Introduction & Overview of the Book of Joshua

Joshua’s Place in the Canon

Like many biblical books, the Book of Joshua is anonymous. It is named after the principal figure in its narrative, Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ chosen successor.

Neither do we know for sure when it reached its final written form. It is likely that records of the chief events were recorded at the time they happened and may have circulated separately for several generations before being collected and put in the form we have the book now. At the very latest this form was reached during the Divided Kingdom of Israel-Judah, but it is more likely that this form was achieved earlier, perhaps even during the reign of King David.

The name Joshua means “Yahweh saves”, with the verb “saves” referring not primarily to salvation from sin, but from the threat of attack by enemy armies. A short form of it is the name Hoshea (or Hosea), which was borne by one of the prophets of Israel whose prophesies form one of the OT books. The name was very popular, being borne by a high priest in the time of the prophet Haggai and Zechariah (Haggai 12; Zech 3), and by numerous individuals in the time of Christ, including Jesus himself (Yeshua=Jesus is the Aramaic and late Hebrew form of the name Joshua). Its popularity may have been due not only to the meaning of the name, but because during the period of Roman rule over Palestine Jewish hopes for independence could be discretely expressed by naming their children for great military leaders of the past. However, Matthew 1:21 makes it clear that the angel announced to Joseph that the name when applied to Mary’s son referred not to a military and political deliverance, but salvation from the people’s sins.

Outline of the Book of Joshua

The historical content of the book concerns Israel’s entry into the land promised by God to Abraham and which was the goal of the exodus. God brought them out of bondage in order to bring them into their own land. But the book does not pretend that by the end of its narrative they had completely conquered the land. Instead, it agrees with the opening chapters of Judges that there were still many pockets of land under the control of the previous inhabitants. But it does show three initial drives (a central one, a southern one, and a northern one) which broke the back of the Canaanite city-states’ armed resistance, leaving the rest of the land as an area for future mopping up. A major obstacle to the completion of the task is completely unmentioned in the book of Joshua: namely, the appearance on the Mediterranean shores of the Philistines, who had migrated west from Crete, the Greek islands, and the southern shores of Asia Minor.

Archeological excavations and surveys do not prove the historicity of the biblical account, but neither do they disprove it, contrary to many of the popular sensational books on the market today.

Part of the uncertainty has to do with when we date the exodus and therefore also the period of Joshua. Some favor c. 1440-1350; others 1280-1200. An Egyptian inscription from the reign of the pharaoh Merneptah (c. 1200 BC) records a military skirmish between an Egyptian expeditionary force and a group called “Israel”. Since this foe is not called by one of the tribal names (Judah, Ephraim), the contact must have been with a larger force of combined tribes such as we see in Joshua, rather than what we usually see in Judges. This would favor the later date of the exodus and conquest.

Some events, such as the fall of Jericho’s walls (Josh. 6), cannot be verified archeologically, because entire strata belonging to this period have been eroded from the site by centuries of exposure to the elements. Other events, such as Joshua’s sack of Hazor in the far north (Josh. 11:10-11), have been confirmed by excavations.

When the Bible describes Joshua’s capture of enemy cities, with the exception of Jericho and Ai, it is never said that he razed them to the ground or burned them completely. If all that happened was that the previous inhabitants were killed and Israelites moved in to occupy the sites, there would be no detectable archeological evidence for the change. The Israelites would have used the same kind of pottery and houses as the previous inhabitants.

There are three main divisions of the book:

I. The Conquest of the Land, chs. 1-12
A. The Central Thrust, chs. 1-9
B. The Southern Campaign, ch. 10
C. The Northern Campaign, ch. 11
D. Outline of the Conquest, ch. 12

II. The Land Allotments to the Tribes, chs. 13-21
A. Allotments to the 11 Tribes, chs. 13-19
B. Cities of Refuge and Levitical Cities, chs. 20-21

III. The Importance of Future Faithful Obedience, chs. 22-24


Joshua, Judges and Ruth as historical-theological bridge from Moses to David

In the canonical order of the books of the Old Testament in the Christian canon there are three books which form a bridge between the Five Books of Moses (the Pentateuch) and the books dealing with the kingdom of Israel (Samuel, Kings, Chronicles). These are: Joshua, Judges and Ruth. All three of these in different ways (1) emphasize the importance of keeping the covenant of Yahweh as enshrined in the law of Moses and (2) anticipate the coming of the kingdom whose ideal monarch will be David. Ruth does this by focusing upon the faithfulness of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz in following the provision of the law for what is called levirate marriage (Deut. 25:5-10; Gen. 38), and closes with the reward for keeping the law: the line of descent from Ruth and Boaz culminating in David (Ruth 4:18-22; Mat. 1:5-6). Judges records the many failures of Israel in keeping the law (although it is left to the reader to make that connection, since the text itself does not specifically quote the law), and a conspicuous refrain that runs through the entire book is “In those days there was no king in Israel: and everyone did what was right in hiis own eyes”. The clear implication is that, if God’s appointed king were reigning, everyone would do what was right in God’s eyes, namely obey the law of Moses (on this connection of God’s king and God’s law in Deuteronomy see Deut 17:18-19).

