Joshua24chapter 24

Joshua 24:1-2

Shechem carries its own history into this scene. Abram built his first altar in the land at Shechem in Genesis 12:6-7, Jacob bought the parcel of ground there in Genesis 33:19, and Genesis 35:4 records Jacob hiding the strange gods of his household under the oak by Shechem, which is what Joshua does with strange gods and a stone under an oak before this chapter ends. The recital opens with Abraham's own father, and verse 2 says Terah served other gods, so the line God chose begins among idolaters on the far side of the river. Joshua 8:30-35 had already staged a reading of the law at Ebal and Gerizim, the two mountains standing over this place.

Joshua 24:3-4

I took your father Abraham: From here to verse 13 God speaks in the first person and the verbs are all his: I took, I gave, I sent, I brought, I destroyed. Abraham does nothing in verse 3 except get taken, which matches Genesis 12:1, where the call arrives before any word of Abram's. Esau's grant of mount Seir is credited to God in the same breath as Jacob's line, and Deuteronomy 2:5 says it the same way, that Seir was given to Esau for a possession and Israel was not to meddle with it.

Joshua 24:5-7

The darkness of verse 7 is the cloud of Exodus 14:20, which came between the two camps and gave light on one side and dark on the other. Joshua tells this crowd that their eyes have seen what God did in Egypt, though the men who watched it died in the wilderness and these are their sons. Deuteronomy 5:3 addresses a generation the same way, as though Horeb had been made with them rather than with their fathers. Thirty-eight years then close in six words, that ye dwelt in the wilderness a long season.

Joshua 24:8-10

The Amorites east of Jordan are Sihon and Og of Numbers 21:21-35. Balak's hire of Balaam runs through Numbers 22 to 24, and here God says I would not hearken unto Balaam, which puts the blessing down to his own refusal rather than to any restraint in the prophet. Deuteronomy 23:5 states it the same way, that the Lord turned the curse into a blessing. Israel heard none of that exchange at the time, since Numbers records the whole of it away from the camp, so this verse tells them what was being transacted over their heads while they sat in the plains of Moab.

Joshua 24:11-13

Seven nations are named in verse 11, the standard list of Deuteronomy 7:1. The hornet of verse 12 was promised at Exodus 23:28 and Deuteronomy 7:20 and appears in Scripture only in those three places, and readers have taken it two ways for a long time: as literal swarms driving the inhabitants out, and as a figure for the terror that ran ahead of Israel, which is how Keil and Delitzsch read it. Verse 13 is Deuteronomy 6:10-11 reported as done, cities they built not and vineyards they planted not, and the sentence leaves Israel no share in the work.

Joshua 24:14-15

Now therefore fear the Lord: The order to put away the gods your fathers served tells a reader that idols were still in the camp after everything recited in verses 2 to 13, and verse 23 says so again in plain words. The choice Joshua sets is between the gods beyond the river and the gods of the Amorites, so serving nothing at all is absent from the options he lays out. He answers his own question before anyone else can speak, and he answers for a household rather than for one man.

Joshua 24:16-18

The people answer with a recital of their own and it is accurate. The house of bondage is the phrase of Exodus 20:2, the great signs are the plagues, and the preserving in all the way is the wilderness. Nothing in their reply is wrong, which is what makes Joshua's response in verse 19 hard to read. Judges 2:7 confirms that they did serve the Lord all the days of Joshua, and Judges 2:10 says the generation after them knew neither the Lord nor the works he had done.

Joshua 24:19-20

Ye cannot serve the Lord is the line readers pass over, and it stands in the text without softening. Matthew Henry and John Gill read it as Joshua pressing the cost so that the oath is not taken lightly, and the covenant form supports that, since a witnesses clause follows immediately in verse 22. Others read it as a statement about the people in front of him, that men with strange gods still among them, as verse 23 says they were, cannot serve a holy and jealous God on those terms. The clause he will not forgive your transgressions sits beside Exodus 34:7, where the same God forgives iniquity and transgression, and the two sentences are left standing together.

Joshua 24:21-22

Ye are witnesses against yourselves is a legal move rather than a rhetorical one. Covenant documents name witnesses, and Deuteronomy 30:19 calls heaven and earth to that office, while here the people are made witnesses to their own oath, so nobody outside the assembly is needed to convict them later. Their answer opens by contradicting what Joshua has just said and then repeats the promise of verse 18.

Joshua 24:23-24

The idols are described as among you, in the present tense, at the end of a covenant ceremony. Genesis 35:2 has Jacob giving his household the same order in almost the same words at this same town, put away the strange gods that are among you, and Genesis 35:4 says he hid them under the oak by Shechem. The people's second answer carries a clause the first one lacked, his voice will we obey, which moves the promise from loyalty to obedience.

Joshua 24:25-26

Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, which puts a hand other than Moses into that book. Gill and Keil take the words as this transaction added to the roll described at Deuteronomy 31:24-26, and others read the phrase of a separate record kept at the sanctuary. The stone goes up under an oak by the sanctuary of the Lord, though the tabernacle had stood at Shiloh since Joshua 18:1; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown suppose the ark was brought over for the occasion, as it was moved in the emergency of Judges 20:27, while others take the ground as called a sanctuary because of what was done on it.

Joshua 24:27

A stone standing as a witness is an old form in these books. Genesis 31:45-52 has Jacob and Laban raise a heap called Galeed to witness between them, and Joshua 22:26-28 has the eastern tribes build an altar named as a witness rather than for sacrifice. Adam Clarke takes the permanence of the thing as the point, a stone competent in every later age as a witness who had been present and heard the words. The reason is given in the last clause, lest ye deny your God.

Joshua 24:28-30

Judges 2:6-9 repeats these verses almost word for word, which is how the next book takes up the thread. Joshua is called the servant of the Lord here, and a query across the King James text shows the title belongs to Moses in every earlier place it occurs, from Deuteronomy 34:5 through Joshua 22:5; it comes to Joshua in this verse and once more at Judges 2:8. He dies at a hundred and ten, the age Joseph reached at Genesis 50:26, and those two men are the only ones in Scripture given that number. Timnath-serah is the city he asked for and received at Joshua 19:50.

Joshua 24:31

The verse carries its own limit inside the sentence, that Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua. The ground it gives is knowledge, that those elders had known all the works of the Lord which he did for Israel. Judges 2:10 supplies the other half, another generation which knew not the Lord nor yet his works, so one generation is the whole distance between this verse and the collapse.

Joshua 24:32

the bones of Joseph, which: Joseph's bones close an oath sworn at Genesis 50:25 and kept by Moses at Exodus 13:19, and the grave is the field Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor at Genesis 33:19. Hebrews 11:22 counts the commandment about those bones among the acts of faith, so the New Testament reads the request as belief that God would bring the family up out of Egypt. Acts 7:16 tells it differently in Stephen's speech, giving the purchase to Abraham and the burial at Sychem, and both accounts stand as written without one being used to correct the other.

Joshua 24:33

The book closes with three graves, Joshua at verse 30, Joseph at verse 32 and Eleazar here. The priesthood passes to Phinehas, who holds the covenant of an everlasting priesthood from Numbers 25:11-13 and is still standing before the ark at Judges 20:28. No successor to Joshua is named anywhere in the chapter, and the next book opens with Israel asking who shall go up for them first.