23:1–2a The narrator of the book of Joshua does not, on the whole, devote much effort to indicating chronology. In the opening chapters the precise details of “three days” (e.g., 1:11; 2:16) proved problematic, but beyond that there are few, if any, fixed time references. The same is true here, although the text’s phrasing combines with earlier notices (13:1; 18:3) to impress the reader with the passage of time since the seemingly rapid campaigns of chapters 2–11.

The whole nation is summoned, although to what location is not specified—one assumes Shiloh, but this is only a guess, for this is a “long time afterward,” and presumably Joshua himself is well settled at Timnath-serah, not very far from Shiloh. The speech that follows is addressed especially to the leadership of Israel, identified with four titles in two categories, the civil (“elders and heads”) and the administrative (“judges and officers”). The last title named provides some closure back to the beginning of the book, as the “officers” were the group responsible for implementing Joshua’s orders as the move across the Jordan took place (1:10; 3:2). The full array of titles is used again in the Bible only at 24:1, further linking these two chapters together, although three of these titles (without “heads”) are also found for the earlier covenant ceremony on Mount Ebal (8:33).

23:2b–5 As Joshua’s speech begins, it bears a striking resemblance to the first speech in the book, of God to Joshua (1:2–9). Both reiterate the narrative situation, mention the gift of the land, circumscribe briefly its boundaries, and provide assurance of God’s capacity to act on Israel’s behalf. The element absent here found in the speech of chapter 1—the necessity of obedience to God’s word—is what Joshua will go on to require by way of response in 23:6–8. Clearly there is some intention to align Joshua’s address to the nation here with God’s words to Joshua as the book began.

Another kind of intertextual link is forged in verse 3 with the reminder that “it is the Lord your God who has fought for you.” These are the words used to such striking effect in 10:14, 42, which marked the first of the territorial wars into which Israel was drawn, initially by the Canaanite reaction to the covenant with the Gibeonites and then in the aftermath of the ensuing battle. The phrase will be used again in 23:10, thus framing the first half of the speech (cf. Section Overview of 23:1–16). These two occurrences align with the two occurrences in chapter 10, with two in Exodus 14:14, 25 (at the Red Sea crossing in relation to the pursuing Egyptians), and with two in Deuteronomy 1:30; 3:22 (in which Moses anticipates God’s actions across the Jordan). These references combine to weave together the entire exodus story. Such parallels between the entry into the land with the exodus from Egypt were in greater supply in the first part of the book, but continue here. Joshua’s speech in chapter 24 will go beyond allusion to direct narration.

Joshua 23:5 signals that, even though a resting place has been achieved, it is not all over yet. Some future struggles are anticipated, as they are again in the latter part of this chapter (v. 13).

23:6–8 To the observations that God has dislodged the nations on Israel’s behalf and that Joshua has allotted the land, the response called for is one of obedience to God’s word as made known through the law of Moses. If the parallels between the first verses of Joshua’s speech and God’s words to Joshua in chapter 1 were thematic and structural, as Joshua now spells out the response invited in light of these things, the connection between the two speeches deepens to verbal overlaps, especially between 1:7 and 23:6–7 (cf. table 2.7).

TABLE 2.7: Overlap between Joshua 1:7 and 23:6–7

Note: Words in bold indicate shared text.

The “Book of the Law” mentioned in 23:6 is likewise named in 1:8. Such generosity and faithfulness on God’s part calls for complete devotion from Israel, in negative terms by not naming, serving, or bowing down to foreign gods—the latter two also being cited as incurring God’s wrath in 23:16, again providing some correspondence between the two halves of this speech (v. 7). Positively, such a rejection of false gods implies or even requires a “clinging” to the true God (v. 8), which is one of the distinctive exhortations of Moses to this same generation of Israelites in Deuteronomy (10:20; 11:22; 13:4 [Hb. v. 5]; 30:20).

23:9–10 The first premise in Joshua 23:2b–5 combined divine action with Joshua; this second premise associates divine action with Israel. God has dispossessed the nations, but Israel has proved unstoppable “since it is the Lord your God who fights for you.” Here Joshua’s terms are rooted in the covenant promise of Leviticus 26:8: “Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall chase ten thousand.” However, the wording here is even closer to that of the Song of Moses (Deut. 32:30), which uses this same language to describe Israel’s being handed over by God to their enemies for abandoning him:

    How could one have chased a thousand,

    and two have put ten thousand to flight,

    unless their Rock had sold them,

    and the Lord had given them up?

Perhaps there is an irony here, then, in Joshua’s positive statement drawing on the covenant blessings that still manages to recall the negative image of the Song of Moses. The scenario envisaged in the song is the very one that Joshua’s exhortation is intended to prevent.

23:11–13 So the second response calls on Israel to “love the Lord your God.” The exhortations to “cling” (v. 8) in the first response and “love” here distribute the parts combined by Moses in Deuteronomy 11:22, associated with driving out the nations, and Deuteronomy 30:19–20, in which Moses urges Israel to “choose life,” as Joshua will go on to do in Joshua 24. Failure to do so will result in God’s “no longer driving out these nations before you,” with dire consequences, graphically described. Tragically, the outcome that Joshua’s warning is designed to preclude is exactly what Israel experiences through their disobedience in Judges 2:3. If Joshua’s words had any effect, it did not last very long (cf. Josh. 24:31).

23:14 Joshua’s mortality is again in view as yet another element in the speech forges a connection with a significant earlier moment in the book. The conclusion to the settlement account occupying chapters 13–21 made an emphatic statement of the complete faithfulness of God to his promises to Israel (21:43–45). The end of that conclusion is woven here into Joshua’s final situation demanding a response (cf. table 2.8).

TABLE 2.8: Overlap between Joshua 21:45 and 23:14

Note: Words in bold signal shared text; words set in italics show corresponding elements that differ owing to context.

There are only minor differences between the two verses, their wording being even closer in Hebrew than is apparent in translation. Just as the beginning of Israel’s venture under God to return to the Land of Promise is linked in the beginning of the speech, so too is their endpoint of enjoying settled life in the land connected to the end of that process.

23:15–16 Verse 13 made the shift from past response to future possibility, and the future could be problematic if Israel defaulted on the covenant with Yahweh. This painful and tragic possible future is laid out by Joshua as the conclusion to the speech. He ends not with an optimistic hope but rather with a realistic warning. Israel has demonstrated its capacity for apostasy in too many ways over the long exodus journey, and even through Achan (ch. 7) in its mission of conquest. The inevitability in case of apostasy is that God will “destroy you from off this good land” (23:15). The action here might well be translated “annihilate,” reflecting a deliberate obligation to destroy objects or enemies. The thread of this lexeme through Joshua is instructive: aside from 7:12, where it is used with reference to the items of kherem taken by Achan, elsewhere it is used of the action of either Yahweh or Israel against the Canaanites (9:24; 11:14, 20; 24:8 [of Amorites across the Jordan]). Here it is applied, at least potentially, against Israelites.

The possibility that Israel might “go and serve other gods and bow down to them” (v. 16) brings before Israel again this specter first raised in verse 7, although there as a statement of what they should avoid in the life of obedience. Here it is identified as the action that will incur God’s wrath. While the speech began by appreciating the blessing of settled life in the Promised Land under God, it ends by warning of the risk of perishing from the land—still under God. Or, in other words, living in such a way that places them in opposition to Yahweh will lead them to be regarded just as the Canaanites were—and to experience the same fate.