Are you for us, or for our adversaries? NO

[tonychanyt]

Jos 5:

13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?”

Friend or foe?

14 And he said, “No;

No, what? Why did the swordsman say 'No'?

No, Joshua, you are asking the wrong question. The proper question is "Are you for God?"

but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.”

The swordsman/angel affirmed that he was sent by God.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, “What does my lord say to his servant?”

Now, Joshua was asking the right question.

15 And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

Joshua obeyed.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Good OP! I love the answer, "No", there. One might well infer from the fact the man standing before him wouldn't have been there if God did not have a reason for the encounter. The fact that Joshua asked the wrong question is almost humorous, except that we do worse. Joshua's thinking seems, at least, to be for the sake of Israel, and not so much for himself, yet, even then he asked it from the wrong point-of-view. This life is about God, and not about us or anything else in his creation —not even about the things that God loves.