1And Joshua gathereth all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and calleth for the elders of Israel, and for its heads, and for its judges, and for its authorities, and they station themselves before God. 2And Joshua saith unto all the people, "Thus said Jehovah, God of Israel, Beyond the River have your fathers dwelt of old -- Terah father of Abraham and father of Nachor -- and they serve other gods; 3and I take your father Abraham from beyond the River, and cause him to go through all the land of Canaan, and multiply his seed, and give to him Isaac. 4And I give to Isaac, Jacob and Esau; and I give to Esau mount Seir, to possess it; and Jacob and his sons have gone down to Egypt. 5And I send Moses and Aaron, and plague Egypt, as I have done in its midst, and afterwards I have brought you out. 6And I bring out your fathers from Egypt, and ye go into the sea, and the Egyptians pursue after your fathers, with chariot and with horsemen, to the Red Sea; 7and they cry unto Jehovah, and He setteth thick darkness between you and the Egyptians, and bringeth on them the sea, and covereth them, and your eyes see that which I have done in Egypt; and ye dwell in a wilderness many days. 8"And I bring you in unto the land of the Amorite who is dwelling beyond the Jordan, and they fight with you, and I give them into your hand, and ye possess their land, and I destroy them out of your presence. 9"And Balak son of Zippor, king of Moab, riseth and fighteth against Israel, and sendeth and calleth for Balaam son of Beor, to revile you, 10and I have not been willing to hearken to Balaam, and he doth greatly bless you, and I deliver you out of his hand. 11"And ye pass over the Jordan, and come in unto Jericho, and fight against you do the possessors of Jericho -- the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Girgashite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite -- and I give them into your hand. 12And I send before you the hornet, and it casteth them out from your presence -- two kings of the Amorite -- not by thy sword, nor by thy bow. 13"And I give to you a land for which thou hast not laboured, and cities which ye have not built, and ye dwell in them; of vineyards and olive-yards which ye have not planted ye are eating. 14"And now, fear ye Jehovah, and serve Him, in perfection and in truth, and turn aside the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, and in Egypt, and serve ye Jehovah; 15and if wrong in your eyes to serve Jehovah -- choose for you to-day whom ye do serve; -- whether the gods whom your fathers served, which are beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorite in whose land ye are dwelling; and I and my house -- we serve Jehovah." 16And the people answer and say, "Far be it from us to forsake Jehovah, to serve other gods; 17for Jehovah our God is He who is bringing us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, out of a house of servants, and who hath done before our eyes these great signs, and doth keep us in all the way in which we have gone, and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed; 18and Jehovah casteth out the whole of the peoples, even the Amorite inhabiting the land, from our presence; we also do serve Jehovah, for He is our God." 19And Joshua saith unto the people, "Ye are not able to serve Jehovah, for a God most holy He is; a zealous God He is; He doth not bear with your transgression and with your sins. 20When ye forsake Jehovah, and have served gods of a stranger, then He hath turned back and done evil to you, and consumed you, after that He hath done good to you." 21And the people saith unto Joshua, "No, but Jehovah we do serve." 22And Joshua saith unto the people, "Witnesses ye are against yourselves, that ye have chosen for you Jehovah to serve Him (and they say, "Witnesses!") 23and, now, turn aside the gods of the stranger which are in your midst, and incline your heart unto Jehovah, God of Israel." 24And the people say unto Joshua, "Jehovah our God we serve, and to His voice we hearken." 25And Joshua maketh a covenant with the people on that day, and layeth on it a statute and an ordinance, in Shechem. 26And Joshua writeth these words in the Book of the Law of God, and taketh a great stone, and raiseth it up there under the oak which is in the sanctuary of Jehovah. 27And Joshua saith unto all the people, "Lo, this stone is against us for a witness, for it hath heard all the sayings of Jehovah which He hath spoken with us, and it hath been against you for a witness, lest ye lie against your God." 28And Joshua sendeth the people away, each to his inheritance. 29And it cometh to pass, after these things, that Joshua son of Nun, servant of Jehovah, dieth, a son of a hundred and ten years, 30and they bury him in the border of his inheritance, in Timnath-Serah, which is in the hill-country of Ephraim, on the north of the hill of Gaash. 31And Israel serveth Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who prolonged days after Joshua, and who knew all the work 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 the portion of the field which Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor father of Shechem, with a hundred kesitah; and they are to the sons of Joseph for an inheritance. 33And Eleazar son of Aaron died, and they bury him in the hill of Phinehas his son, which was given to him in the hill-country of 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].