1And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and summoned the elders of Israel, their heads, their judges, and their officers; and they presented themselves before God. 2And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel: Your fathers (Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor) dwelt on the other side of the River in ancient times; and they served other gods. 3And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the River, led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac. 4To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt. 5And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt, according to what I have done among them. Afterward I have brought you out. 6And I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea; and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. 7And they cried out unto Jehovah; and He put darkness between you and the Egyptians, brought the sea upon them, and covered them. And your eyes saw what I have done in Egypt. And you dwelt in the wilderness many days. 8And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, who dwelt on the other side of the Jordan, and they fought with you. But I gave them into your hand, that you might possess their land, and I destroyed them before you. 9Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose to make war against Israel, and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you. 10But I was not willing to heed Balaam; therefore he continued to bless you. And I delivered you out of his hand. 11And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho. And the lords of Jericho fought against you; also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. But I delivered them into your hand. 12I sent the hornet before you which drove them out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites; not with your sword or with your bow. 13I have given you a land for which you have not labored, and cities which you have not built, and you dwell in them; you are eating of the vineyards and olive groves which you have not planted. 14Now therefore, fear Jehovah, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers have served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve Jehovah! 15And if it seems evil to you to serve Jehovah, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers have served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve Jehovah. 16And the people answered and said: Far be it from us to forsake Jehovah to serve other gods; 17for Jehovah our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, who has done those great signs before our eyes, and preserved us in all the way that we have gone and among all the people through whom we have passed. 18And Jehovah drove out before us all the people, including the Amorites who were living in the land. We also will serve Jehovah, for He is our God. 19And Joshua said to the people, You cannot serve Jehovah, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous Mighty God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins. 20If you forsake Jehovah and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do evil and consume you, after He has done you good. 21And the people said to Joshua, No, but we will serve Jehovah! 22And Joshua said to the people, You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen Jehovah for yourselves, to serve Him. And they said, We are witnesses. 23Now therefore, he said, put away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart unto Jehovah the God of Israel. 24And the people said to Joshua, Jehovah our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey! 25So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and established for them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem. 26And Joshua wrote these words in the Book of the Law of God. And he took a large stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Jehovah. 27And Joshua said to all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness to us, for it has heard all the words of Jehovah which He has spoken to us. It shall therefore be a witness to you, lest you deny your God. 28So Joshua sent the people away, each to his inheritance. 29And it came to pass after these things that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Jehovah, died, being one hundred and ten years old. 30And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Serah, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash. 31And Israel served Jehovah all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders whose days were prolonged after Joshua, who had known all the works of Jehovah which He had done for Israel. 32And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem, in the plot of ground which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for one hundred pieces of silver, and which had become an inheritance of the sons of Joseph. 33And Eleazar the son of Aaron died; and they buried him in a hill belonging to Phinehas his son, which had been given to him in the mountains 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].