Joshua23chapter 23

Joshua 23:1-2

The rest named in verse 1 is the narrator's own summary at 21:44 said over again, and verse 9 will repeat the other half of that sentence, that no man could stand before them. Hebrews 4:8 takes up this word and argues that if Joshua had given them rest, another day would not have been spoken of afterward. Joshua is old and stricken in age here, where 13:1 called him old and stricken in years, the same words used of David at 1 Kings 1:1. The four ranks summoned, elders and heads and judges and officers, are the four he calls again at 24:1, and Moses gathered Israel by a like list at Deuteronomy 29:10.

Joshua 23:3-5

The Lord your God is he that hath fought for you puts in the past tense what Exodus 14:14 and Deuteronomy 3:22 had promised in the future. Verse 4 says the nations that remain have already been divided by lot as inheritance, so the title was handed over before the ground was held, which is the seam the book opened at 13:1. Verse 5 leaves the expelling still to come, and Gill reads the possession as held on condition of obedience, while Clarke reads the surviving Canaanites as left through Israel's own slackness rather than through any strength of theirs.

Joshua 23:6-8

The charge God gave Joshua alone at 1:7, be very courageous to do all the law and turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, is handed here to the whole nation in the same words, and the courage asked for is courage to keep a book. Verse 7 forbids even the naming of their gods, which is Exodus 23:13, and its five clauses fall in order from keeping company to speech to oath to service to worship. Cleave in verse 8 is the word Deuteronomy 11:22 and 13:4 use of holding fast to the Lord, and it is the same word Joshua turns on the nations at verse 12; those two verses are the only places it falls in the chapter.

Joshua 23:9-11

No man hath been able to stand before you is the second half of 21:44, and the book records one exception to it, at 7:12 after Achan, where Israel could not stand before their enemies. One man chasing a thousand raises the figure of Leviticus 26:8, where five chase a hundred, and Deuteronomy 32:30 asks how one could chase a thousand unless their Rock had sold them. Judges 2:14 turns the sentence around and says Israel could no longer stand before their enemies. Verse 11 is the whole charge in one line, and Clarke reads take good heed unto yourselves as take heed to your souls, the Hebrew word covering the whole man.

Joshua 23:12-13

Numbers 33:55 is the warning being quoted, that those you let remain shall be pricks in your eyes and thorns in your sides. Joshua swaps the pair, giving thorns in the eyes and scourges in the sides, and adds snares and traps, which is the word Exodus 23:33 and Deuteronomy 7:16 use of serving their gods. Judges 2:3 reports the thing arriving: they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. The marriages of verse 12 are what Deuteronomy 7:3 forbade, and 1 Kings 11:2 quotes that prohibition and then says Solomon clave unto these in love, using the verb Joshua uses here.

Joshua 23:14

The way of all the earth occurs here for the first time in Scripture and once more afterward, when David says it to Solomon at 1 Kings 2:2. Not one thing hath failed is the narrator's line from 21:45 now spoken by Joshua, said twice inside the one verse and put to the people as something they know in their own hearts and souls. Judges 1 opens by listing the towns that were never taken, and both accounts stand. Keil and Delitzsch read Joshua's words as a statement about what God had done rather than a measure of how much ground Israel occupied, and Gill reads verse 5 as leaving the remainder under the condition of obedience.

Joshua 23:15-16

The address turns on a single hinge, that the faithfulness which brought the good things will bring the evil ones, and Clarke puts it that the veracity of God is pledged equally for both. The closing sentence of verse 16 is Deuteronomy 11:17 said again almost word for word, the anger of the Lord kindled and the people perishing quickly from off the good land. Israel is told of losing the country in the same speech that says nothing failed, and 2 Kings 17:7-23 and 25:21 record where that warning landed. Henry counts the threat pressed three times in the chapter, at verses 13, 15 and 16.