Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible · Joshua Capitolo 24

Ver. 1. And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel— Calmet thinks, that the discourse in the former chapter is to be considered only as the exordium or introduction to the present: which is nearly the opinion of Calvin. But the two discourses seem very distinct in the text, and we see no reason for putting them together.

To Shechem— Some copies of the LXX, particularly the Roman edition, and Alexandrian manuscript, read here, and in ver. 25 to Shiloh. What renders this reading very probable is, that we find the Israelites assembled before God; that is, before the ark, which certainly resided in the tabernacle; and that, undoubtedly, was at Shiloh. Of this opinion likewise are Grotius, Junius, Wells, and others. In answer to which it is to be considered, 1. That, according to Eusebius and St. Jerome, there were not less than ten or twelve miles distance between these two places. 2. Other copies of the LXX, as well as the Hebrew, Chaldee, and other eastern versions, read Shechem, and not Shiloh; and to these we may add Josephus, Hist. Jud. lib. 5: cap. 1. See Dr. Wall. 3. It is easy to account for this convocation of the assembly at Shechem. For, not to mention that this city was the capital of the tribe of Ephraim, and in the neighbourhood of Timnath-serah, where Joshua resided, who, on account of his great age, might very possibly be unable to go to Shiloh; it is probable, that he thought it proper to renew the divine covenant in the place where Abraham had first settled, and had erected an altar on his entering into the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:6-7.); where the patriarchs were interred, Acts 7:16.; and where Joshua himself had first entered into covenant with the Israelites, chap. Joshua 8:30, &c.; for Ebal and Gerizzim were very near Shechem. See Le Clerc and Calmet. We will presently consider the objection brought by some, that the assembly in question was held before God; observing here, that an able critic thinks, that the several opinions respecting the matter may be reconciled, by supposing the congregation to have met in the fields of Shechem, and that thence the people went in companies to Shiloh, as it were to confirm before God what they had promised to Joshua, who had received the assembly at Timnath-serah, his place of residence, situate between Shechem and Shiloh. See Shuckford's Connection, vol. 3: p. 427.

They presented themselves before God— That is to say, before his tabernacle. "But," say some, "this tabernacle was at Shiloh." It rested there, it is true; but we apprehend, that upon this grand solemnity it was removed from Shiloh to Shechem; and the kings and leaders of Israel certainly had a right to have the ark removed from its usual station to any other place upon extraordinary occasions. See 1 Samuel 4:3-4. 2 Samuel 15:24., and Bertram de Repub. Jude 1:25; Jud 1:15 p. 249. This was such an occasion: The whole nation had been convened at Shechem to renew the divine covenant; Joshua, one hundred and twenty years of age, was come up from Timnath-serah to that city, his strength not allowing him a longer journey: and was not this sufficient to authorise the sending for the ark, that the people might thus assemble before the Lord? We must not, however, pass over the opinion of the learned Mede, who thinks that the Ephraimites had built at Shechem a proseucha, a kind of oratory or chapel, whither the people resorted to divine worship when they could not go so far as the tabernacle; and that it was before this house of prayer that the assembly was held. But for more respecting this ingenious conjecture, see on ver. 26.

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Ver. 2. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel— This exordium indicates a prophetical discourse; so that Joshua was no less the prophet than the political head of the nation. It is not, therefore, so much he that speaks, as God by his mouth; and hence it is, that he expresses himself as the mere organ for the delivery of a discourse addressed by the Lord himself to all Israel.

The flood— i.e. The river Euphrates.

