the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is the Lord of war!
From me, Joshua, the servant of God, and from the holy and
chosen congregation to the impious nations, who pay worship to
images, and prostrate themselves before idols: No peace unto you,
saith my God! Know that ye acted foolishly to awaken the
slumbering lion, to rouse up the lion's whelp, to excite his wrath. I
am ready to pay you your recompense. Be ye prepared to meet me,
for within a week I shall be with you to slay your warriors to a
man."

Joshua goes on to recite all the wonders God had done for Israel,
who need fear no power on earth; and he ends his missive with the
words: "If the hero Japheth is with you, we have in the midst of us
the Hero of heroes, the Highest above all the high."

The heathen were not a little alarmed at the tone of Joshua's letter.
Their terror grew when the messenger told of the exemplary
discipline maintained in the Isrealitish army, of the gigantic stature
of Joshua, who stood five ells high, of his royal apparel, of his
crown graven with the Name of God. At the end of seven days
Joshua appeared with twelve thousand troops. When the mother of
King Shobach, who was a powerful witch, espied the host, she
exercised her magic art, and enclosed the Isrealitish army in seven
walls. Joshua thereupon sent forth a carrier pigeon to communicate
his plight to Nabiah, the king of the trans-Jordanic tribes. He urged
him to hasten to his help and bring the priest Phinehas and the
sacred trumpets with him. Nabiah did not tarry. Before the relief
detachment arrived, his mother reported to Shobach that she
beheld a star arise out of the East against which her machinations
were vain. Shobach threw his mother from the wall, and he