John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: June 1

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John Kitto Morning Bible Devotions: June 1


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Joshua

After a long career of victorious warfare, followed by an old age of comparative repose, during which, upon his estate at Timnath-Serah, in the mountains of Ephraim, he was permitted to enjoy the blessings of the land he had conquered, Joshua consciously drew near to the term of his existence, and, like Moses, determined to give to the assembled Israelites the advantage of his parting counsels. The tribes were convened at Shechem, where the tabernacle seems at this time to have been, and where on a former occasion, between the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, they had entered into covenant with God. Nothing can be conceived more impressive or more sublime, than the circumstances of this last public interview of the aged leader with the people whom he had put in possession of the goodly land of Canaan, and who had so often followed him in his victorious path. In the midst of the elders, the chiefs, and magistrates of Israel; surrounded by a respectful people, formerly bondsmen of Pharaoh, but now in possession of a rich and beautiful country; and sole survivors of am untoward generation, their illustrious and venerable commander—the oldest man in all their nation—spoke to them as to his sons. And of what did he speak? He was a soldier, and his career had been essentially military; but he spoke to them, not of conquest—the sound of the trumpet and the gleam of the sword cannot be recognized in his address—but of the holiness and the obedience which become the people chosen of God. It is such a discourse as a patriarch might have given on his death-bed, or a prophet might have uttered from the valley of vision. He called to mind the benefits which, age after age, had been showered upon the race of Abraham; he humbly summed up the victories to which he had himself led them, in a single allusion; and concluded with the impressive words—“Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” The entire people, with one voice, responded to this call, by loud and hearty declarations of their determined faithfulness to their covenant with God; and the aged Joshua, after he had written these words in the book of the law deposited in the ark, set up a stone under a tree that grew near the tabernacle, as a memorial of this renewal of the covenant. His work, both of war and peace, was then done. He could now lay down his head and die in thankful peace. So he died, and was buried in his own grounds at Timnath-Serah.

The character of Joshua is not only one of the finest in Scripture history, but one of the most remarkable that the world ever saw. There is scarcely any other great conqueror, and certainly no Asiatic conqueror, like him—without personal ambition, without any desire of aggrandizement. His whole heart was in the highest degree patriotic, under a system which required patriotism to take the form of religious obedience. In the distant view, the personal and even public character of the man is overshadowed by the very greatness of the events and circumstances in which he is placed. The events are greater than the man, and engage the attention more; and hence individually he appears with less eclat, and attracts less attention, than an inferior man among events of less importance. This, when rightly viewed, is not a dishonor to him, but a glory; for it shows how accurately he measured, and how truly he understood, his right position. A lesser man, in all the attributes of true greatness, would have been seen and heard more; but it is the magnanimous character of real greatness to shroud the power it exercises. Littleness is more demonstrative; greatness is quiet in the calm repose of conscious strength and influence.

Looking more closely, we appreciate the character of Joshua better. We see that it is only his essential fitness for the place he filled—for the great work which devolved upon him, that prevents him from being more seen. We, then, behold in him that rare combination of the highest qualities of the statesman and the warrior. We see that he is quite equal to every emergency. Under which he has to act; and that he puts forth just that degree of power—just that degree of the qualities suited to the occasion, and which may be required—no more, for that would be scarcely demonstrative; no less, for that would be incompetency. If his gifts were less brilliant than those of Moses, they were such as befitted his successor; and few men have lived to whom it would not be high praise to say, that they succeeded such a man as Moses with credit. We find Joshua valiant without temerity, and active without precipitation. No care, no advantage, no duty is neglected by him. In the passage of the Jordan, in the judgment of Achan, in the siege of Ai, he forgot nothing which might tend to deepen the impression the miracle produced—nothing which might render the justice of the doom apparent—nothing by which the victory might be assured. The generation which he led was better and wiser than that which came forth from Egypt, and yielded to him a more willing obedience. than Moses had obtained from their fathers. Towards the enemy alone was his countenance terrible; for, regarding himself as the minister of the Divine anathemas against a guilty people, he executed his awful commission with no shrinking hand; but at the same time with calmness and without fury. His piety is, however, gentle, while his faith is impregnable, and his confidence in God unshaken.

In short, no man that ever lived need desire a higher or more honorable character than that given to this great man by the sacred writer who records his death, and whose words form a striking epitaph upon the hero, and the most appropriate memorial of his career—“And it came to pass after these things, that Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the lord, died, being a hundred and ten years old.”