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Joshua 23: What the Passage Says

50 claims across 16 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Joshua 23 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joshua, now old, calls together all Israel along with its elders, leaders, judges, and officers for a farewell speech. He reminds them that the LORD fought for them and that he has divided the land among the tribes, and he urges them to keep everything written in the Book of the Law of Moses and to stay clear of the nations still left in the land, their gods, and marriage with them. He tells them that not one of the good things the LORD promised has failed, and warns that if they break the covenant and serve other gods, the LORD will bring harm on them until they perish from the land.

Claim by Claim

  1. 23:1
    • A long time passed after the LORD had given Israel rest from all their enemies round about.
    • Joshua was old and advanced in years.
  2. 23:2
    • Joshua called for all Israel.
    • Joshua called for Israel's elders, heads, judges, and officers.
    • Joshua said to them that he was old and advanced in years.
  3. 23:3
    • Joshua said they had seen all that the LORD their God had done to all these nations because of them.
    • Joshua said the LORD their God was the one who fought for them.
  4. 23:4
    • Joshua said he had allotted these remaining nations to them as an inheritance for their tribes.
    • Joshua said the allotment included all the nations he had cut off.
    • Joshua said the territory extended from the Jordan to the Great Sea toward the going down of the sun.
  5. 23:5
    • Joshua said the LORD their God would thrust those nations out from before them.
    • Joshua said the LORD would dispossess them from before them.
    • Joshua said they would possess their land.
    • Joshua said this would happen as the LORD their God had promised them.
  6. 23:6
    • Joshua told them to be very strong to keep and do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses.
    • Joshua told them not to turn aside from it to the right hand or to the left.
  7. 23:7
    • Joshua told them not to go in among these nations that remain among them.
    • Joshua told them not to make mention of the name of their gods.
    • Joshua told them not to swear by them.
    • Joshua told them not to serve them.
    • Joshua told them not to bow down to them.
  8. 23:8
    • Joshua told them to cleave to the LORD their God.
    • Joshua said they had done so unto this day.
  9. 23:9
    • Joshua said the LORD had driven out great and strong nations from before them.
    • Joshua said no man had been able to stand before them unto this day.
  10. 23:10
    • Joshua said one man of them would chase a thousand.
    • Joshua said this was because the LORD their God was the one who fought for them.
    • Joshua said the LORD had promised this to them.
  11. 23:11
    • Joshua told them to take very good heed to themselves.
    • Joshua told them to love the LORD their God.
  12. 23:12
    • Joshua said that if they turned back and clung to the remnant of these nations that remain among them, and intermarried with them and mixed with them and they with them, a consequence would follow.
  13. 23:13
    • Joshua said they should know for certain that the LORD their God would no longer drive out these nations from before them.
    • Joshua said those nations would become a snare and a trap to them.
    • Joshua said those nations would become a scourge in their sides.
    • Joshua said those nations would become thorns in their eyes.
    • Joshua said this would last until they perished from off this good land.
    • Joshua said the LORD their God had given them this good land.
  14. 23:14
    • Joshua said that this day he was going the way of all the earth.
    • Joshua said they knew in all their hearts and all their souls that not one thing had failed of all the good things the LORD their God spoke concerning them.
    • Joshua said all of them had come to pass for them.
    • Joshua said not one thing of it had failed.
  15. 23:15
    • Joshua said that just as all the good things the LORD their God promised had come upon them, so the LORD would bring upon them all the evil things.
    • Joshua said this would continue until the LORD had destroyed them from off this good land.
    • Joshua said the LORD their God had given them this good land.
  16. 23:16
    • Joshua said this would happen when they transgressed the covenant of the LORD their God.
    • Joshua said the LORD had commanded them that covenant.
    • Joshua said this would happen when they went and served other gods.
    • Joshua said this would happen when they bowed down to them.
    • Joshua said the anger of the LORD would then be kindled against them.
    • Joshua said they would quickly perish from off the good land the LORD had given them.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

