I agree with The Public Forum letter from Marilyn Marshall as she writes that “based on background, baggage, biases and experience, people interpret the written words differently.”
Based on those elements, when I read the story of Joshua and Jericho, I read a gruesome, inhuman story that is devoid of any moral value whatsoever, and it implicates the supposedly compassionate and loving God.
After all, Joshua claimed that his God instructed him how to bring down the walls of Jericho so that he could commit his genocide, ethnic cleansing, infanticide and many other despicable crimes that he committed, and his loving God didn’t make any attempt to stop him.