1And Joshua will gather together all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and he will call for the old men of Israel, and for the heads, and for the judges, and for the scribes; and they will stand before God. 2And Joshua will say to all the people, So said Jehovah the God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt beyond the river from everlasting time, Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor and they will serve other gods. 3And I will take your father Abraham from beyond the river, and I will lead him into all the land of Canaan, and I will multiply his seed and I will give to him Isaak. 4And I will give to Isaak, Jacob and Esau: and I will give to Esau mount Seir, to possess it; and Jacob and his sons will go down to Egypt 5And I will send Moses and Aaron, and I will strike Egypt as I did in its midst: and afterwards I will bring you out 6And I will bring out your fathers from Egypt; and ye shall come to the sea: and the Egyptians will pursue after your fathers with chariot and horsemen to the sea of sedge 7And they will cry to Jehovah, and he will put darkness between you and between Egypt, and he will bring the sea upon him, and will cover him; and your eyes will see what I did in Egypt; and ye shall dwell in the desert many days. 8And I will bring you to the land of the Amorite dwelling beyond Jordan, and they will fight with you and I will give them into your hand, and ye shall inherit their land; and I will destroy them from before your face. 9And Balak, son of Zippor, king of Moab, will rise up and will fight against Israel, and he will send and call for Balaam son of Beor, to curse you: 10And I was not disposed to hear to Balaam and blessing, he will bless you; and I will deliver you from his hand. 11And ye shall pass through Jordan, and ye shall come to Jericho; and the lords of Jericho will fight against you, the Amorite and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite and the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite; and I will give them into your hand. 12And I will send before you the hornet, and it shall drive them out from your face, the two kings of the Amorites: not with thy sword and not with thy bow. 13And I will give to you the land which ye labored not in it, and cities which ye built not, and ye shall dwell in them; the vineyards and the olives which ye planted not, ye ate. 14And, now fear ye Jehovah and serve him in uprightness and in truth; and remove the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt; and serve ye Jehovah. 15And if evil in your eyes to serve Jehovah, choose for yourselves this day whom ye will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which are beyond the river, and whether the gods of the Amorite which ye dwelt in their land: and I and my house, we will serve Jehovah. 16An the people will answer and say, Woe to us forsaking Jehovah to serve other gods; 17For Jehovah our God, he bringing us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of servants, and who did before our eyes these great signs; and he will watch us in all the way which we went in it, and among all the peoples which we passed through in the midst of them: 18And Jehovah will drive out all the peoples, and the Amorite dwelling in the land, from our face: also we will serve Jehovah, for he is our God. 19And Joshua will say to the people, Ye will not be able to serve Jehovah, for a holy God is he: a jealous God is he; he will not take away your transgressions and your sins. 20If ye shall forsake Jehovah and serve strange gods, and he turned back and did evil to you, and finished you after that he did good to you. 21And the people will say to Joshua, Nay; but Jehovah we will serve. 22And Joshua will say to the people, Ye are witnesses against yourselves, for ye chose to yourselves Jehovah to serve him. And they will say, Witnesses. 23And now remove the strange gods which are in the midst of you, and incline your heart to Jehovah the God of Israel. 24And the people will say to Joshua, Jehovah our God we will serve, and to his voice will we hear. 25And Joshua will cut out a covenant to the people in that day and will set to him a law and a judgment in Shechem. 26And Joshua will write these words in the book of the law of God, and he will take a great stone and will set it up there under the oak which is in the holy place of Jehovah. 27And Joshua will say to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be to us for a testimony, for it heard all the sayings of Jehovah which he spake with us: and it was to you for a testimony lest ye shall lie to your God. 28And Joshua will send away the people each to his inheritance. 29And it will be after these words, and Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Jehovah, will die, the son of a hundred and ten years. 30And they will bury him in the bound of his inheritance in Timnath-Serah, which is in mount Ephraim from the north, to the mount of Gaash. 31And Israel will serve Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the old men who prolonged the days after Joshua, and who knew all the works of Jehovah which he did to Israel. 32And the bones of Joseph which the sons of Israel brought up out of Egypt, they buried in Shechem, in a portion of the field which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem, for a hundred weight; and they will be to the sons of Joseph for an inheritance. 33And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they will bury him in Gibeah of Phinehas his son, which he gave to him in mount Ephraim.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 1 JOSHUA ASSEMBLING THE TRIBES. (
Josh 24:1)
Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem--Another and final opportunity of dissuading the people against idolatry is here described as taken by the aged leader, whose solicitude on this account arose from his knowledge of the extreme readiness of the people to conform to the manners of the surrounding nations. This address was made to the representatives of the people convened at Shechem, and which had already been the scene of a solemn renewal of the covenant (
Josh 8:30,
Josh 8:35). The transaction now to be entered upon being in principle and object the same, it was desirable to give it all the solemn impressiveness which might be derived from the memory of the former ceremonial, as well as from other sacred associations of the place (
Gen 12:6-
Gen 12:7;
Gen 33:18-
Gen 33:20;
Gen 35:2-
Gen 35:4).
they presented themselves before God--It is generally assumed that the ark of the covenant had been transferred on this occasion to Shechem; as on extraordinary emergencies it was for a time removed (Jdg. 20:1-18;
1Sam 4:3;
2Sam 15:24). But the statement, not necessarily implying this, may be viewed as expressing only the religious character of the ceremony [HENGSTENBERG].