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Ver. 14. Now, therefore, fear the Lord, &c.— Here it is no longer Jehovah that speaks; Joshua himself addresses the Israelites, and, after all that he had just represented to them in the name of God, concludes with exhorting them to fear Jehovah; i.e. to open their whole heart to his religion, and to render him, in sincerity and in truth, with right and pure intentions, free from all hypocrisy, the worship due to him; and that without any mixture of idolatry, and according to his law, which is truth itself. "Put away from among you," says he, "those idols, the worship of which your ancestors, Terah, Nahor, Abraham, and others, formerly joined with the worship of the true God, while they remained on the other side of the Euphrates. Remove from you that unhappy propensity to idolatry which you acquired in Egypt: in a word, resolve to serve God, and Him alone." To the idols of the Chaldees and Egyptians, Joshua in the following verse adds the idols of the Amorites; and from the manner of his speaking, both here and in ver. 23 it is easy to discern, that the Israelites, notwithstanding all that the Lord had done for them, were by no means clear from the capital crime of idolatry. St. Augustin could not agree in this opinion; for, struck with the fine testimonies which Joshua himself bears to the faith of the Hebrews; and seeing it nowhere mentioned, that on account of the last exhortations of that holy sage, the people removed from them any idols; and being moreover unable to believe that God, who took vengeance of the Israelites for many lesser crimes, would have left their idolatry unpunished; this learned man has thought proper to interpret the words of Joshua conditionally, as if he had said; "If any one of you hath still the least inclination to idolatry, let him pluck it from his heart, and unreservedly devote himself to the worship of the only true God." See Quaest. 29: in Josh. But it is certainly doing violence to Joshua's discourse: to give it so soft a sense. Besides, what greater difficulty is there in conceiving the Israelites to have given way to idolatry under the government of this general, than under that of Moses their legislator? And how, after all, can we controvert a fact so positively attested by the Holy Spirit in divers other passages of Scripture? Ezekiel, Amos, and St. Stephen warrant the truth of the offence here imputed to the Hebrews. See Ezekiel 3:8; Ezekiel 3:27; Ezekiel 20:6; Ezekiel 20:49. Amos 5:16. Acts 7:41. Without doubt, the whole nation was not tainted with it, nor was the scandal of it yet public; but it appears evident, that among the multitude of the Israelites, there were many superstitious persons who privately joined the idolatrous worship of the people of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the land of Canaan, with the worship of Jehovah.

REFLECTIONS.—Joshua seems, at his last meeting of the congregation, to have expected his dissolution at hand; but, God having spared him a little longer, he is glad to make use of the last moments of his life in one more solemn assembly of the heads of Israel. Note; (1.) Whilst God continues our lives, it is a sign that he has something for us yet to do. (2.) They whose hearts are faithful to God will be pleased with the returning solemnities, when they come to appear before the Lord. (3.) God is still in the midst of his people, whenever or wherever they assemble in his name.

The congregation being collected, Joshua opens his farewel sermon, commissioned from God to speak, and therefore deserving the most profound attention: he begins with a recapitulation of the signal mercies that, from the beginning until that time, God had shewn to their ancestors, and to them. Their ancestors, who dwelt beyond the Euphrates, were sunk, as other Gentiles, into gross idolatry; when God, in his infinite mercy, separated Abraham from them, and brought him out from thence into the land of Canaan, where they now were, multiplied his posterity in Ishmael, and gave him the promised seed in Isaac. When Rebekah's barrenness seemed to restrain the fulfilment of the promise, Jacob and Esau were born. Jacob, their great progenitor, with his increasing household, were driven into Egypt by famine; but when his seed were there multiplied and oppressed, with a mighty arm did God rescue them from thence, protecting them with his pillar of a cloud, and overwhelming their pursuers in the sea. Through the dreary wilderness he led them safely, defeated the plots of their enemies, and turned wicked Balaam's intended curse into a blessing. After this also, he wrought his wonders in the land of Gilead, at Jordan and Jericho, casting out their foes before them, not by their sword or bow, but by his army of hornets, which he sent before them; and now at last he brought them into possession of Canaan, where peace and plenty reigned. In return for which mercies, it was not more their bounden duty, than the dictate of gratitude, 1. That they should fear that God whose wonders they had seen, and with a reverential sense of his majesty and mercy walk before him. 2. That they should serve him in sincerity and truth; for he is a heart-searching God, who cannot be imposed upon, who hateth hypocrisy, and expects the soul in simplicity to be devoted to his service. 3. That they should put far from them strange gods. Note; (1.) God requires the heart in his worship; without this, we can do him no acceptable service. (2.) Neglect of God is not only foul disobedience, but base ingratitude. (3.) That is still our idol, to which our affections cleave more than to the blessed God.

