Joshua22chapter 22

Joshua 22:1-3

The bargain being settled here was struck at Numbers 32:20-22, where these tribes promised to cross over armed before the Lord until every other tribe had its inheritance. Joshua's words at verse 3, that they have not left their brethren these many days, are the receipt for that promise. Commentators reckon the length of service from Caleb's arithmetic at Joshua 14:7 and 14:10, forty years old at the spying and eighty-five now, with thirty-eight of the forty-five spent in the wilderness, which leaves about seven years of war.

Joshua 22:4-5

Rest is the word the whole book has been moving toward, promised at Deuteronomy 12:9-10, held out to these same tribes at Joshua 1:13-15, and recorded as delivered at Joshua 21:44. Hebrews 4:8 picks the word up, and the King James there spells the name Jesus for Joshua: if he had given them rest, God would not afterward have spoken of another day. The charge at verse 5 stacks five verbs, to love and to walk and to keep and to cleave and to serve, which is the vocabulary of Deuteronomy 6:5, 10:12 and 11:22 handed to the men going home.

Joshua 22:6-8

So Joshua blessed them: The spoil is divided with the brethren who stayed behind, which is the rule Moses laid down at Numbers 31:27 after Midian and the rule David makes permanent at 1 Samuel 30:24-25 after Ziklag. Verse 7 explains why Manasseh is split in two, since Moses had given half the tribe Bashan at Numbers 32:33 and Deuteronomy 3:13 and Joshua gave the other half its portion west of the river. Joshua blesses them twice in three verses, and the last instruction he gives is to hand part of the winnings to men who were not there to take it.

Joshua 22:9-10

They leave from Shiloh, where the tabernacle had been set up at Joshua 18:1 and where it stays until the ark is taken in 1 Samuel 4. Where the altar stood is disputed, because verse 10 places it in the land of Canaan while verse 11 says over against the land of Canaan, and readers have taken it for the western bank and for the eastern without the text settling either. It is called a great altar to see to, which says it was built to be visible at a distance, and that detail turns out to be the argument of verse 28.

Joshua 22:11-12

Israel hears a report and musters at Shiloh for war before anyone has asked a question. Deuteronomy 13:12-15 sets out the procedure for this exact charge, that a report of a city gone after other gods is to be inquired of, searched out and asked diligently before a sword is drawn. The inquiry does happen, and it happens in the next verse with the army already gathered.

Joshua 22:13-15

Phinehas is the man of Numbers 25:7-8, who took a javelin into the tent at Peor and stopped the plague, and who was given a covenant of peace for it at Numbers 25:12-13. He is the one sent to men accused of a second Peor, and Peor is the first thing he raises when he speaks at verse 17. The ten princes are one for each tribe settled west of the river, Judah, Simeon, Benjamin, Dan, Ephraim, the western half of Manasseh, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher and Naphtali, with Levi standing in the priest who leads them.

Joshua 22:16-17

The word trespass here is the word used of Achan at Joshua 7:1, and the delegation names Achan outright four verses later. Peor is raised as a case still open, that they are not cleansed from it until this day, though the twenty and four thousand who died for it at Numbers 25:9 had been dead a generation. The charge assumes that a second altar can only mean a second worship, which is what Deuteronomy 12:5-14 made a capital matter when it fixed sacrifice at one place.

Joshua 22:18-20

The argument is corporate, that a rebellion today brings wrath tomorrow on the whole congregation. Verse 19 makes an offer before it repeats the threat, that if the eastern land is unclean they may cross over and take possession among the western tribes, and that offer concedes the sanctuary sits on one side of the river only. The concession is the exact fear the eastern tribes are about to describe in verses 24 and 25. Achan is the proof text at verse 20, one man who took of the accursed thing and did not perish alone in his iniquity.

Joshua 22:21-23

The answer opens with a divine name said twice over, the Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, which is El Elohim Jehovah repeated in the form an oath takes. What follows is a self-curse, that if this was rebellion then save us not this day, and let the Lord himself require it. They swear to the motive before they explain the building, so the oath comes first and the reason for the stones waits three more verses.

Joshua 22:24-25

The fear named here is generational, that one day the western children will tell the eastern children they have no part in the Lord because the river is a border. Numbers 32:6-15 shows Moses suspecting these same tribes of that same distance before they ever crossed, so the anxiety is older than the altar. Time bore the fear out: Judges 12:1-6 has Ephraim and Gilead at war with a password to tell one from the other, and 1 Chronicles 5:26 records Reuben, Gad and the half tribe carried into Assyria before the rest of the nation.

Joshua 22:26-27

An altar that receives no sacrifice is a monument, and a monument is what they say they raised, a witness between us, and you, and our generations after us. The pattern is Genesis 31:47-48, where Jacob and Laban pile stones at a border and name the heap for what it does, a heap of witness. Joshua sets up the same kind of marker twice himself, the twelve stones out of Jordan in chapter 4 and the great stone under the oak at 24:26-27, which he says has heard all the words of the Lord.

Joshua 22:28-29

The word rendered pattern at verse 28 is the word used of the tabernacle plan shown to Moses at Exodus 25:9 and 25:40, so what stands by the river is a copy built to be recognised rather than used. The defence turns on that: the thing is shaped like an altar so it can be pointed at, and no fire is ever laid on it. Verse 29 puts the denial in the strongest form the language has, God forbid, and locates the only lawful altar where Deuteronomy 12 located it, before the tabernacle.

Joshua 22:30-31

It pleased them, and the man who once settled a matter at Peor with a javelin takes an answer here and goes home. Phinehas reads the outcome as evidence rather than as relief, that this day we perceive that the Lord is among us because the trespass was not committed. His last clause hands the credit to the accused, that they have delivered the children of Israel out of the hand of the Lord.

Joshua 22:32-34

The name Ed stands in italics in the King James because it is absent from the Masoretic text, which reads only that they called the altar, for it is a witness between us; a few Hebrew manuscripts along with the Syriac and Arabic versions carry the word, and Clarke and Barnes both lay the variant out. Ed means witness, and the sentence it heads is a confession rather than a boundary claim, that the Lord is God. Israel had gathered at Shiloh to destroy a tribe and went home blessing God instead, and Judges 20 records the same nation mustering against one of its own tribes and not turning back.