Joshua 1 — The Beginning

1:1-5 - The Transition from Moses

Commentaries have rightly pointed out that Joshua begins with both a note of continuation to the lifetime of Moses and a strong division.

The division is indicated by the words “after the death of Moses”. The human being Moses is gone and will not return. The era stamped by his strong personality and unique character has passed. It will not return. Moses completed his God-given task; now a new leader will be given his task. The tasks are new with each generation, as we all can see today. And the leaders are ever new.

Yet the first chapter of this book stresses repeatedly a note of continuation, for the God of Moses has not died nor passed from the scene. And the commitment of this God was never just to Moses, but to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with whom we have become well acquainted in Genesis 12-60 and during the lifetime of Moses (Exodus-Deuteronomy). The promises of God to Moses are also the promises to the succeeding generations:

Josh. 1:3 Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses.
Josh. 1:5 No one shall be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.
Josh. 1:17 Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you. Only may the LORD your God be with you, as he was with Moses!

The commitment is the same, and the promises are still in force. God has committed Himself to lead Joshua, and the People have committed themselves to follow Joshua.

Furthermore, Moses himself has left a legacy in the Book of the Law (the Torah), which will guide not only his immediate successor, Joshua, but every succeeding generation of believers in this God, including Old Testament Jews and New Testament Gentiles who believe in Israel’s Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. It provides guidance—this in fact is the root meaning of Hebrew noun torah— as sure as the twin pillars of cloud and fire that led the Israelites through the wilderness in the days of Moses. The believer only needs to read it and obey it.

Josh. 1:7 Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful.

It is not obvious to a reader of the Bible in English, but the “you” forms in the Hebrew and Greek texts of verse 8 are singular, referring primarily to Joshua. As the leader of Israel, it was especially important for him to be guided in all his decisions and actions by the law of God.

Similarly, Moses indicated in Deut 17:18-20 that future kings of Israel were to have their own personal copies of the written law of Moses, to study and to obey.

If God has called you to be a leader in a neighborhood Bible Study, or in a Sunday School class, or in any undertaking for God, it is vital that you saturate your mind with the teachings of Scripture, and that you think deeply as you read as to how your life can be brought into line with these teachings. God uses leaders who listen to him and obey him. Such leadeers will always succeed in their tasks for God.

Yet it is obvious that in our day, when Bibles are as available and inexpensive as they are, and exist in understandable and easy language, every believer needs to read and meditate upon God’s word daily. For the promise is to us, as it was to Joshua: “for then you will be successful” in living with the Living God (see verses 7-8).

1:5-9 The God who is "with you"!

Joshua chapter one gives great assurances of God’s help to Joshua. These are verses that I learned by heart as a new Christian in my first two years of college. They are favorites of all Scripture memory programs.

Joshua 1:5-9 No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. 6 "Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

What does it mean for God to be “with” us? The phrase “as I was with Moses” (v. 5) gives us a clue. Can you remember the many times that Moses faced dire emergencies? No water to drink, no food to eat, attacked by the Amalekites, rebelled against by his own people, confronted by the people's idolatry with the Golden Calf. And do you remember how those emergencies were dealt with? God was “with” Moses!

How did God demonstrate that he was “with” Moses? by miraculous power: drinking water from a rock that Moses was to “speak to”, and it would spurt forth pure water for the people to drink; manna from heaven and quails found and easily captured for daily food in the desert; a smashing victory over the Amalekites while Moses stood on a hill with his hands raised in prayer to God; etc.

God was “with” Moses not just in the physical sense that he was present with him, but in the sense that he was on Moses’ side! God was present to help and save! And is this not the meaning of the name given in Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah (Isa 7:14): Immanuel “God is with us (i.e., on our side, to save us from all harm, especially from eternal harm)”?

Do you see how the promise to be with Joshua translates into specifics?

Joshua 1:5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forsake you.

