Bible Commentaries

The Man and His Call

Joshua 1:1-9

THE book of Joshua has been divided into three sections—namely, the conquest of Canaan, 1 Chronicles 7:20-27, reaching back through generations to Joseph. His grandfather, Elishama, marched through the wilderness of Sinai at the head of his tribe, and probably he had special charge of the embalmed body of Joseph. The book is indirectly referred to in many places both in the Old Testament and the New; for example in Judges 18:31; 1 Samuel 1:24; 1 Samuel 3:21; Isaiah 28:21; Psalm 44:2-3; Psalm 68:12-14; Psalm 78:54-58; Psalm 114:1-8; Habakkuk 3:8-13; Acts 7:45; Hebrews 4:8; Hebrews 11:31; Hebrews 13:5; James 2:25. These passages are collated to show that the references to the book of Joshua are not merely incidental or occasional, but that the book is certified by reference and endorsed by application throughout the most of the remainder of the sacred records. Joshua was a prince of the tribe of Ephraim, born in the land of Goshen, and trained as a soldier,—kept in repression during many years, because there was really nothing for a soldier-prophet to do. He was appointed to repel the attack of Amalek. He was honoured to accompany the great minister partly up his solitary way which lay towards the meeting-place on the summit of mount Sinai. He was one of the two spies who came back with a good heart and an inspiring word, saying that the work could be done and was worth doing. For a long time he was in the background: nothing was known of him during the years of weary wandering in the Arabian desert. A weird character altogether!—Speaking of his house, but with a limitation; without wife, or child, or heir; standing, as it were, midway between Moses and Samuel—a period of four hundred years. A soldier always,—prompt, obedient, decisive, sharp in expression; his attitude a challenge or a benediction. Great was his honour, too: into his much-meaning name there was inserted part of the name of the Eternal; and Joshua in its Greek form is Jesus—the captain of our salvation—the name which is above every name. So may our names grow and blossom and fructify into great meanings; they are trusts: we hold them as stewards;—shall they vanish like blanks that can never be missed, or live on day after day,—a memory, a blessing, an inspiration? Each man must answer the inquiry for himself.

Now let us turn to the book with religious attentiveness. "Now after the death of Moses—" ( Joshua 1:1). Can there be any "after" under such a circumstance? Does not all time seem to breathe for certain men? And does it not seem as if there would be no need of time if their great figures and generous influence were removed? Does not time seem to focus itself in some noble characters—as if all other life were tributary to those eminent personalities, as if all other influence circulated around them and had heaven enough in a subordinate relationship? But God can bury any one of us, and continue the history as though we had never lived. We cannot make great gaps in God's providence. His thoughts are not our thoughts, neither his ways our ways. He toucheth the mountains, and they smoke; he taketh up the isles as a very little thing, and the nations are as a drop of a bucket—a poor trembling eye of dew—before Him. We cry over this opening line as if some great chasm had been dug in our little heaven. We forget that the man spoken of is only dead to us, not dead to the universe, or dead to God, or dead in any sense equivalent to extinction or destruction. The word is a cold one, and full of hideousness in some aspects; we must use it; no other term touches the reality of things so significantly, but we must, by living in a right course so look down upon all things as to account death as only a word—a mere term of expediency, a mark of punctuation, rather than an articulate term,—a point a printer might use, but really without any terror or sting or dread. Death is dead to every man who is himself alive with the immortality of his soul. And some great names must be removed to make way for lesser names that have growing sap in them and real capability of beneficent expansion. Some great trees must be cut down to make room for lesser trees that mean to be great ones in their time. We owe much to the cutting-down power of death, the clearing power of the cruel scythe or axe. Death makes history as well as life. Of life death is the servant. The great thing to know about the dead is their character. That character in the case of Moses is indicated here explicitly—"the servant of the Lord." Is the term so definite as almost to amount to an indication or singularity—as if the Lord had but one servant? The expression is not "one of the servants," or "a" servant, but "the" servant Nor is this an ancient term only; it is part of the speech of our day. There are men who are pre-eminently primates. We do not contest their primacy. It is not official. The greater the man the readier he is to own that Moses is above him: for in no domineering or tyrannous sense is the higher above the lower, but in the sense of Joshua 1:8). An excellent thing this, too,—namely, to have a book! The question admits of being put from two opposite points of view. An excellent reflection that there is a writing which may be consulted, and which must be perused if life is to seize the very highest treasures of wisdom. To the law and to the testimony then,—not that they are to be interpreted hardly, in some tone of domination that oppresses the soul, but a written word that is to be a living seed, growing its fruits in every clime, answering all the influences of heaven as revealed in civilisation, education, and progress of the broadest and noblest kind. The eighth verse Joshua 1:10-15

THESE opening paragraphs present Joshua in several interesting aspects, which we may profitably consider and personally apply: for there is nothing old in them, in the sense of outwornness; what is old in them is old in the sense of venerableness, ascertained reality, enduring energy and virtue. In that sense we must never give up what is old. Whatever is effete, exhausted, evidently done, you may shake off into forgetfulness, because however good it once was, it has served its time, and the age longs for some new inspiration, and clearer, broader, direction and guidance.

