Joshua 23

Joshua 23:1-24

Section 2. (Joshua 23:1-16; Joshua 24:1-33.)The closing chapters are so plain that they require, in general, but little interpretation. Joshua’s appeal, the renewal of the covenant, the limiting statement as to Israel’s obedience in the (lays of Joshua and of those contemporary with him, all show the decline that is imminent, and which faces us at once in the following book. Joshua’s words, “Ye cannot serve Jehovah,” show that, with all his heroism of individual obedience, he is not deceived as to the issue under that covenant which so often needs renewing on the people’s side. How could he be, with Moses’ song ringing in his ears? Only those willing to be deceived could be. And so with ourselves exactly: predictions of the Church’s course have so little ambiguity that it is marvelous that the smooth preaching of peace, and the comforting assurance of progressive blessing, could ever gain credence with those who boast in an “open Bible.” But the Bible can be but little “open,” as long as man’s pride and self-seeking hang their imaginative veil before it; and the Church, believing herself heir to Israel’s promises, has largely refused to accept the lessons of Israel’s career, which she has so closely followed. Thank God, we are near the end of the strange history of near two millennia and for us the end is the coming of the Lord. (1) These charges are a double warning, at the pathetic moment when Joshua, their leader in victory so often, is passing away. Old, and stricken with the weight of the years he carries, he stands before assembled Israel, to remind them of the Lord’s fulfillment to them of His promises, and to assure them that His threatenings would be no less perfectly fulfilled. The word given to himself at the beginning of the conquest of the land, he now exhorts them with in turn: “Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left.” In truth it needs courage to stand for God and for His word in the face of all that this involves! Yet how strange to speak of any call for this as if it could be lacking! Courage, in standing for God! But such is man, even the best of men, that he needs to be urged to this, though only faith is lacking in this cause for one man to chase a thousand, yea, for two to put ten thousand to flight. (2) Joshua’s second address is at Shechem, a place memorable in so many ways from Abraham’s time and there the covenant with Jehovah is renewed. Joshua reminds them again of the mercies of God towards them, beginning with the call of Abraham himself, of whom we are now for the first told that he had been involved in the common idolatry of the times, along with his father Terah and his brother Nahor. With grace thus the tale begins, a grace their need of which their own history had so clearly testified. Divine power had been shown in the gift of Isaac, given when nature was dead in Abraham. Even Jacob and Esau were the seed of a barren woman. To Esau God had given Seir, while Israel endured the needed discipline in Egypt.

Then came the marvel of their deliverance, the days of sojourn in the wilderness, the dispossession of the Amorite kings, and the spiritual conflict when Balaam, after all the history of failure, sought how to curse and ended but in blessing them finally, the possession of the land they now enjoyed. After all this, Joshua bids them, if there could be doubt, to make up their minds whom they would serve, the idols their fathers had served beyond the river, the gods of the Canaanites in whose land they dwelt, or else Jehovah: his own choice for himself and his house was already made. In result the people renew the covenant, and a great stone is set up under an oak in memorial of it. It is still the legal covenant, and all is suspended upon an obedience at the best how fitful! The stone in its lifelessness would abide, more certainly far than the living tree under which it was set up, Israel’s picture at that moment. For the present it is well, and they depart, every one in peace to his inheritance. Joshua dies, his influence lasting till the end of his generation -a significant limitation. Joseph his father’s bones are buried at Shechem. Lastly, Eleazar dies: and these three graves are a sign that the Great Deliverer has not yet come. The types are but the shadow, not the substance: which yet for faith they point on towards. Thank God, for us the Deliverer is come, although not even yet the full deliverance.