To be able to stand before you in Hebrew means to be able to successfully oppose you. This is what the Amalekites tried to do in the desert: oppose Israel’s march from Egypt to Canaan. Later the Edomites tried the same, and the Moabites, and Balaam the pagan prophet. These were the external opponents of Moses. But do you also remember that there were internal opponents (Nathan, Abihu, Korah, even Moses' borther Aaron and his sister Miriam!)? John Wesley commented on this verse:

“With Moses - To assist him against all his enemies, and in all the difficulties of governing this stiff-necked people, which Joshua might justly fear no less than the Canaanites.”

Be strong and courageous (v. 6, 7, 9). How important these words were is shown by their occurrence three times in this speech of God to Joshua. One of the greatest temptations that Christian leaders face, when opposition arises, is to give up in the face of opposition or initial failure. This is not to suggest that disagreements expressed either by those you lead or by other leaders in your church are necessarily signs of those people being “enemies” who oppose God. The true Christian leader needs the humility to recognize that he or she can be wrong. That is what recourse to study of the Word and prayer is for! When Moses was opposed from within the people, he went to God (his equivalent to Bible study and prayer). If he was wrong, he wanted God to tell him so. When Joshua experienced defeat (as at Ai), he humbled himself before God in prayer, confessed the failure of himself and the people, and asked God what to do. But—and this is the point—he did not give up. He persisted in the task that God had given to him.

May none of us give up doing whatever task God has given us just because we meet with setbacks. Maybe your task is raising a teen-ager. Maybe it is running a food drive for a homeless shelter. Maybe it is hosting a teen club in your church. Maybe it is hosting a neighborhood Bible Study group in your home. Maybe you have cancer and feel led to write a blog to encourage others with this disease by stories of your own experiences and your faith in Bible promises. Whatever task you feel God has given you to do for him, pursue it steadily and courageously, but always informed by the Word of God — the Bible, Do nothing in God’s name that diverges from his specific instructions in the Bible.

For then you will have good success.

Joshua 1:10-18 It Takes All Twelve Tribes!

Hilary Clinton wrote a widely-known book It Takes a Village, to celebrate how in some cultures the raising of children is a responsibility shared by the entire village, not just the nuclear family. How one reacts to the subliminal message of this book depends on how one understands it. If it is intended to imply that we should “redefine” the traditional family, so that biological parents have less responsibility for instilling spiritual and ethical values in their children in favor of community-defined ones, most Christians would object firmly, for the community may not have the same scripture-based values that the individual family has.

If, however, one applies the analogy only to the importance of community support for the parents in nuclear families, none of us would take issue. In fact, in churches which practice either infant baptism or infant dedication the pastor often asks the congregation to respond to a promise to support the new parents in raising the child in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. This is a positive application of the parallel.

I would like to point out here that the same principle underlies this paragraph in the Book of Joshua. Each of the tribes was allocated an area for which it had primary responsibility to drive out the pagans and settle. But in the first days of the incursion under Joshua’s leadership, it was important that all the tribes participate in a unified campaign to break the resistance of the Canaanites. Then subsequently, the Book of Judges tells us, that smaller units of several tribes cooperated in clearing one of the tribes’ area for settlement (Judah and Simeon in Judges 1:3). The family of Jacob, now a confederation of tribes, had to remain unified in the pursuit of God’s plan to give them the land promised to Abraham.

Not all scholars, however, believe the account given in Joshua. Many believe that the idea of a unified Israel was a much later retrojection on the earlier period. But the facts indicate the contrary:

“The consciousness of unity that the Israelite tribes display throughout their history cannot be explained as a late development. For the isolation and separate destinies of the Israelite tribes once settled in Canaan and Transjordan would have been sufficient under normal circumstances to dissolve even a united people into separate fragments. The Jordan divided the area of settlement in two. The absence of Judah in the wars of Barak, Gideon, and Jephthah speaks for a long period of its complete isolation. Amalgamation with Ammon and Moab would have been the normal course for the Transjordanian tribes. Judah and Ephraim might have been expected to develop independently of each other, yet they have a feeling of common origin and destiny. The political and territorial history of postconquest times was hardly favorable to promoting the feeling among the tribes that they were a national entity of twelve tribes. The fact is that after only three-quarters of a century of not unbroken political unity during the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon the united kingdom fell apart. Yet the sense of common origin and destiny outlived all these divisions. It survived even the destruction of the northern kingdom. Inexplicable on the basis of later history, this sense of unity must have had its roots in the period before the entry into Canaan. The tribal confederation is therefore primary” (Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 245f.).