First of all, Joshua comes before us as a man with great official antecedents. He does not succeed a little man: he begins what, from the human point of view, is a rivalry that will strain his energy and test his quality. Men cannot go from a leader like Moses and follow some inferior personage, as if he filled up all the space and represented what was necessary to satisfy the heart's hunger. This web cannot be continued, as to the weaving of it, by an apprenticed and unskilled hand. Our call is precisely the same.

Every age succeeds an age marked by greatness peculiarly its own. We are born now into a grand civilisation; it admits of no indolence, or reluctance as to work, and it cannot be satisfied by what is petty, perfunctory, and inexpensive as to the strength which is laid out upon it History brings its responsibilities. To be born immediately after such and such leaders have played their part in the world's theatre is itself to have a cross of no mean weight laid upon the shoulder. We may close our eyes and think nothing about these things, but we do not thereby make them the less realities, nor do we thereby destroy the standard of judgment which they force upon us and by which our life will be tested. To close the eyes is to play a foolish part Every man should say, Whom do I succeed? Whose are these footprints near the place whereon I stand? Has a giant been here—a great leader, a noble sufferer, a patient student, a father great in love, a mother greater still?—then my responsibility begins with their greatness and goodness; what I have to do—the soliloquist should say—is to go on: where they have been great, I must try to be greater still,—or if not along their line, along some line of my own,—so that the ages may not stagger backwards but with steadiness and majesty of strength advance from one degree to another as the light increases to the perfect day. Thus we honour our ancestors; thus we bury Moses—not in the grave of forgetfulness, but by turning his strength, Joshua 1:5). What did God want in return? Cheerfulness:—"Be strong and of a good courage.... Only be thou strong and very courageous... turn not... to the right hand or to the left,"—be strong and of a good heart. So Joshua did not go to war at his own charges. Is there anything old and outworn in that happy reflection? Inspiration cannot cease until the Holy Ghost expires. It is the very function of the Holy Ghost to inspire; without that function he has, so to say, no mission amongst men; the very fact of his being the Spirit of God invests him with the continual prerogative to inspire and qualify his Church. We may all be divinely qualified; and unless we are so qualified our work ends in a cloud blown away by the veering wind. "If any of you lack Joshua 1:10).

The first command was one which showed his great faith, and tested strongly the obedience of the people. The river Jordan lay between the camp and the land of their promised inheritance, and it must be passed over by them at the very outset of their march. But how could this be accomplished? Even if it were possible, with difficulty and risk, to transport over it a chosen handful of warriors, how could he possibly carry over the mixed multitude—the women and the children, and the flocks and the herds? Even over the fords of Jordan, under the most favourable circumstances of the river, this would have been almost impossible; and at this season of the year, when, from the melting of the snow upon the highlands, Jordan war greatly flooded (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest), it was more than ever impossible ( Joshua 3:15). Yet down to these threatening floods, on the hopeless errand of passing over them, all the people are ordered to inarch. Surely, it must have been a sore strain upon the simple faith of the young commander to issue such an order. But his faith was strong, and he commanded, and was obeyed.

—Samuel Wilberforce, D.D

Prayer

Thy word is exceedingly comfortable to our souls, thou Father of spirits, thou God of eternity! We know thy words are good and full of power: they fill the necessity of our heart to overflow, yea, even to abundance, as of fulness upon fulness, until there is not room enough to receive thy gift. Thou dost speak from the sanctuary of eternity, and thy words come with all the infinite power of thy majesty; yet are they gentle, gracious, like the soft rain upon the tender herb: they come from a great height, but thou dost cause them to fall without burdensomeness, and they refresh and cheer and satisfy us as no other words have done. We bless thee for any measure of constancy in thy kingdom which we have been enabled to realise and to manifest There have been many who have said, Turn to the right-hand; and others have said, Turn to the lefthand;—but because thou hast been with us, an abiding inspiration and a daily light, we find ourselves still in the sanctuary, standing upon the rock, clinging to the blessed Cross, looking to the Son of God for redemption and all the mystery of pardon. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. We would have no other delight; all other joys would we know in this lofty passion—to love the Saviour, to know him more intelligently, and to serve him with a profounder obedience. Thou wilt not decline our prayer, or cause a cloud to come between thy throne and this poor earth: when we so cry we know that we have the answer even whilst we are breathing the prayer: for this is the will of God, even our perfectness,—the completeness of our manhood, the subjugation of our will to right and truth and love. So we know that we have thy reply,—may we know it still more confidently, and rejoice in deepening peace, and in ever-increasing strength, and in continual delight which makes the heart young and the hand strong. As for our sin, take it up in thy mighty power and love, and bury it where no man can find it, and thou thyself forget where the burden has been laid. Amen.