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Ver. 15. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, &c.— Satisfied that the Israelites, as a nation, are very far from falling into atheism, or being averse from serving God; Joshua cannot think them so blind and ungrateful as to desire to serve any other God than Jehovah. This, and nothing more, is his meaning in this place. He speaks like an orator; he invites them to choose, merely because he supposes the choice already made. Just as if he had addressed the Israelites thus: "Put away from you every object of idolatry, and determine only to serve the Lord. Ah! whom will ye serve, speak candidly, whom will ye serve, if ye refuse Him your homage? Where could you hope to find a god worthy to be compared to him? If the worship of those gods which your ancestors worshipped beyond the Euphrates has the sanction of antiquity, ye know, on the other hand, that Abraham openly abjured that worship; that from his heart he renounced those idols; and that, drawing down the benediction of the Most High, he obtained from his munificence, as his inheritance, the country of which you have now taken possession. As to the gods of the Amorites, I know that you are convinced how despicable those impotent idols are, whose worshippers you have subdued. Make your choice, however. Nothing should be more free than the preference given to a religion. But know, O Israelites! that the choice of Joshua no longer remains to be made; I and my house, I and all my family, if I am master of it, will serve the Lord; and will remain faithful to him even to death."

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Ver. 19. And Joshua said unto the people, ye cannot serve the Lord, &c.— These words may he understood two ways. 1. They may signify, "you will not serve the Lord; I foresee that ye will not keep your word:" in the same sense as it is said of Jesus Christ, that he could work no miracle at Nazareth, to express that he would not; or, as when he said to the Jews, ye cannot hear my word; i.e. your prejudices and passions hinder you from desiring it. 2. They may signify "the thing is difficult, it requires great courage, and will cost you more than you are aware, by reason of the temptations you will have to conquer in the attaining it." These two senses seem necessary to be united for the proper understanding of the passage. The intention of Joshua is certainly, not to insinuate to the Israelites that it will be impossible for them to serve God; for why then should he have exhorted them to serve him, as he had just done in ver. 14.? His design is evident: it is, to pique the zeal of the Israelites, to engage them seriously to reflect on what they promised, and to stimulate their protestations of fidelity, by seeming to doubt the sincerity of them: as if he had said, "You promise to serve God; but can you do so, whose inclinations to idolatry are so strong? And will you be firm and courageous enough to persevere sincerely in the desire so to do?"

For he is an holy God; he is a jealous God, &c.— As he has no equal, neither can he suffer a rival. To pay to idols that worship which he only deserves, or even to associate them with the homage which is paid to him, is to contest with him, to take from him a part of that perfect holiness which constitutes his glory, and is what the Scripture calls profaning his holy name. See Mede's Discourses, b. 1: disc. 2.

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Ver. 23. Now, therefore, put away—the strange gods— See ver. 14. All this evidently shews, that Joshua was a prophet, that he could penetrate the secret intentions of the Israelites, and was certain of their propensity to idolatry. Publicly they worshipped only the true God, but in secret they had their penates (as the Romans termed them), their household gods; idols which they worshipped clandestinely, teraphim, little statues, magical rings, and other such instruments of superstition. See Spencer de Leg. Heb. lib. 3: dissert, 1 cap. 3. Of these we have more than once had occasion to speak.

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Ver. 25. So Joshua made a covenant with the people, &c.— The Israelites having a third time repeated that they were resolved only to serve the Lord, and being thereby bound more strictly than ever to obey him, Joshua, in order to bind, in the most indissoluble manner, those ties whereon their happiness depended, proposes to them a solemn renewal of the covenant which they had made first by the ministry of Moses, and afterwards by his own; in consequence of which, the Israelites rigorously swore to worship only the Lord, and to obey only his laws; while on his part, by the mouth of Joshua, God promises to continue the constant protector and benefactor of their nation. Most interpreters are of opinion, from the latter clause, that Joshua read to the Israelites the conditions and laws of the covenant, to which they assented. But it may also signify, that he gave to whatever had been concluded upon, all the force of a perpetual law, and an irrevocable ordinance, which was afterwards called the covenant of Shechem; inasmuch as there the Israelites had renewed their profession of an inviolable attachment to the Lord.

