the story of the siege of Jericho, immortalized in popular culture as a miracle of God in which the city walls come tumbling down from the trumpeting sounds of the Israelite army. What is not generally discussed is the cheerfully narrated genocidal atrocity after the collapse of the walls. “Everyone charged straight in,” we are told, “and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, and donkeys…. Then they burned the whole city and everything in it.” This event was considered an
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