Unanimity

Joshua 1:16-18

JOSHUA had commanded the officers of the people to pass through the host, saying, "Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it." A charge was delivered to the people, interpreting the divine will, and promising great blessedness, possession, and rest. The people having heard the appeal answered Joshua saying, "All that thou commandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us, we will go." We see men occasionally at their best, and then the revelation of human nature is not without enchantment and great comfortableness. Men like to speak in crowds, to multiply their voices by a thousand and ten thousand; and then they imagine that they are revealing the strength and enjoying the confidence of what is termed unanimity. It is a beautiful thing to see forty thousand men all intent upon one purpose, and to hear them uttering one cry, and to know that their utterance is expressive of an obedient spirit. This is the answer which ought to have been given, and which ought now to be given to every divine appeal. We should answer love by love; we should answer music by music; when heaven descends to earth with some unusual blessing, earth should become almost heaven in its grateful appreciation and response. We see this sometimes in the sanctuary. A sublime revelation of divine care, providence, grace is made, and hearts are melted into one, and the final hymn becomes a pledge, a solemn vow, a great musical consecration of the heart. It is beautiful now and again to see what ought to be,—occasionally to see the ideal, now and again to hear a common sentiment uttered by an inspired heart;—surely such are sights and sounds which might do us good evermore! Herein is part of the benefit of the sanctuary: we become our best selves under its holy inspiration. We did not know altogether what was in us whilst we were outside the sanctuary, walking solitarily, brooding upon our own thoughts, and heaping up reproaches against society; when we came into the house of God and heard the universal language, something moved in us which claimed kinship with the speech, and we longed to spring with a thousand men to our feet to sing our convictions and to utter our vow in solemn music. You do not see a man at any one moment; you see some aspect of him, but what he is as to his true spiritual bulk, value, scope, force, you do not see at any one observation: but you see most of him when under the sway of inexpressible emotion, when his prayer is interrupted with praise, when his supplication sobs itself into confession and humiliation, and when his hope rises into song and expresses itself in exclamations of loyalty and thankfulness to God. We never could have known human nature in its wholeness but for religious influences and Christian appeals. The divine appeal is a resurrection-trumpet: it awakes the dead within us, it makes the churchyard of the heart throb with new life. You lose inexpressibly by cutting off religious connections, by interrupting channels through which religious communications flow. It seems to be an easy thing to leave the church and to allow great voices and appeals to waste themselves upon the empty wind, but we cannot tell how much we lose by ceasing to mingle in the common emotion and reciprocate the universal sentiment of the church. To leave the altar is to forego the touch which connects us in a mysterious but wonderfully sensible manner with the eternal throne, the infinite power, the ineffable grace. So do not put away the blessing of an ideal answer. The people meant every word of it. They did not know what they said; still, they were excited to a nobler selfhood than perhaps they had ever realised before; and we do say things in prayer and hymn and religious speech the full scope of which we do not apprehend;—do not be literal with us and say that we lied in the hymn, that we committed treason in the prayer, and spoke falsely in the noble excitement; it is not so: another self, larger, better than we have ever known before, rose up within us and sang that grand hymn, uttered that heaven-moving prayer, and ennobled that sublime excitement.

