Exodus 17:8-13
Till the sun goes down
His first appearance is a battle in the valley while the outcome is decided on the hilltop by whether two arms stay up. He wins, and is told to write it down.
People of the Bible
Joshua
Spent forty years as the assistant who did not leave the tent, and then led the crossing.
Also called Hoshea, son of Nun
Joshua is first seen picking men to fight Amalek while Moses watches from a hill. After that he is mostly in the background and always close: on the mountain when Moses goes up, still at the tent when everyone else has gone back to their own, one of twelve sent to look at the land and one of two who came back saying it could be done. He waits out the forty years that sentence entails. Then Moses dies, and the first thing he is told is to be strong and courageous, three times in one chapter.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Joshua
- 01
- 02
Numbers 13:1-14:10
Two reports out of twelve
Ten men describe giants and a land that eats its inhabitants. He and Caleb tear their clothes and say the LORD is with us, and the congregation picks up stones.
- 03
Deuteronomy 31:1-8
The charge in front of everyone
Moses, at a hundred and twenty, calls him out before all Israel and tells him he will go with this people into the land. The commission is public, so nobody can dispute it later.
- 04
Joshua 3:1-4:24
The river standing in a heap
At harvest, with the Jordan over its banks, the priests carry the ark in first and the water stops upstream. Twelve stones come out of the riverbed so that children will ask about them.
- 05
Joshua 6:1-21
The seventh circuit
Six days of walking around a shut city in silence, then seven times on the seventh day, then trumpets and a shout. It is the least military way to take a fortress imaginable.
- 06
Joshua 24:1-28
As for me and my house
Old, at Shechem, he recites the whole history from Abraham forward and then tells them to choose. When they say they will serve the LORD he warns them they are not able, and writes it in the book anyway.
Why it matters
Joshua is the succession that works. Everything the exodus promised, land and rest and a place to put the ark, arrives under him, and the book that carries his name ends with the nation standing at Shechem choosing whom it will serve. He is also the counterweight to Moses: no signs, no burning bush, no face to face conversation, just a man told to keep a book of law in his mouth day and night and to go and take what was promised.
29 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
