being cunning

Today we read from Joshua 9:3-10:43 in the One Year Bible. We read a story of deceit and cunning. As the Israelites move into the promised land, they come across a people who claim to be from far away. They dress up in worn clothes and carry stale bread to prove they came from far away. And the get Joshua and the other Hebrews to promise not to kill them and let them live.

Then Joshua finds out that they've been deceived. But since they promised before God not to kill them, they keep their promise.

It reminds me of the story from the New Testament, where Jesus talks about the shrewd manager who slashes the debts that people owe his master once he's been fired from his job, so they'll be nice to him later. It brings up the word "cunning", like the fox in the pic above.

Just like the fox, both the Old and New Testament stories are about people who use their knowledge in order to preserve themselves. Foxes often outwit farmers or guard dogs in order to get the food they need to survive. The shrewd manager and the people in the OT story both use their knowledge to preserve their own lives. The word "cunning" comes from an old English word meaning "knowledge" combined with the word "can", meaning "ability." So when you take what you know and apply it to what you can do, you have cunning. It originally didn't have a negative, deceitful meaning. That came in later English. But now we know it to mean using our skill and knowledge to deceitfully gain an advantage.... and usually save our lives.

As Jesus taught us, the "children of this world" are often wiser in the ways of self preservation than the "children of light." And we can learn a few things from both the OT and the NT cunningness... to learn to be wise as serpents, and yet remain innocent as doves.

God, thanks for teaching us about cunning foxes.