This is an answer which experience has uniformly discredited. We have never lived this reply. The words are still ringing in the air, and the air seems to have a kind of pleasure in retaining the tones and reproducing them, until they become not reminders only but reproaches and criticisms and appalling judgments. We remember the altar: we need no mocking spirit to remind us how far we have wandered from it. We remember the wedding-day when Christ and we became one,—and what a feast there was on that radiant morning; what vows were exchanged; what love was pledged; how the future was enriched with all the hospitality of inexhaustible bountiful-ness so that we would for ever dwell in the banqueting-house and for ever hear the flapping of the banner bearing the divinest name! We know what we said when we were young. Youth has a speech all its own—a flower language, a garden rhetoric, a beautiful efflorescence and poesy. Every word was meant, and by the help of God the soul now says, every word shall yet be redeemed! But what wandering we seem to have had; how wayward we are; how subtle are the influences which bear upon memory, and becloud the imagination, and pervert the heart, and enfeeble the will! Did Adam fall?—Certainly. There ought to be no more fully-attested truth in all the range of the theological judgment and imagination than the fall of every living man. Compare the speech of promise and its attempted excuses; compare yesterday and today; contrast the morning prayer with the evening recollection. No other man could fall for us. We seem to think there is a kind of substitutionary action in the Adamic apostasy,—as if Adam had mysteriously consented to fall on our account, or to represent us in a great tragedy. The truth is, every man falls himself, in himself, and for himself; and the experience of the world is lost upon every one of us: were it not so, the first two chapters of Ecclesiastes would save the world from all further practical mistake. But nobody believes those two chapters; they read fluently, the style is copious and urgent, the experience is full of colour, and it beats with a very strong pulse, and we would not like to give up the chapters as part of a literary treasure,—but who believes them? No living soul! Every man builds his own Jerusalem, gets around him his garden of delights, yields to his own serpent, and is damned on his own account. It is not for us to become the censors of antiquity, saying that Israel failed to carry out in literal exactness the pledge which was made almost in song. Let us keep to our own experience; stand upon the facts which make up our own daily life, and through them we shall see how it was that antiquity sinned and that the first man fell. Were we to close here we should close under a great cold cloud; but this is not the stopping-place: there are points beyond.

This was an answer given without full consciousness of the motive which dictated it. We are not rapid, as we certainly are not exact, in the analysis of motive: we take the first explanation which comes to hand, and are content if other people will receive it. A mysterious action is this, which we have come to know by the name of motive,—that is to say, why we do certain things, or say them, fear them, or hope for them. It is not always convenient to descend into the secret place where motive lives and reigns. It is better sometimes not to know the deeper psychological reality. What was the case in this particular history? A great promise had been made; land was to be given; rest was to be assured: Sabbath was to dawn upon the world, and the desert was to be as a fruitful field; under this promise the command was given, and whilst the command and the promise mingled together in a common music, the people said—We are ready! Nor did they speak untrustfully or insincerely. We do not surely know by what motives we are moved. Motives are not simple, they are complex, mixed up with one another, now coinciding, now separating, again approaching,—and not to be expressed fitly in words. How far did the promise of the land tell upon the obedience of the men who answered Joshua? Who can tell how subtly the word "rest," which occurs so often in this opening chapter, entered into weary lives, distracted hearts, and made men ready to say anything that lay in the direction of its immediate and complete realisation? Who can take himself out of himself? Who can die unto God? This is a miracle which lies beyond us just now; yet it is well to keep our eyes upon a plan—a position that must be attained—if we are to grow up into the measure of the stature of men in Christ Jesus; we are to have no self: when asked where our life is, we are to point to the Cross on which it has been nailed and on which it has expired. Do we not find the operation of the same motive now in our spiritual experience? What is it that has been promised?—rest, release from the torment of conscience, the destruction of accusing recollection;—another promise has been made under a sweet name which no man has ever been able to define: we are to have heaven. We have placed heaven above the blue sky: we would not have it in the east or in the west, but straight up in the zenith of the visible firmament. We have thought of heaven as a place of pureness, rest, joy, song, recognition of one another, riddance of all evil, escape from death in every form; and whilst godly men have been making the soul these promises, what if the soul said—We accept the conditions; we will obey; for such a prize we are prepared to serve and suffer until life's last day? Having uttered the pledge, we have another step to go to get back to old lines, and perhaps the interposition of that one step may happily deter us from returning to our old pursuits. A prayer should be a thick wall through which it is difficult to get back to the old non-praying state; a day in church should separate us by a practical eternity from all evil and irreligious propensity and act. Are not many men Christians because they want to. go to heaven? It is a poor reason, yet it may be better than none at all. It is full of selfishness: it is a little, narrow, unworthy reason. What we should aim to be enabled to say is this: If this life were all, it is better to live in the spirit of Christ than in any other spirit;—if so be God will it that we are but contributaries to a greater humanity and an enduring civilisation, it is enough that we have ever prayed and ever loved. Who can attain that spiritual sublimity? We cling to the promised Canaan; we long to escape the threatened perdition. Our reasoning may be in all such respects narrow, superficial, and selfish,—still, it is something to begin with: for the literary truth of Christianity cannot be urged upon us all at once: we have to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that every day brings not its new Bible but its new interpretation, its larger claim, its ennobled and brightened outlook.