23:1
Where "LORD" appears in capital letters, it stands for the personal name of Israel's God as written in Hebrew (four consonants, often transcribed YHWH). Jewish readers avoided pronouncing it and said "my Lord" instead, and English translations follow that practice with the capitalized word. "Rest" here is not sleep but the settled condition of a land no longer at war.
23:2
These are four overlapping ranks of leadership, not offices with sharp modern equivalents. "Elders" were the senior heads of families and clans who spoke for their kin; "leaders" (literally "heads") were tribal chiefs; "judges" settled disputes brought to them; "officers" translates a Hebrew word tied to writing, probably record-keepers, marshals, or administrators. Together the list means the whole governing structure of the people.
23:3
"These nations" means the peoples already living in the land of Canaan when Israel arrived, such as the Canaanites, Amorites, and Jebusites.
23:4
"By lot" means by casting or drawing marked objects, a procedure something like drawing straws. It was used so that the outcome could not be traced to anyone's favoritism. "To be handed down as their own land" translates a word usually rendered "inheritance": a permanent family holding that passed from parents to children and was not meant to be sold off. The "Great Sea" is the Mediterranean, the western edge of the territory being described. "Cut off" is the standard idiom for destroyed or removed.
23:5
Notice what this verse assumes: territory has already been assigned to tribes on paper that those tribes do not yet control. The book of Joshua carries both pictures side by side, sweeping victories in the earlier chapters and populations still in place here, and this speech addresses the second situation directly.
23:6
The "Book of the Law of Moses" is the written body of instruction associated with Moses. The Hebrew word behind "law" (torah) means teaching or instruction more broadly than a modern law code does. "Turn aside to the right or the left" is a traveler's image: leaving the road you were told to stay on.
23:7
Swearing an oath "by" a god meant naming that god as the witness and enforcer of a promise, which was ordinary practice in contracts, court testimony, and treaties across the region. Avoiding it therefore meant staying out of a great deal of everyday legal business with neighbors. "Do not even speak the names of their gods" refers to this kind of formal invoking, not to any mention of the name in conversation.
23:8
The Hebrew verb translated "hold tightly" (cleave, in older English) is the same one used in Genesis for a man joining himself to his wife. It carries the sense of sticking fast to someone and staying loyal.
23:10
A stock battlefield expression for an overwhelming rout, found elsewhere in Israel's older poetry. It is a figure of speech about lopsided odds rather than a count of casualties.
23:11
In the treaty language of this period, "love" between parties to an agreement means loyal allegiance and faithful adherence to its terms, the way a subject king was said to "love" his overlord. Warmth of feeling is not excluded, but the word is doing the work of a legal term here.
23:12
"Marry them and mix with them, and they with you" renders a Hebrew phrase that includes an idiom for sexual union between a man and a woman. The concern being described is intermarriage between families, spelled out in both directions: your people to theirs and theirs to yours.
23:13
Four images stacked together, all of things that catch or wound. A "snare" and a "trap" are hunters' devices for taking birds and animals. The word behind "whip on your sides" is uncertain and appears only here; some translators read it as a scourge, others as something like nets or barbs. A close version of the whole picture appears in Numbers 33:55.
23:14
"Going the way of all the earth" is a plain idiom for dying, the way we might say someone is nearing the end of the road. Joshua is announcing his own approaching death, not a journey. "Heart and soul" in Hebrew means the whole inner self, mind and will included, rather than emotion alone.
23:15
The word older translations render "evil things" here means harm, disaster, or calamity, not wickedness. The same Hebrew word covers both senses, and the sense in this sentence is the reverse of the "good things" just mentioned: not moral evil but injury.
23:16
A covenant was a formal binding agreement, the same kind of arrangement used for treaties between a great king and a lesser one. Such treaties typically listed obligations and then set out the benefits of keeping them and the penalties for breaking them, which is the pattern the previous two verses follow.

Read Joshua 23