Companion to the Bible

by E. P. Barrows

I. JOSHUA.

3. This book records the conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites under Joshua, and its distribution by lot among the tribes that received their inheritance on the west side of the Jordan. It connects itself, therefore, immediately with the Pentateuch; for it shows how God fulfilled his promise to Abraham that he would give to his posterity the land of Canaan for an inheritance (Gen. 17:8), a promise often repeated afterwards, and kept constantly in view in the whole series of Mosaic legislation. The book naturally falls into two parts. The first twelve chapters contain the history of the conquest itself, with the movements preparatory thereto. Joshua, who had been previously designated as the leader of the people (Numb. 27:15-23), receives a solemn charge to pass over the Jordan and take possession of the promised land; the people prepare themselves accordingly; two spies are sent out to take a survey of Jericho; the Israelites pass over the Jordan dry-shod, its waters having been miraculously divided; they encamp at Gilgal, and are there subjected to the rite of circumcision. Chaps. 1-5. Then follows an account of the overthrow of Jericho, the trespass of Achan with the calamity which it brought upon the people, the conquest of Ai, the ratification of the law at mount Ebal with the erection of the stones on which the law was written, the artifice of the Gibeonites by which they saved their lives, the overthrow of the combined kings of the Canaanites at Gibeon, and the conquest, first of the southern and afterwards of the northern kings of Canaan. Chaps. 6-12.

The second part gives an account of the division of the land by lot among the several tribes. This work was begun as is described in chapters 13-17, and after an interruption through the dilatoriness of the people, for which Joshua rebuked them, was continued and completed at Shiloh. Chaps. 18, 19. Six cities of refuge were then appointed, three on each side of the Jordan; forty-eight cities were assigned by lot to the Levites; and the two and a half tribes that had received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan (Numb., chap. 32) were sent home. Chaps. 20-22. The twenty-third chapter contains Joshua's charge to the elders of Israel, and the twenty-fourth his final charge at Shechem to the assembled tribes, on which occasion there was a solemn renewal of the national covenant. The whole book is brought to a close by a brief notice of the death of Joshua and Eleazar, and the interment of the bones of Joseph in Shechem. This brief survey of the contents of the book reveals at once its unity, its orderly plan, and the place which it holds in the history of the Theocracy.

4. The authorship of the book cannot be determined from the title alone, any more than that of the two books which bear the name of Samuel. Jewish tradition ascribes it to Joshua himself, except the last five verses. But it records some transactions which, according to the most obvious interpretation of them, occurred after Joshua's death. Among these are the conquest of Hebron (chap. 15:16-19, compared with Judges 1:12-15), and especially the excursion of the Danites (chap. 19:47), which must be regarded as identical with that described in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Judges. Unless we assume that this notice of the Danites is an addition made by a later hand, we must suppose that the book was written by some unknown prophetical man after Joshua's death. He may well have been one of the elders who overlived Joshua, since at the time of his writing Rahab was yet living among the Israelites. Chap. 6:25.

The eighteenth chapter of the book of Judges, which records the invasion of the Danites, is evidently an appendix, introduced by the words: "In those days there was no king in Israel;" and that this invasion took place not long after the settlement of the people in Canaan, is manifest from the object proposed by it. Judges 18:1. At the time of the conquest, Rahab was a young woman, and may well have survived that event forty years or more. The only apparent indication of a still later composition of the book is that found in the reference to the book of Jasher, chap. 10:13. From 2 Sam. 1:18, we learn (according to the most approved interpretation of the passage) that David's elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan was written in the book of Jasher. But we are not warranted in affirming that this title was applied to a book of definitely determined contents. It may have been a collection of national songs, enlarged from age to age.

Though Joshua does not appear to have been the author of the book in its present form, we may well suppose that the writer employed, in part at least, materials that came from Joshua's pen. When the land was divided by lot among the several tribes, the boundaries of each inheritance, with the cities pertaining to it, must have been carefully described in writing by Joshua himself, or by persons acting under his direction. It is probable that these descriptions were copied by the author of the book of Joshua; and this is sufficient to account for any diversity of diction that may exist in this part of the book as compared with the purely historic parts. Nothing in the style and diction of this book, or in that of the two following books of Judges and Ruth, indicates that they belong to a later age of Hebrew literature. Certain peculiarities of expression which occasionally appear in them may be naturally explained as provincialisms, or as belonging to the language of conversation and common life.

5. The book of Joshua bears every internal mark of authentícity and credibility. The main transaction which it records—the extirpation of the Canaanites by the immediate help of Jehovah, and the gift of their country to the Israelites—was contemplated from the very first by the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 13:14, 15; 15:18-21; 17:8, etc.), and also by the entire body of the Mosaic laws. Why God chose to accomplish this by the sword of his covenant people, has been already sufficiently considered. Chap. 10, No. 7. The stupendous miracles recorded in the book of Joshua are in harmony with the entire plan of redemption, the great and decisive movements of which have been especially marked by signal manifestations of God's presence and power. The man who denies the credibility of this book on the ground of these miracles, must, for consistency's sake, go much farther, and deny altogether the supernatural manifestations of God recorded in the Bible, including the mission, miraculous works, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

In chap. 10:12-14 we read that, at the word of Joshua, the sun stood still and the moon stayed in the midst of heaven about a whole day, so that "there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man." Some have sought to explain the whole passage as a quotation from "the book of Jasher" expressed in the language of poetic hyperbole; and they have compared with it such poetic amplifications as those contained in Psa. 18:7-16; Hab., chap. 3, etc. But this interpretation is forced and unnatural; and besides this, there remains the analogous event of which we have a double record in 2 Kings 20:8-11; Isa. 38: 7, 8, and which is expressly ascribed to divine power: "Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun-dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward." Here it is manifest that to human vision the sun, and with it the shadow, went backward ten degrees. How this was accomplished we need not attempt to determine. We are not shut up to the supposition that the earth was turned back on her axis ten degrees, nor that the rays of the sun were miraculously deflected ten degrees (which would change his apparent position in the heavens ten degrees), nor to any other particular hypothesis. If God chose that the sun should to human vision go backward ten degrees, he could accomplish it by means inscrutable to us; and so also if he chose that it should stand still in the midst of heaven about a whole day.