Longer study: Terah – a bad steward

‘A steward is a ruler and servant, one who exists to please his master.’

It is too easy for words to lose their meaning. Like so many of our purchases, if we use words too often or in the wrong context, they almost seem to fall apart. If you’re looking for proof, just take a look at your nearest card shop, where marriage is an adventure, children grow up so fast and death is a loss for which we offer our deepest sympathies. All those words were not always so clichéd and trite. But time and incorrect use has worn them thin.

Even the Bible is not immune. Verses can also suffer from quoting fatigue, just like this one:

‘But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.’ Joshua 24:15

I bet you’ve seen it a dozen times before, stitched or printed within a frame near the doorway. Recently I was in a home where this verse was stencilled on two walls. Why two? They really couldn’t tell me.

When we strip verses of their context, we rob them of much of their power. We leave them weak and vulnerable to misuse, fitting them into whatever context suits our purposes, regardless of the original intent.

Especially well-known verses suffer from another issue: the quotes can be so well-known that they lose meaning, leaving ‘turn the other cheek’ pale and insipid and turning ‘Jesus wept’ into a blasphemous expression of mild frustration. Repeated too often and our minds breeze over the images. We see, hear, and taste nothing. Words become empty, as opposed to being pregnant with meaning.

But clichés are clichés for a reason. In reality, often quoted words are ‘settled’ with deep, deep meaning. Marriage really is a journey and an adventure, children do grow up fast and death really is a loss. To reconnect with the true meaning we need to see the words as they were originally intended as well as learning how to apply them to our own unique context: asking what these words mean for me in my present here and now.

Let’s get back to the double stencil on the wall. The thing about Joshua’s declaration is that it’s anything but meek or mild, and it is a pivotal player in a profoundly dramatic episode involving Terah, Abraham’s father.

The first two verses of chapter 24 read:

‘Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. He summoned the elders, leaders, judges and officials of Israel, and they presented themselves before God. Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshipped other gods.’

Terah lived in a foreign land, Haran, and followed other gods. The Lord’s plan was for Terah to go to a new land, Canaan, and to follow one god, Yahweh - Himself. Yet Terah never made it to Canaan. Instead he settled in (and settled for) Haran. The gods he probably worshipped there were household gods - a fact that Joshua himself informs us of in verses 14 and 15:

‘Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.’

Suddenly we see the verse in context: there is a family history of worshipping idols. Now, as Joshua prepares to lead his people to enter a new land with new beginnings, he makes a bold - and important - declaration: the mistakes of the past will not be carried on by the people of the present. From this point on, things are going to change.

He challenges the people to make this same commitment before they enter Cannon. And they do: Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! It was the LORD our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we travelled. And the

LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because he is our God.”

While Terah settled in Haran, ignoring God’s plans in favour of false idols and a foreign land for his family, Joshua makes a change. He names his father as an example that should not be followed, and in the process, ends a generations-long period of nomadic existence that started with Abraham. Now, finally, the people are ready to go in, but only once they have thrown their household idols, their Terahs away. Only then, as the Lord God states in verse 13, will they be settled. Only then will they come home.

There’s one more cliché that I want to look at: the notion of settling in. We use it to convey a sense of order or control, as if being ‘settled in’ to a new home or new job means that we feel that we know, or in some way control the situation. Such a use of the word really couldn’t be further from the truth for Joshua.

For him and his people, being settled meant something far greater and more powerful. Being settled meant dealing with the past in a bold, determined, practical way. It meant putting right great wrongs and choosing to start afresh, way out of their zones of comfort and familiarity. Being settled meant taking a risk. Being settled meant trusting God with everything.

There’s nothing wrong with putting the words of Joshua up on the wall, or even two walls. But we should know what we are doing when we place them there. And who knows, if we learn to understand and appreciate quite how powerful the words are, perhaps some of that bold determination might rub off on us. Then we will have truly settled in.

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