1. The time had now come for the children of Israel to take possession of their inheritance. Palestine was in sight, and Moses, knowing that his end was near, asked God with great solemnity to name his successor, “that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd.”
2. To Moses it would have been a source of legitimate gratification if one of his two sons, Gershom or Eliezer, had been appointed to be his successor. His brother Aaron had the joy before he died of seeing his son Eleazar assume the high-priestly robes, and the sacerdotal office remained in the family until the time of Eli. But with Moses it was otherwise. However pleasing such an arrangement would have been to his fatherly pride, in this as in other matters he was supremely disinterested, and his wish was in perfect harmony with the Divine choice. Joshua, the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, was marked out by God for the position, and solemnly invested with authority by Moses, who gave the ordination charge before his decease.
3. The scene has a deep significance. It is not merely the dramatic contact of old and young that interests us-the pathos of a great man nearing his end, and the fascination of a young man at the beginning of a great career-but we see that the bond between them is a common religious ideal. Moses is fresh from the vision of God; Joshua is seeking it. There is a deep pathos of clinging hands as the parting hour of the two draws nearer. How often was the charge repeated by the older leader to the younger, “Be strong, and of a good courage,” till it became a kind of national refrain.
4. As we pass from Moses to Joshua we feel as if we were passing from poetry to prose. Practical though Moses was, his sphere was on the height. The mountain was his native element. It was on the mountain that he had to prepare for the plain. It was the soul of a poet that led him to glorify common things; his sober practice came from his ecstatic elevation. Joshua, on the other hand, had never stood on the height, had never required to occupy it. He had not possessed the genius to discover the Promised Land. Moses was moving towards the Land of Promise. Everything had been planned; everything had been arranged. All that was needed was a patient drudge to execute the orders-a man who would be content to take the servant's place. No prophetic vision was required, no foresight. The head and the heart of the enterprise were already there; all that remained was to seek a hand. Joshua could no more have wielded Moses' rod than Moses could have wielded Joshua's sword. The one did his work and was laid aside. But new circumstances required a new type of character-the smaller man was better fitted for the rougher work. Joshua was a man fit not only for battle but for tedious campaigning; full of resources, and able to keep up the heart of a whole people by his hopeful bearing. That he should have been able to fill the place vacated by so great a man as Moses gives us the highest idea of his calibre. That Moses was missed there can be little doubt; yet not Moses himself could have led the people more skilfully and successfully from victory to victory, or have in the full tide of conquest held them more thoroughly in hand, and settled them more quietly in the land.
Traditions has not preserved any details which enable us to realize the individual character of Joshua. The present writer has said of Moses, “Moses' personality cannot be exactly defined. In the oldest tradition he stands in such isolated grandeur, is so constantly thought of as the ideal ruler and prophet, that the traits of human, individual life and character are lost. Even points that seem characteristic are soon seen to belong to the Israelite ideal of the saint and prophet … his wife and sons vanish silently from the story, which cares nothing about his personal relations, and is interested only in the official successor to his leadership.” (Article “Moses,” in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.) In the same way Joshua is not so much an individual as a type, first of a devoted adherent to a divinely appointed leader, and then of a God-fearing ruler and general. As tradition is sifted and interpreted with a view to edification, the individual traits are dropped, and hortatory writers, like the editors of the Book of Joshua, only retain those ideal features which they desire their readers to admire and imitate. Our sympathetic interest in a historical character is derived from the blending of light and shade, of strength and weakness, of failure and success, and even of noble and of unworthy motives, which is found in real men and women. But when once a hero is set up as a shining example, there is a growing tendency to represent him as a combination of a favourite of fortune, an admirable Crichton, and a perfect saint. It is doubtful whether he becomes more edifying, but he certainly grows less interesting. These and other considerations have led some scholars to suppose that Joshua is merely the personification of his tribe, Joseph; or the eponymous ancestor devised for one of its clans. But if we had the ancient traditions in all their primitive fulness and frankness, we should probably find Joshua still there, as real and as human as Gideon, Saul, or David. As it is, the successor of Moses stands out as a noble ideal of a national leader in war and peace.1 [Note: W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine, 86.]
5. Joshua had need of great strength and courage, for it was one of the most difficult of tasks that was entrusted to him. He was to lead the people through a series of the most brilliant and exciting military successes, and then to turn them to the most peaceful pursuits. He was to teach them to shed blood pitilessly, to harden them to such sights as the sacking of towns, and then to enforce laws which in many points were singularly humane. It has been said of the Romans that they conquered like savages and ruled like philosophic statesmen. The same transition had to be accomplished by Israel, and into the strong hand of Joshua was this delicate task committed.
A keen observer, who is also one of the most vivid of contemporary writers, recently said in conversation that the greatest fighters he had known were by temperament and disposition the most peaceful of men. He named more than one famous English soldier, whose name is a synonym for daring audacity, who exhausts all the arts of diplomacy before resorting to arms, who hates war, and yet who fights with Titanic energy and apparent recklessness when the battle is on. These are men of true courage, because they face the issues of life and death, not with the stolidity of ignorance or the blind pluck of brute force, but with clear intelligence of all that war involves. The bravery of the Greek is more admirable than that of the Turk, because the Greek is intensely alert and sensitive, while the Turk is stolid and indifferent. It is said that no troops are so quiet under fire as the Turkish troops. Nothing disturbs or excites them. Under the play of murderous guns they move as calmly as if they were deploying on a parade-ground. In some cases this courage is the fruit of a fanatical religious faith; in most cases it is due to lack of physical and mental sensitiveness. The root of the noblest courage is faith in God.2 [Note: H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 122.]
