How It All Goes Down
The Short Story
Moses is dead. What a way to start a book, right? Joshua, his ordained-by-God successor, is ready to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land. But Houston, we have a problem. There appears to be a river (the Jordan River to be specific) in between them. Joshua, being the clever duck that he is, sends two spies ahead of the group to scout the land.
The two spies wind up in the city of Jericho and conveniently convene in a brothel (wink wink). There, they meet a sultry goddess of a prostitute named Rahab who offers them sanctuary and aid for the siege of Jericho if they promise to spare her family. The spies agree and return to Joshua to tell him the good news.
Although Joshua and the Israelites enjoyed their time down by the river, the Israelites cross the river Jordan. The Israelites' first task is to lay waste to the city of Jericho. So after six days of scare tactics involving horns and a box filled with God (a.k.a. the Ark of the Covenant), the Israelites take the city of Jericho and burn it to the ground, sparing Rahab and her family as promised.
What follows is a succession of sieges all across Canaan as the Israelites conquer the land. Once they're all tuckered out from the epic conquering they've done, Joshua goes about dividing the land up between the twelve tribes. Years pass without any battles to fight because God loves them and stuff. Near the end of his life, Joshua makes a final speech reminiscent of all the great speeches in movie history and promptly dies, hoping Israel will keep their end of the covenant with God.