The account of the incident in Joshua 1:12-18 is beautifully told. The Reubenites, Gadites and half tribe of Manasseh are grateful that they received the help of the other tribes in acquiring their land on the east side of the Jordan River, while Moses was still alive. They show now their complete solidarity with the 9 ½ tribes by promising to leave their wives and possession east of the Jordan and cross over armed with their brothers to fight for land which will not be their own, but their brothers’. And they pray for Joshua to have the same resolute obedience to God that Moses had, so that the mission will be successful. Joshua reminds them (v. 13-15) that Moses had commanded them to do this before he died, and the eastern tribes acknowledge that fact and pledge their loyal obedience.

Years later (Josh 22:10-29) the western tribes discovered that these eastern tribes had built an altar on the east side of the Jordan, and feared that this meant that their eastern brothers were deserting the faith of the fathers in favor of their own gods and cult. But when asked, these eastern tribes again showed their fierce loyalty to the God of Israel:

“The Lord, God of gods! The Lord, God of gods! He knows; and let Israel itself know! If it was in rebellion or in breach of faith toward the Lord, do not spare us today 23 for building an altar to turn away from following the Lord; or if we did so to offer burnt offerings or grain offerings or offerings of well-being on it, may the Lord himself take vengeance. 24 No! We did it from fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, ‘What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? 25 For the Lord has made the Jordan a boundary between us and you, you Reubenites and Gadites; you have no portion in the Lord.’ So your children might make our children cease to worship the Lord. 26 Therefore we said, ‘Let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, 27 but to be a witness between us and you, and between the generations after us, that we do perform the service of the Lord in his presence with our burnt offerings and sacrifices and offerings of well-being; so that your children may never say to our children in time to come, “You have no portion in the Lord.” ’ 28 And we thought, If this should be said to us or to our descendants in time to come, we could say, ‘Look at this copy of the altar of the Lord, which our ancestors made, not for burnt offerings, nor for sacrifice, but to be a witness between us and you.’ 29 Far be it from us that we should rebel against the Lord, and turn away this day from following the Lord by building an altar for burnt offering, grain offering, or sacrifice, other than the altar of the Lord our God that stands before his tabernacle!” (Joshua 22:22-29)

Throughout the period of Joshua-Judges we see evidence of the intense loyalty of the individual tribes for the “family unity”, the confederation called “Israel”. The beginning of the downfall of Israel came when at the death of Solomon, the kingdom was divided into two: a northern “Israel”, and a southern “Judah”. But the prophets predicted that in the Last Days God would reunite his people, so that as one people they would worship him in the days of his Messiah and King.

Interestingly, in the earliest days of the church, as recorded in Acts, the apostles believed it necessary to replace Judas as the twelfth apostle, in order for the witness of the apostolic college to be "whole".

How important to you and me is the unity of the Church? I don’t mean an organization such as the World Council of Churches. Well-meaning organizations often sow more discord by their highhanded imposition of "majority" decisions than to promote real unity. Real unity comes through a kindred spirit of faith in Jesus as our God and Savior, confidence in and obedience to the Scriptures, and a zeal to spread the gospel and love to help those who suffer. But is it your prayer that—at the very least—there be love, understanding and cooperation among the members of your own local church? And do you pray for mutual understanding among believers in Jesus worldwide?

It may not “take a village” to raise a family of Christian children, but it does take the whole Church to reach the world for Christ. Remember that, when you feel too tired to pray for the Church in the world: in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.