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Ver. 26. And Joshua wrote these words in the book, &c.— To perpetuate the memory of this renewal of the covenant; to convince the Israelites of the reverence due to that obligation which they had assembled to enforce; and to leave such an immortal testimony as might witness against them for the Lord, in case they forsook his holy religion; Joshua caused a particular account of all that had passed to be written down, and added to the book of the law which Moses had ordered to be kept in the side of the ark. Deuteronomy 31:26. Possibly, he caused a copy of it to he transcribed at the same time into the book of the law which was to remain in the hands of the princes of Israel for the use of the tribes, ch. Joshua 17:18. To this monument Joshua added a second, to eternize the remembrance of the covenant renewed. He set up a great stone under an oak; and in all probability ordered an inscription to be engraven thereon, referring to the august solemnity, the memory of which he was desirous to perpetuate. People, from the earliest ages of the world, used to rear stones for the like purpose in the case of important events. We find an instance of it in the history of Jacob, Gen 28:18 and another in the history of Joshua himself, ch. Joshua 6:3; Joshua 6:20-21. But what sanctuary of the Lord was this, placed by, or under an oak? The learned Mede answers, it certainly could not be the tabernacle, by reason of the laws specified so particularly Deu 16:21-22 and which are too positive for Joshua to have thought of controverting them by placing the tabernacle near an oak, and by setting up by it a pillar or monument of stone. The question then is, to know whether these laws (calculated to divert the Israelites from the delusions of the Gentiles, who thought that the Deity dwelt in forests, and who consequently reverenced the places where the ark had a settled residence) concerned also those places in which the ark was but occasionally deposited, and for a very little while? Be this as it may, our able critic concludes from these laws, that the sanctuary here mentioned was nothing more than an oratory or house of prayer, erected in this place by the Ephraimites; and he apprehends, that they had chosen this spot in preference to any other, as the place of their devotions, because there the Lord had appeared to Abraham, and promised to give the land of Canaan to his posterity. Our author goes on to say, that there were from all antiquity, besides the tabernacle, and, in later time, the temple, two sorts of buildings consecrated to religious worship; namely, synagogues in cities, and oratories in the fields; that the former were regular buildings, covered like houses at the top; but that the others were mere inclosures, commonly formed by trees, or under their shade. But for more on this subject we refer to Mede, b. 1: dis. 18 observing, that, in the original, this is one of those transpositions familiar to the Hebrew language, and probably should be translated thus: And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God, which was in the sanctuary of the Lord: and he took a great stone and set it up there under an oak; for an instance of such transposition, see Gen 13:10 where, instead of translating, and Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered, &c.—as thou comest unto Zoar; it should evidently be translated, and Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, as thou comest unto Zoar, that it was well watered, &c. See Kennicott's Dissert. vol. 2:

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Ver. 27. For it hath heard all the words, &c.— "If ever you so far forget yourselves, as to act as if you had not this day chosen the Lord for your God, this stone shall convince you of falsehood, and shall witness as strongly against you, as if it had heard all that I have been saying to you, and all that you have replied in answer; and had assumed a voice to contradict you to your face." How strongly figurative soever this discourse may appear, it is not too much so for the taste of the orientals, with whom it is common to give sentiments to the most insensible creatures, and, as it were, to animate all nature by their expressions. See for instance, Deuteronomy 4:26; Deuteronomy 32:1.Psalms 19:1; Psalms 19:1.Isaiah 1:2; Isaiah 1:2.Jeremiah 22:29; Jeremiah 22:29. Luke 19:40.

