For Teaching

Joshua 24: What the Passage Says

134 claims across 33 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Joshua 24 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joshua gathers all Israel at Shechem and recites, in God's own words, the history that brought them there, from Abraham beyond the Euphrates through Egypt, the wilderness, and the taking of the land. He then tells the people to choose whom they will serve, warns them that God is holy and jealous and will not overlook their rebellion, and accepts their repeated pledge to serve the LORD. He makes a covenant with them, writes it down, and sets up a stone as a witness. The chapter closes with the deaths and burials of Joshua and Eleazar and the burial of Joseph's bones at Shechem.

Claim by Claim

24:1
- Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem.
- Joshua called for the elders of Israel.
- Joshua called for the heads of Israel.
- Joshua called for the judges of Israel.
- Joshua called for the officers of Israel.
- They presented themselves before God.
24:2
- Joshua spoke to all the people.
- Joshua said that this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says.
- The LORD said that their fathers dwelt beyond the River long ago.
- Terah was the father of Abraham.
- Terah was the father of Nahor.
- The LORD said that their fathers served other gods.
24:3
- The LORD said he took their father Abraham from beyond the River.
- The LORD said he led Abraham through all the land of Canaan.
- The LORD said he multiplied Abraham's offspring.
- The LORD said he gave Abraham Isaac.
24:4
- The LORD said he gave Jacob and Esau to Isaac.
- The LORD said he gave Mount Seir to Esau to possess it.
- The LORD said Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.
24:5
- The LORD said he sent Moses and Aaron.
- The LORD said he struck Egypt with plagues.
- The LORD said he plagued Egypt according to what he did in its midst.
- The LORD said that afterward he brought them out.
24:6
- The LORD said he brought their fathers out of Egypt.
- The LORD said they came to the sea.
- The LORD said the Egyptians pursued their fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea.
24:7
- The people cried out to the LORD.
- The LORD put darkness between them and the Egyptians.
- The LORD brought the sea upon the Egyptians.
- The sea covered the Egyptians.
- The LORD said their eyes saw what he did in Egypt.
- The LORD said they dwelt in the wilderness many days.
24:8
- The LORD said he brought them into the land of the Amorites.
- The Amorites dwelt beyond the Jordan.
- The Amorites fought against them.
- The LORD said he gave the Amorites into their hand.
- The LORD said they took possession of the Amorites' land.
- The LORD said he destroyed the Amorites from before them.
24:9
- Balak son of Zippor was king of Moab.
- Balak arose and fought against Israel.
- Balak sent and called for Balaam son of Beor.
- Balak called Balaam in order to curse them.
24:10
- The LORD said he was not willing to listen to Balaam.
- Balaam blessed them repeatedly.
- The LORD said he delivered them out of Balak's hand.
24:11
- They crossed the Jordan.
- They came to Jericho.
- The men of Jericho fought against them.
- The Amorites fought against them.
- The Perizzites fought against them.
- The Canaanites fought against them.
- The Hittites fought against them.
- The Girgashites fought against them.
- The Hivites fought against them.
- The Jebusites fought against them.
- The LORD said he gave them into their hand.
24:12
- The LORD said he sent the hornet before them.
- The hornet drove them out from before them.
- Those driven out were the two kings of the Amorites.
- It was not done by their sword.
- It was not done by their bow.
24:13
- The LORD said he gave them a land they did not labor for.
- The LORD said he gave them cities they did not build.
- They dwell in those cities.
- They eat of vineyards and olive groves they did not plant.
24:14
- Joshua commanded them to fear the LORD.
- Joshua commanded them to serve the LORD in sincerity and in truth.
- Joshua commanded them to put away the gods their fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt.
- Joshua commanded them to serve the LORD.
24:15
- Joshua said that if serving the LORD seems evil to them, they must choose this day whom they will serve.
- The choice was between the gods their fathers served beyond the River and the gods of the Amorites in whose land they dwell.
- Joshua said that he and his house will serve the LORD.
24:16
- The people answered.
- The people said far be it from them to forsake the LORD.
- The people said far be it from them to serve other gods.
24:17
- The people said the LORD their God is the one who brought them and their fathers up from the land of Egypt.
- The people said Egypt was a house of slaves.
- The people said the LORD did those great signs before their eyes.
- The people said the LORD kept them in all the way they went.
- The people said the LORD kept them among all the peoples through whom they passed.
24:18
- The people said the LORD drove out all the peoples from before them.
- The people said the LORD drove out the Amorites who dwelt in the land.
- The people said they also will serve the LORD.
- The people said the LORD is their God.
24:19
- Joshua spoke to the people.
- Joshua said they are not able to serve the LORD.
- Joshua said he is a holy God.
- Joshua said he is a jealous God.
- Joshua said he will not forgive their transgressions and their sins.
24:20
- Joshua said that if they forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, he will turn and do them harm.
- Joshua said the LORD will consume them.
- Joshua said this would come after the LORD has done them good.
24:21
- The people spoke to Joshua.
- The people said no.
- The people said they will serve the LORD.
24:22
- Joshua spoke to the people.
- Joshua said they are witnesses against themselves that they have chosen the LORD to serve him.
- The people said they are witnesses.
24:23
- Joshua commanded them to put away the foreign gods that are among them.
- Joshua commanded them to incline their heart to the LORD, the God of Israel.
24:24
- The people spoke to Joshua.
- The people said they will serve the LORD their God.
- The people said they will obey his voice.
24:25
- Joshua made a covenant with the people that day.
- Joshua set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem.
24:26
- Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God.
- Joshua took a great stone.
- Joshua set the stone up there under the oak.
- The oak was by the sanctuary of the LORD.
24:27
- Joshua spoke to all the people.
- Joshua said this stone shall be a witness against them.
- Joshua said the stone has heard all the words of the LORD which he spoke with them.
- Joshua said the stone shall be a witness against them lest they deny their God.
24:28
- Joshua sent the people away.
- Each man went to his inheritance.
24:29
- After these things Joshua son of Nun died.
- Joshua was the servant of the LORD.
- Joshua was a hundred and ten years old.
24:30
- They buried Joshua in the border of his inheritance.
- The burial place was Timnath-serah.
- Timnath-serah is in the hill country of Ephraim.
- Timnath-serah is north of Mount Gaash.
24:31
- Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua.
- Israel served the LORD all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua.
- Those elders had known all the work of the LORD which he did for Israel.
24:32
- The children of Israel brought up the bones of Joseph out of Egypt.
- They buried the bones of Joseph in Shechem.
- The burial place was a parcel of ground Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor.
- Hamor was the father of Shechem.
- Jacob bought it for a hundred pieces of money.
- The parcel became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
24:33
- Eleazar son of Aaron died.
- They buried Eleazar in the hill of Phinehas his son.
- The hill had been given to Phinehas in the hill country of Ephraim.

