1. And it happened after the death of Moses. These opening words are an explicit device to create a direct link with the end of Deuteronomy, which reports the death of Moses (Deuteronomy 34:5ff.), and the beginning of this book, in which Joshua takes up Moses’s task.

servant of the LORD. This identifying phrase, reiterated in this initial passage, is a formal epithet for Moses, also used in Deuteronomy. Joshua is called his “attendant,” as he is in Numbers 11:28; the implication is that the attendant of the LORD’s servant will now assume the role of his master.

2. this Jordan . . . this people. The repeated use of the deictic zeh, “this” (and again in verse 4, “this Lebanon”) is positional. God is addressing Joshua across the Jordan from Canaan. First, He points to “this Jordan,” across which Joshua will have to take the people, then to “this people,” whom Joshua must lead, and then to “this Lebanon,” marking the northern limits of the land.

4. from the wilderness and this Lebanon to the Great River, the River Euphrates. These are utopian—or perhaps one should say fantastic—borders never occupied by Israel and never within its military capacity to occupy.

the whole land of the Hittites. This can scarcely be the region in Asia Minor that was once the center of a Hittite empire. There were Hittite immigrants scattered through Canaan from an early period. Shmuel Ahituv proposes that the phrase reflects a usage in Neo-Assyrian texts where it indicates everything west of the Euphrates, including the Land of Israel.

to the Great Sea. The “Great Sea” is, as elsewhere, the Mediterranean.

6. Be strong and stalwart. This reiterated exhortation clearly reflects the military setting of this initial charge by God to Joshua, who is commander in chief of the army about to invade the land.

8. This book of teaching shall not depart from your mouth. The book in question is almost certainly Deuteronomy, and the phrasing of the entire verse is strongly Deuteronomistic.

10. the people’s overseers. This is the same term used in the Exodus story (5:6ff.). It derives from a verb meaning to document or record, and so it is not necessarily a specialized military term.

11. three days. This is a conventional time span in biblical narrative for an interval of relatively short duration.

13. Recall the word that Moses . . . charged you. The episode of the two and a half tribes that chose to settle on land east of the Jordan is initially reported in Numbers 32.

grant you rest. The verb here has the obvious technical sense of granting respite from previously hostile neighboring peoples.

14. arrayed for combat. The Hebrew ḥamushim appears to derive from the word for “five,” and it has been plausibly explained as referring to a battle formation, with troops on all four sides and a unit of fighting men inside the rectangle. In modern Hebrew, it means “armed.”

17. As in all that we heeded Moses, so we will heed you. The Israelites in fact were repeatedly rebellious against Moses, but it is best to view this declaration of unswerving loyalty as an idealized representation of the people, not as an intended irony.

18. Every man who flouts your command . . . shall be put to death. What appears to be reflected in these stern words is the strictness of military justice: Israel is about to enter into battle, and whosoever does not obey the commander’s orders will be summarily executed.

Only be strong and stalwart. The opening section of Joshua comprises four speeches: God to Joshua, Joshua to the people’s overseers, Joshua to the trans-Jordanian tribes, and the response of the trans-Jordanian tribes to Joshua. These interlocked speeches are meant to convey a sense of perfect solidarity on the eve of the conquest of the land. Thus, the concluding words of the tribal spokesman exactly echo God’s twice-asserted exhortation to Joshua, with the addition of the emphatic raq, “only.”