2 RELATES GOD'S BENEFITS. (
Josh 24:2-
Josh 24:13)
Joshua said unto all the people--His address briefly recapitulated the principal proofs of the divine goodness to Israel from the call of Abraham to their happy establishment in the land of promise; it showed them that they were indebted for their national existence as well as their peculiar privileges, not to any merits of their own, but to the free grace of God.
Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood--The Euphrates, namely, at Ur.
Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor--(see
Gen 11:27). Though Terah had three sons, Nahor only is mentioned with Abraham, as the Israelites were descended from him on the mother's side through Rebekah and her nieces, Leah and Rachel.
served other gods--conjoining, like Laban, the traditional knowledge of the true God with the domestic use of material images (
Gen 31:19,
Gen 31:34).
3 I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan--It was an irresistible impulse of divine grace which led the patriarch to leave his country and relatives, to migrate to Canaan, and live a "stranger and pilgrim" in that land.
4 I gave unto Esau mount Seir--(See on
Gen 36:8). In order that he might be no obstacle to Jacob and his posterity being the exclusive heirs of Canaan.
12 I sent the hornet before you--a particular species of wasp which swarms in warm countries and sometimes assumes the scourging character of a plague; or, as many think, it is a figurative expression for uncontrollable terror (see on
Exod 23:28).
14 Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth--After having enumerated so many grounds for national gratitude, Joshua calls on them to declare, in a public and solemn manner, whether they will be faithful and obedient to the God of Israel. He avowed this to be his own unalterable resolution, and urged them, if they were sincere in making a similar avowal, "to put away the strange gods that were among them"--a requirement which seems to imply that some were suspected of a strong hankering for, or concealed practice of, the idolatry, whether in the form of Zabaism, the fire-worship of their Chaldean ancestors, or the grosser superstitions of the Canaanites.
26 Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God--registered the engagements of that solemn covenant in the book of sacred history.
took a great stone--according to the usage of ancient times to erect stone pillars as monuments of public transactions.
set it up there under an oak--or terebinth, in all likelihood, the same as that at the root of which Jacob buried the idols and charms found in his family.
that was by the sanctuary of the Lord--either the spot where the ark had stood, or else the place around, so called from that religious meeting, as Jacob named Beth-el the house of God.
29 HIS AGE AND DEATH. (
Josh 24:29-
Josh 24:30)
Joshua . . . died--LIGHTFOOT computes that he lived seventeen, others twenty-seven years, after the entrance into Canaan. He was buried, according to the Jewish practice, within the limits of his own inheritance. The eminent public services he had long rendered to Israel and the great amount of domestic comfort and national prosperity he had been instrumental in diffusing among the several tribes, were deeply felt, were universally acknowledged; and a testimonial in the form of a statue or obelisk would have been immediately raised to his honor, in all parts of the land, had such been the fashion of the times. The brief but noble epitaph by the historian is, Joshua, "the servant of the Lord."
31 Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua--The high and commanding character of this eminent leader had given so decided a tone to the sentiments and manners of his contemporaries and the memory of his fervent piety and many virtues continued so vividly impressed on the memories of the people, that the sacred historian has recorded it to his immortal honor. "Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua."
32 the bones of Joseph--They had carried these venerable relics with them in all their migrations through the desert, and deferred the burial, according to the dying charge of Joseph himself, till they arrived in the promised land. The sarcophagus, in which his mummied body had been put, was brought thither by the Israelites, and probably buried when the tribe of Ephraim had obtained their settlement, or at the solemn convocation described in this chapter.
in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought . . . for an hundred pieces of silver--Kestitah translated, "piece of silver," is supposed to mean "a lamb," the weights being in the form of lambs or kids, which were, in all probability, the earliest standard of value among pastoral people. The tomb that now covers the spot is a Mohammedan Welce, but there is no reason to doubt that the precious deposit of Joseph's remains may be concealed there at the present time.
33 Eleazar the son of Aaron died, and they buried him in . . . mount Ephraim--The sepulchre is at the modern village Awertah, which, according to Jewish travellers, contains the graves also of Ithamar, the brother of Phinehas, the son of Eleazar [VAN DE VELDE].