In the Book of Joshua obedience to the law of Moses is laid down explicitly at the very outset as the indispensable condition for the success of Israel’s armies in conquering the Promised Land (Josh 1:8-9). And failure to observe even one of its requirements in the course of the narrative is immediately punished, usually by a catastrophic defeat (see Ai in ch. 7-8). Furthermore, the covenant of Moses is re-enacted in a wide variety of ways throughout the course of the book: from the writing of a symbolic portion of the law on the stones set up at Mt. Ebal (ch. 8) to the ceremony of covenant renewal at the end of the book (Josh. 24). In Joshua, more so than in Judges or Ruth, it is the book form of the law and the covenant that is envisaged (Josh 1:8). Of course, we are not to envisage a “book” in the modern format of a sewn spine, hard covers and paper pages: what Moses initially delivered were stone tablets, and what he eventually wrote in terms of the whole law were probably leather scrolls. These would have been kept by the priests, but consulted by Joshua, and later by David and his royal successors. This is how the Book of Joshua bases all success on keeping the law of Moses, which is synonymous with God’s covenant.

But how does Joshua anticipate the coming reign of David and his successors? The man Joshua is himself a picture of future royalty. Israelite kings—and David was a perfect example—were first and foremost military leaders. It is true that with Solomon we do not see this activity as we did with his father. But among the successor kings of both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah at strategic moments it is the king himself who must lead the effort to repulse enemy armies from Israel’s holy territory. And when that king is a transgressor of god’s law—as was for example Ahab—he usually is defeated and loses his life.

A second way in which the Book of Joshua anticipates the reign of David and his successors is in the division of the land into tribal territories. Now you may be surprised at this claim. What—you ask—does a division into tribal allotments have to do with a monarchy? It is a well-known fact, substantiated by the latest research on the kingdoms of the ancient Near East, that a land’s political subdivisions existed for one primary purpose, and that was to simplify and regularize revenue collection and provide a basis for periodic contribution of personnel for public labor. Boundary-setting within a kingdom was similar to census-taking in providing a basis for the organization of a nation-state. As our country is the “United States”, so Israel under David was “the United Tribes”, with the tribes providing local and regional government, subsidiary to the central authority of the king.

God did not give individual parcels of land to individual tribes per se. Rather he gave the entire land, to a unified people, and allowed Joshua as his figure of future kingship to allocate the parts of that land to the respective tribal units, so that they could eventually contribute to the support of the monarchy both by contributions of wealth in the form of produce and in public labor projects: in modern terms money and volunteer service. The key passage, Josh 13:6-7, pictures Joshua almost like a father, who “allocates” (‏הַפִּלֶהָ לְיִשְׂרָאֵל בְּנַחֲלָה v. 6) parcels of land and “divides” it (‏חַלֵּק v. 7) like an “inheritance” (נַחֲלָה) to his sons. The king who allocates (even though he receives his instructions from God, v. 6) serves as the unifying glue which binds these territorial units into a single proto-kingdom. When Joshua died, we are told in Joshua 13:1-6 and in Judges 1, the land had been allocated but not yet conquered. And the confederacy of tribes, representing the proto-kingdom, still did not have its promised king. During the period of the Judges it would be led in battle by various charismatic figures raised up by God and temporarily empowered by his Spirit. But these “judges” were not yet kings. All three of these “bridge” books constantly make us aware that the ideal king was still to come. And Ruth tells us his name was “David”.

There is therefore a kind of eschatological tension existing during this period: an “already” aspect of the Kingdom in tension with a “not-yet” one. The land has been allocated, but not yet entirely possessed and controlled. A king-like figure (Joshua) presides, but his antitype, the real and future David, is “not yet”.

This is what makes the study of Joshua and Judges so rewarding to us today, since we too live in an “already” and “not-yet” tension. The Kingdom of God already exists in our hearts, and the risen Christ has allocated to each of us in his church spiritual gifts and abilities suited to our tasks, so that —like the individual tribes of Israel—we may contribute toward the success of the whole worldwide Church. We have also been given all the potential ability we need to live kingdom lives of complete obedience to God. But like Achan we sometimes fail, and like the Israelites in Judges we experience cycles of victorious obedience alternating with defeat through disobedience. Like the tribes during the period of the Judges, when one member tribe falls into sin or apostasy, we grieve over that fallen member and do what we can to restore it. for we know all too well that it will take the whole worldwide Church of Jesus/Joshua to prevail in our “not-yet” quest of proclaiming the Once-and-future King, Jesus to a Canaanite world.

When we pray “Your Kingdom come; your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” we pray an eschatological prayer, a “Maranatha prayer”, in that the not-yet aspect of God’s Kingdom still lies ahead when Jesus will return to Earth to reign. But we pray an existential prayer for the “already” state: that God will help us today to depend upon his Spirit to lead us into Kingdom of God obedience and blessing.

So when you read Joshua this year, think about how, as Joshua led Israel, and David would someday lead them, so today our Joshua (Yeshua Jesus) leads us to make the not-yet Kingdom an experienced reality, even while we wait for God’s timing to make the “not-yet” into a “now” kingdom on earth by the literal return of Jesus as the ultimate David.