Joshua 5

The reading today covers four main things:

- The enemies of Israel who inhabited the promised land were stricken with fear by the Lord's miracle at the Jordan river

- The new generation of Israelite men were circumcised after crossing into the land, since their parents had not done that to them as children. I was rather surprised at this, as I thought the command given by God was to circumcise sons early in their lives - but perhaps either they had not had the proper tools or facilities to do so in the desert wanderings or they were just disobeying the Lord; or maybe the command just hadn't taken effect yet.

- The Israelites began eating produce from the land again, instead of God's manna; as soon as they did so the manna stopped.

- The "commander of the Lord's army" (verse 14) appeared to Joshua. This must have been an awesome sight, and I suspect that it was Jesus Himself pre-incarnate; why else would the ground Joshua was standing on have been holy (verse 15)? The only other time I recall this happening so far was Moses and the burning bush, which was clearly an instance of God appearing to him. I suppose that is actually another similarity between the early parts of Moses' and Joshua's service.

Exodus 16

Today we see how God providentially fed the hosts of Israel while they traveled in the desert - which will extend for forty years. It is a pretty amazing thing, the way manna is described, and the fact that God was doing this for them every day (except Sabbaths) for so long ought to have been a good demonstration to them of His power and authority... but they will still disobey from time to time, as we'll see in the rest of Exodus.

The stand-out things today to me were as follows:

- God rationed out the manna, so that each person ended up with just the amount they needed. I bet gluttony was a hard vice to find among the Israelites in that era, simply because they didn't have anything excess to eat!

- Some manna was set aside to be preserved for viewing by future generations. Was that perhaps the first time-capsule? I suppose it was never intended to be opened, though, especially once it was placed inside the Ark.