This was an answer given before battle. The idea of the battle was not fully recognised. The Lord said, "I will give you,"—and scarcely, as we have seen, had "I will give you" been uttered than the other words were, "Fight for it!" What land were they to possess?—the land whereon their feet trod. You must go the land to claim it: your footprint must be your title. We are not called to some land that lies in the unmeasured region of the fancy; the land shall be yours whereon soever you set the sole of your foot. Hence we read in the third verse,—" Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses." That Is the true idea of possession. Do not live in the imagination "but in the realisation of spiritual truths. What have we fought for. Is there now a man who can stand up and say, "I have fought for my faith, and I hold it with a hand that has bled"? What wonder that we change our faiths easily if we took them into possession easily? We simply heard of them, and we desire to hear no more about them. Who has studied, pondered, prayed, corrected himself, modified his conclusions—readjusted them, and gone on from point to point as from conquest to conquest,—now and again chargeable with inconsistency, but only with the inconsistency of self-correction, profounder criticism, and using a broader light than was available yesterday? We want sturdy soldiers in the Church—men who say,—Though all is given to us, yet it has to be fought for, and our answer before battle shall be quiet, modest, religious. "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Do not force us to answer just now. We have heard the sublime appeal; we know it has come down from infinite heights, it has about it the fragrance of other worlds,—thank God for it!—for its broad words, its grand challenges: they move the soul, they shake the spirit out of prison;—but as for the full reply, we ourselves will wait: every day we will add a syllable to the answer, secretly hoping that by the grace and comfort of the Holy Ghost we may be able at the end of the days to present a complete word, steady as a planet, bright as the sun, glorious with the purity of a good conscience; just now our answer must be hesitant, broken, confused, but, believe us, our meaning is right: we will pray ourselves into greater prayers, and transfer ourselves through the medium of action into higher sacrifice and higher expositions of holy mysteries. Do not judge any one by the one day. We are aware that he replied ecstatically—"I will!"—and he meant it in the very secret places of his soul. We know that the day after he faltered and fell, but his faltering and falling did not destroy the purpose of his soul: the seed of God was in him; and he in whomsoever that seed is found must win Canaan, with all its light and rest, its everlasting morning and its surprising joys. Do not fix your mind upon your failures and slips and apostasies; they are a thousand in number and they are without defence, but you can say, "Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee." If you can say so honestly, the battle is won before it has begun; if you can say so sincerely, you need have no fear of the end;—only be strong and very courageous, and there shall not a man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. What are the appeals addressed us?—not to take a Jericho measurable, but to advance to positions remote but glorious. "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,... and I will receive you." "If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother... he cannot be my disciple." Who is on the Lord's side—side of righteousness, side of truth, side of pureness? These are the questions and propositions that are thundered upon our ears. Let us reply saying,—God helping us, we will endeavor to be true, constant, loyal.

Prayer

How many there are whose life is a battle thou knowest, O Father of all living! They wonder why they should exist; all things are hard to them: the night is dark, every road is difficult of passage, every door is shut, every man is a foe. They wonder and can hardly pray; they are amazed, and struck down with astonishment. Yet sometimes a little shining of light makes them glad; then they foretell the time of peace and rest and joy. Thou hast set in the midst of the week a day on which there shall be proclamation from time to time of thy mercy and sympathy, and on which some hint of life's great meaning shall be given to the sons of men. Thou dost show us that all thy way is full of goodness, though we cannot now realise the significance of every event. When the grave is dug, thy meaning is pitiful and merciful and most compassionate; when thou dost send sorrow upon our life it is to chasten and refine that life and cleanse it of all defilement Thou dost cause all things to work together for good to them that love thee; and thou dost surprise thy children by newness of revelation. We set to our seal that God is true; we will stand up and say in the hearing of men—God is good, and his mercy endureth for ever; he abideth through all the ages, and his love is an unchanging light. We are enabled to say this notwithstanding the battle, the bereavement, the great loss, the mortal disappointment; when we recover ourselves a little we say, Thou hast done all things well; thy will not mine be done; lead kindly Light. So we feel it worth while to fight all the battle and endure all the sorrow, that at the end we may see light as we never saw it before, and feel the very peacefulness of peace, the very restfulness of rest. We come to thee by a way that is living, the eternal way, the only way. We look unto Jesus, and are saved: we behold the Lamb of God, and in beholding him with the eyes of our faith we see our sins carried away. Was ever love like his? Scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for a good man peradventure some would die; but thou dost magnify thy love towards us in that while we were yet sinners—neither righteous nor good—Christ died for us,—amazing love! Oh the depth of the wisdom and grace! We are amazed; we are made glad; we feel we are forgiven. Amen.