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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 226. Joshua's Farewell and Death
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Joshua's Farewell and Death
1. Joshua hears that more or less everywhere local sanctuaries are corrupting the disloyal conquerors and Jehovah is no longer the uncontested King of Israel. So the old soldier returns to fight one more battle-harder than all the rest. He convenes the great Israelite assembly at Shechem, and there, in a speech which recalls that of Moses in the plains of Moab or that of St. Paul taking leave of the Ephesian elders, Joshua rehearses the whole plan of God. He expresses the strongest solicitude for what he knows the public happiness to depend on-the preservation of true religion, and consequently of virtue, in opposition to the superstitious follies and shocking vices of the nations round them. He recapitulates Jehovah's blessings and Israel's crimes and duties, and gathers all his failing strength to remind the chosen people that all their future and salvation depend on their loyalty to the head of the theocracy, Jehovah, their King.
No one can read this farewell speech without being moved. There is first the brief recapitulation of the mighty acts of the Lord, and then the trumpet call to decision: “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Here is a statement of perfect liberty, but of courageous warning; he puts the truth of their position plainly before them. They were to choose whom they would serve; he taught them this important moral truth that, if men will not choose to serve God, they will still be servants, that is, they will be enslaved by Satan.
These words were the last utterance of a man whose days on earth were run, and who spoke from that commanding eminence which looks at once upon the clearness of the earthly past and the dimness of the heavenly future, with the wisdom of aged experience and the awe of coming death. He stood amongst them, a monumental relic of the times pushed back, by a stirring century of change, into remote history; one who had toiled in Egyptian quarries, had crossed the sand of the Red Sea, had shrunk from the thunders of Sinai. He knew more than they thought of their secret idolatrous inclinations; he would have no half-hearted renunciation. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” He would bind the nation so, with cords, “even unto the horns of the altar.” He made the very stone, which “had heard all the words of the Lord,” be a witness to them, lest they should deny their God.
The “great stone,” like Jacob's stone at Bethel, was one of those sacred monoliths which were among the apparatus of early Israelite, as of other primitive religions. They were known in Israel as maççēbas or “pillars.” Having set up this maççēba, “Joshua said to all the people, This stone shall bear witness against us; it has heard all the words of Jehovah which he spoke with us, and it shall bear witness against you, lest ye deny your God.” In the existing narrative there is no record that Jehovah had spoken; possibly Joshua's words are regarded as Jehovah's; or else the tradition has been mutilated. Perhaps in its original form it told how Joshua set up in the sanctuary at Shechem the tables of stone received by Moses from Jehovah at Sinai, and carried by the Israelites throughout their wanderings. The idea of a stone bearing witness is still found among the nomad Arabs. Doughty tells us (Arabia Deserta, ii. 538) that he was informed concerning a great bank of stones on the pilgrim road to Mecca, that “Every pilgrim who casts a stone thereon has left a witness for himself, for his stone shall testify in the resurrection that he fulfilled the pilgrimage.”1 [Note: W. H. Bennett, Joshua and the Palestinian Conquest, 83.]
2. The simple but impressive ceremony which ratified the covenant thus renewed consisted of two parts-the writing of the account of the transaction in “the book of the law,” and the erection of a great stone, whose grey strength stood beneath the green oak, a silent witness that the Israelites, of their own choice, after full knowledge of what the vow meant, had reiterated their vow to be the Lord's. Thus on the spot made sacred by so many ancient memories, the people ended their wandering and homeless life, and passed into the possession of the inheritance, through the portal of this fresh acceptance of the covenant, proclaiming thereby that they held the land on condition of serving God, and writing their own sentence in case of unfaithfulness. It was the last act of the assembled people, and the crown and close of Joshua's career.
There is a solemn choice in life. Life and death, light and darkness, truth and lies are set before us. At every instant the cry comes for us to choose one or the other, and the choice of one involves the putting away of the other. And we must choose. That is one of the certainties of life. There is no such thing as offering one hand to God and another to evil; one hand to the self-sacrifice of Christ and the other to the covetousness of the world. You cannot serve God and Mammon. You cannot follow Jesus at home, and your own pleasure in your outward life. Your life, whether you like it or not, becomes of one piece.1 [Note: S. A. Brooke, Sunshine and Shadow, 194.]
On the morning of his wedding-day, James Taylor, the father of Hudson Taylor, was haunted by the words “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” probably heard at some of the Methodist services, and unheeded, until, as he threshed out wheat in preparation for his bride, the responsibility of the step he was taking was borne in upon him. The words would not leave him.
“Hour after hour went by. The sun rose high over the hills, lighting the white-roofed village where the bride was waiting. Taylor was due there long before noon, and had yet to don wedding apparel. But all, all was forgotten in this first, great realization of eternal things. Alone upon his knees among the straw the young stone-mason was face to face with God. ‘As for me' had taken on new meaning. The fact of personal responsibility to a living though unseen Being-Love infinite and eternal, or Justice as a consuming fire-had become real and momentous as never before. It was the hour of the Spirit's striving with this soul, the solemn hour when to yield is salvation. And there alone with God James Taylor yielded. The love of Christ conquered and possessed him, and soon the new life from above found expression in the new determination: ‘Yes, we will serve the Lord.' ”2 [Note: Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 5.]
3. It was at Shechem also, in full assembly of Israel, that Joshua celebrated the fulfilment of the promise by laying the bones of Joseph at last to rest. They had remained, waiting for deliverance, in Egypt for many, many years. “God will surely visit you,” said Joseph, dying, “and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.” They had been taken from Egypt that terrible night, and crossed the sea with the escaping host. They had rested at Sinai, gone through the wilderness, accompanied the conquest-their Palladium, the immortal witness of what Israel had done in Egypt, and was to be in Canaan-and, on this solemn day, of all that Israel had attained. And now, after so many restless years, they were put to sleep at last, in the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
His task ended, Joshua retired to his inheritance; but the influence of his character and life was felt as long as he lived, and afterwards. At last he died, one hundred and ten years old, “and they buried him.”
Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong.
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong.
Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,-
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.1 [Note: J. R. Lowell, The Present Crisis.]