The People Answer, the Stone Witnesses, the Servants Rest

The Greek Old Testament names the place as Shiloh, here and in verse 25; the Hebrew has Shechem. “Presented themselves before God” may imply that the ark was brought, since the phrase is used of standing before the sanctuary. The same five groups were summoned in 23:2.

Terah’s family lived in Ur and then Haran, both centres of the worship of the moon god, and some scholars connect Terah’s name with yareach, moon; that is a proposal from the name. What the verse states plainly is that Abraham’s own father worshipped other gods.

“Gave” begins to run through the speech: God gave Isaac, gave Jacob and Esau, gave Seir, gave the Amorites, gave the land (verses 3–13). “Multiplied his seed” covers a long delay: Isaac was not born until Abraham was a hundred (Genesis 21:5).

Moses had told Israel not to touch Esau’s land: “I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:5). The whole account of Joseph and the descent to Egypt is folded into six English words: “Jacob and his children went down into Egypt.”

Micah 6:4 gives a similar summary with one more name: “I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.” The Hebrew of “according to that which I did among them” is compressed, and the Greek reads it more fully; the plagues are summed up in one clause.

“Red sea” is yam suph in Hebrew, commonly explained as the sea of reeds; the name Red Sea came into English through the Greek and Latin versions. “Chariots and horsemen” is the phrase of Exodus 14:9, Pharaoh’s whole mobile force.

“Darkness” here is maafel, a word found only in this verse. Exodus 14:20 describes the same moment: “it was a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to these.” The forty wilderness years become “a long season”.

This is the first time in the review that Israel fights: “they fought with you: and I gave them into your hand.” Even here the Israelite part is the defending, and every other verb, giving and destroying, belongs to God.

Numbers 22–24 records no battle between Balak and Israel; he fought with a hired prophet instead. The review counts the hiring of Balaam as an act of war: “warred against Israel” describes the attempt to curse.

“He blessed you still” is a doubled verb, blessing he blessed you, the same form Balak used in his complaint: “behold, thou hast blessed them altogether” (Numbers 23:11). God refused to hear Balaam, so the curse came out as a blessing.

Chapter 6 describes no battle at Jericho, only the walls falling, yet here “the men of Jericho fought against you”; the word for men is baale, the citizens or lords of the city. All seven peoples of the land are named, including the Girgashites often left out of the lists.

Exodus 23:28 had promised, “I will send hornets before thee.” “The two kings of the Amorites” are Sihon and Og, defeated east of the Jordan; the Greek reads “twelve kings”, which would fit better after the mention of Jericho.

Deuteronomy 6:10–12 promised these same unbuilt cities and unplanted vineyards, and then warned: “beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt.” Joshua’s next word, “Now therefore”, delivers the warning that came attached to the gift.

“Sincerity” is tamim, whole or blameless, the word of God’s charge to Abraham, “walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1). Only Ezekiel 20:7–8 also says that Israel kept Egyptian idols while in Egypt; this verse assumes it.

The alternatives Joshua offers are both false: the gods of the ancestors beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites now at hand. Elijah will put a sharper form of the question on Carmel: “How long halt ye between two opinions?” (1 Kings 18:21).

“Forsake” is azav. The Book of Judges will use this very verb for what happened next: “they forsook the LORD God of their fathers... and served Baal and Ashtaroth” (Judges 2:12–13). The people’s own word of refusal comes back against them.

“The house of bondage” is the phrase of the first commandment’s preface: “which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). The people answer Joshua in the opening words of the Ten Commandments.

“Therefore will we also serve” is gam anachnu, “we too”, joining Joshua’s “as for me and my house”. “He is our God” is the covenant formula spoken from the people’s side, the answer to God’s “I will be your God”.

“An holy God” uses a plural adjective with Elohim, qedoshim, an unusual construction. “Jealous” is the rare form qanno, found only here and in Nahum 1:2, “God is jealous, and the LORD revengeth”; Exodus 20:5 has the more common qanna.

The shape of the warning follows Deuteronomy 28:63: as the LORD rejoiced to do good, so he will rejoice to destroy. Joshua keeps the order in time: “after that he hath done you good”. Past kindness does not cancel the threat.

The people answer Joshua with one word first: “Nay”, lo, flatly contradicting him. The captain of the LORD’s host had answered Joshua with the same “Nay” in 5:14. Now it is Israel that refuses the terms offered.

“We are witnesses” is one word in Hebrew, edim. The elders at Bethlehem answer Boaz with the same word when he buys Naomi’s field and takes Ruth (Ruth 4:9–11), the legal formula for a binding transaction. The people become the witnesses to their own contract.

“Incline your heart” is natah levav, to turn the heart in a direction. Solomon prays at the temple “that he may incline our hearts unto him” (1 Kings 8:58), and his foreign wives later “turned away his heart” with the same verb (1 Kings 11:3).

The people speak three times in this scene (verses 16–18, 21, 24), and each answer is shorter and firmer. This last echoes Sinai: “All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7).

“A statute and an ordinance”, choq and mishpat in the singular, is the pair used only once before, at Marah, where God sweetened the bitter water and “there he made for them a statute and an ordinance” (Exodus 15:25). The first law after the sea and the last covenant of Joshua share the phrase.

Excavations at Tell Balata, ancient Shechem, uncovered a large temple with a great standing stone in its courtyard, and some excavators proposed a link with this verse; the connection is a proposal. “The book of the law of God” is the only time the Book of Joshua calls it that.

“Lest ye deny” is kichesh, to lie or disown. Proverbs 30:9 uses it for the danger of plenty: “Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD?” The stone is to answer anyone who later claims no such promise was made.

The same dismissal ends the Book of Judges, in a very different setting: “the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family... every man to his inheritance” (Judges 21:24). Both books close with Israel going home.

Egyptian texts treat a hundred and ten years as the ideal length of a life. The Book of Joshua gives the title “the servant of the LORD” to Joshua only here, at his death, the title Moses bore in 1:1.

The brooks of Gaash were the home of Hiddai, one of David’s mighty men (2 Samuel 23:30). The Greek version adds that they laid in Joshua’s tomb the flint knives he had used to circumcise Israel at Gilgal, “and they are there unto this day”.

“Overlived” is 1611 English for outlived. “Known all the works” means experienced them at first hand. In the Greek Old Testament this verse stands before the notice of Joshua’s death, closing the covenant scene rather than following the burial.

“Pieces of silver” is qesitah, a unit of value found only here, in Genesis 33:19 where the purchase is recorded, and in Job 42:11. The plot near Shechem is where John places Jacob’s well at Sychar, “near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph” (John 4:5).

Eleazar is buried on “the hill of Phinehas”, land given to his son. The Greek version does not stop here: it adds that Phinehas served as priest, that Israel served Astarte and the gods of the nations, and that the LORD gave them into the hand of Eglon king of Moab, leading straight into the Book of Judges.