Note; (1.) If the service of God be not our deliberate choice, from conviction of its blessedness, and experience of its comfort, a constrained profession will last but a short time. (2.) Those who count the denial of their corrupt affections hard, and the restraints of religion burthensome, have already rejected the Lord from being their God. (3.) A good and great example is very influential. (4.) They who resolve to serve God themselves, cannot but labour that all who are under their care may do so too. (5.) They, who are faithful to God, fear not to be singular, though all others are ashamed of his religion, or live a dishonour to it; their houses shall be the temples for daily prayer and praise, and their ways unconformed to the wicked world around them. (6.) We can never hesitate whose service to prefer, God or the world, Christ or Belial, if our minds are freed from the delusions of Satan, and the bias of corrupt affections.

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Ver. 29. And—after these things—Joshua—died— Most probably within a short time after the holding of the assembly at Shechem. It is difficult to say positively how many years this great man governed the people of God in the land of Canaan. Some Jewish doctors say, that he lived twenty-eight years after the passage over Jordan; others confine his administration to seven or eight; some preserve a medium, and grant him seventeen. This, among others, is the opinion of Bonfrere, to whom we refer the reader.

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Ver. 30. And they buried him—in Timnath-serah— This city, which he had built himself, and which had been assigned him by the nation, is elsewhere called Timnath-heres, or, the rest of the sun, Judges 2:9. This name, if we are to believe the Jews, was given it on account of an image of the sun engraved on Joshua's tomb, in memory of that famous day in which he stopped the sun in his course, in order to finish the defeat of the Canaanitish kings. See Hottinger, in Cippi. Heb. p. 32. and in Smegma Orientale, c. viii. p. 523. Thus, in after-times, according to Cicero, the sepulchre of Archimedes was adorned with a sphere and a cylinder. Eusebius says, that the tomb of Joshua was to be seen in his time near Thamna; and Brochard informs us, that there was, in the mountain of Leopards, (Song of Solomon 4:8.) a cavern twenty-six feet long, into which the Saracens were used to go, in memory of this holy man. Gaash is thought to have been a part of mount Ephraim, and to have faced Timnath-serah on the south.

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Ver. 31. And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua— So long as this pious general was at the head of the people of Israel, idolatry durst not show itself, and the Israelites in public adored only the true God. Moses did not enjoy the like happiness. Every one knows what a disturbance that depraved taste which the Hebrews had imbibed for idolatry in Egypt, produced in the affair of the golden calf: God, however, remedied it, by condemning the offenders to wander forty years in that wilderness, where, according to St. Chrysostom, all those perished who had been witnesses of that horrible apostacy; that thus there might remain no one among them capable of teaching them again so atrocious a kind of impiety. See Vitae Monastic. Vitup. lib. 1.

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Ver. 32. And the bones of Joseph—buried they in Shechem— See Genesis 50:25. Some are of opinion, that Joshua performed this duty soon after the passage over Jordan, immediately after he had built the altar on mount Ebal, near Shechem. Others think that it was not done till the peace which followed the conquest of the land of Canaan. They all conclude, that Joshua would not have longer deferred paying to the patriarch Joseph an honour so frequently enjoined. The reason, say they, that no mention of the ceremony occurs before, is, that it was thought proper to collect together, in this concluding passage, what respected the funerals of three great men. But there seems no difficulty in supposing Joshua to have discharged himself of this tribute to the remains of Joseph in the great assembly of the nation at Shechem. We might even suppose, that it was the design of interring the bones of that patriarch with greater solemnity, which determined Joshua to convene that assembly there, rather than at Shiloh.

In a parcel of ground which Jacob bought, &c.— See Genesis 23:16; Genesis 33:18-19; Genesis 48:22; Genesis 50:25. Joseph was not interred in Shechem, but, according to the ancient custom, in a field adjoining. Probably, the other children of Jacob received the like honour, each tribe taking care to bury its ancestor, either at Machpelah, or elsewhere, in the land of Canaan. Josephus asserts that it was so, upon the credit of an ancient tradition, , Hist. Jud. l. ii. c. 4.; and St. Stephen confirms the relation, Acts 7:16.

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