Jericho: the Heart (part 4 of 8)

Thomas Bromley [1629-1691) wrote about all the places Israel stopped at in their journey from Egypt to the Promised Land; in “The JOURNEYS of the Children of Israel, as in their Names and Historical Passages, they Comprise the Great and Gradual Work of Redemption” he says this about the last stop before entering Canaan:

The last Station of Israel here enumerated, is fix’d in the Plains of Moab.  They descended to it from the Mountains of Abarim, intimating further Humiliation in bearing the Cross, and submitting to Chastisements.  Moab signifies of the Father.  The Plains of Moab are the Plains of the Father, importing, that the spiritual Travellers are yet in the Father’s Work, not wholly out of that Dispensation, whilst under Moses or the Prophetick Light of the Law, yet leading to the Son.  By the Father’s Dispensation, I mean the first in the Order of Regeneration, exprest John6.44.  No Man can come to me, except the Father that hath sent me draw him.  As Israel was yet under Moses, whose Name Moshe signifies Drawing, or a Drawer, who had drawn the People out of Egypt, was now preparing them to submit to Joshua, as their chief Leader:  So all this was done in a Type, representing the Light of the Father, in the first Dispensation, drawing us to the Son, figured by Joshua.

Also, just before entering Canaan, just before the mantle of authority passed from Moses (the Sinai or Wilderness light [Law] and manna) to Joshua (the Promised Land light [gospel] and the cleansed produce [symbolically no longer cursed with thorns and thistles]),

The Lord spoke to Moses in the plains of Moab by the Jordan opposite Jericho, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their figured stones, and destroy all their molten images and demolish all their high places; and you shall take possession of the land and live in it, for I have given the land to you to possess it.  You shall inherit the land by lot according to your families; to the larger you shall give more inheritance, and to the smaller you shall give less inheritance. Wherever the lot falls to anyone, that shall be his. You shall inherit according to the tribes of your fathers.  But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live.  And as I plan to do to them, so I will do to you.’”  (Numbers 33:50-56, NASB).