The book of Joshua marks God fulfilling His promise to Abraham: that the land of Canaan would belong to his descendants. More than half a millennium later, the children of Israel finally settle the land and make it their own. This book also marks the end of an age for Israel. After the deaths of Moses and Joshua, there is no God-commissioned leader of the whole nation. Israel moves into the age of judges, when God periodically raises leaders to deliver Israel from her enemies.
Joshua is from the tribe of Ephraim, and had served as Moses’s aide since his youth (Numbers 11:28; Numbers 13:8). There were many times in stories related in Torah that Israel turned away from God and from Moses. However, Joshua remained completely loyal to both. He was not involved when Israel turned away to worship a golden calf, and when Moses sent Joshua and eleven other spies into the promised land ahead of the people, Joshua was one of the only spies who believed that Israel’s God could help them seize the land (Numbers 14:6–9). At the end of Moses’ life, God chose Joshua to lead the nation into the promised land.
Summary
The book opens with God commissioning Joshua to be strong, courageous, and loyal to him, and to lead the people into the land that God promised to their ancestors. God demonstrates his support for Joshua by miraculously stopping the Jordan river and allowing the nation to enter Canaan on dry ground. Joshua meets a mysterious warrior and asks him whose side he’s on: Israel’s or her enemies. The stranger says he’s on neither side, and reveals himself to be the commander of God’s army. The meaning is that God isn’t the one who takes sides, but that humans must choose where their loyalties lie.
Beginning with the battle for of Jericho, God leads Israel to victory after victory. As the Israelites move through the land of Canaan, we see people reacting in different ways to Israel’s God. Some Canaanites, like Rahab and the Gibeonites, choose to side with God, and integrate into the nation of Israel. The thirty-one kings who oppose Israel are defeated.
Hundreds of years earlier, God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would have the land of Canaan as their possession. By this time, Abraham’s descendants have grown into a nation of twelve tribes. The book of Joshua lays out the cities and regions that fall and their assignment to each of the tribes.
As Joshua nears the end of his life, he does what Moses had previously done, and gathers the next generation to tell them that they will be tempted to serve the gods of Mesopotamia or the gods of their new land. He exhorts them to worship only the God that had given them all they had come to possess.