him in the face of suffering, pain, anxiety and death.) The Gibeonites and Amorites exemplify fear’s dichotomy. Both recognized Israel’s power and even sought self-preservation. But the former threw themselves at the mercy of Joshua saying, after admitting to their trickery, “And now that we are in your power, do with us what is good and right in your eyes.” They would have accepted punishment since that is what they deserved — but Joshua held to their covenant and even fought for them, risking his and Israel’s life.   

How many times have we broken our oaths with God, but He mercifully welcomes us back through the Sacrament of Reconciliation? And how often does He continue to fight for us against the principalities of darkness, though we have fallen short of living His commandments?

The Amorites defied God – never a good idea

The Amorite kings, however, could have made a similar peaceful alliance with Israel and been brought into the covenant. Instead, they united to be their own masters, clinging to their titles, property and material wealth. They would not — or have anyone else — submit to the Lord’s dominion. Yet submitting oneself to God with all of our mind, body, and soul is the path to freedom and salvation. To make matters worse, after Joshua’s victory, the defeated kings do not even beg him for mercy like the Gibeonites. They remain silent, thus sealing their fates. In the end, the Amorites endured the destruction that they feared by rejecting the Lord into not only their territory, but in their hearts.

Ultimately, there is a right and a wrong way to fear, and like any good author, God shows the where each path leads: to death like the Amorite ‘kings’ — or to life like Christ, the king of the universe. 

So, we must ask ourselves: how will we fear the Lord today?

This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.