Words Worth Explaining

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

24:1: Shechem was a city in the central hill country, between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, about thirty miles north of Jerusalem. It was where Abraham first stopped in Canaan and where Jacob bought land, and it had long been a place where covenants and agreements were made. The four groups named (elders, leaders (literally "heads," meaning clan chiefs), judges, and officers) were the standing ranks of Israelite leadership; "officers" translates a word for administrators or record-keepers rather than soldiers. "Presented themselves before God" is language for standing at a sanctuary.
24:2: Where the King James says "the other side of the flood," the Hebrew means "beyond the River", the Euphrates, in what is now Iraq. It has nothing to do with Noah's flood; "flood" in 1611 English could simply mean a great river. Terah, Abraham's father, came from Ur and settled in Haran, both east of that river.
24:3: "Multiplied his seed" uses "seed" in its old sense of offspring or descendants, a family line rather than a plant.
24:4: Seir is the mountainous country south and east of the Dead Sea, later called Edom, and Esau's descendants were the Edomites. Naming it here explains why one brother's family ended up outside Canaan and the other's in Egypt.
24:5: "I plagued Egypt" points back to the ten disasters God sent on Egypt when the king refused to free the Israelite slaves.
24:6: "Red Sea" translates Hebrew *yam suph*, which literally means "sea of reeds." Exactly which body of water is meant has been debated since ancient times; the traditional identification is the northern arm of the Red Sea.
24:7: The speech keeps sliding between "your fathers" and "you," as though the people standing at Shechem had personally been at the sea generations earlier. That is deliberate: in covenant ceremonies the present generation is addressed as if it had lived the history itself.
24:8: The Amorites here are the kingdoms of Sihon and Og, east of the Jordan, defeated before Israel ever crossed into Canaan. "The other side of Jordan" is said from the standpoint of someone already west of the river.
24:9: Balak, king of Moab (the territory east of the Dead Sea), hired Balaam, a professional diviner from the upper Euphrates, to pronounce a curse on Israel. In the ancient world a curse spoken by a recognized specialist was thought to have real force, and hiring one was a normal move before a battle. The full story is told in Numbers 22–24.
24:10: "He blessed you still" uses "still" in its older sense of "again and again," not "nevertheless", Balaam pronounced blessing repeatedly instead of the curse he was paid for. The Hebrew of the last phrase, "I delivered you out of his hand," does not say whose hand: it could be Balak's or Balaam's.
24:11: This seven-name list is a stock formula in the Hebrew Bible for the assorted peoples living in Canaan before Israel; the names are not meant as a precise census of who fought at Jericho. "The men of Jericho" translates a word for the city's leading citizens or landholders.
24:12: The Hebrew word translated "hornet" (*tsir'ah*) occurs only three times in the Bible and its sense is uncertain. It may mean literal hornets, or it may be a figure of speech for the panic and demoralisation that scattered an enemy ahead of an army; some have connected it to Egyptian military pressure, since the hornet or bee was a royal emblem in Egypt. "The two kings of the Amorites" are Sihon and Og.
24:13: This is a picture of inheriting a working economy rather than building one. Vineyards take several years to bear, and olive trees can take a decade or more before a serious harvest, so a planted grove represented a previous generation's long labor.
24:14: "Fear the LORD" translates a Hebrew word covering awe, reverence and loyal respect toward a superior, not fright. "Sincerity and truth" renders two words meaning wholeness or integrity, and reliability or trustworthiness: acting without duplicity and keeping one's word.
24:15: "If it seem evil unto you" uses "evil" in its older, wider sense of "bad" or "displeasing", the question is what the people find undesirable, not what is wicked. "My house" means a household in the ancient sense: family, dependants and servants under one head.
24:16: "God forbid" is the King James translators' rendering of a Hebrew idiom that literally means "far be it from us." The Hebrew does not mention God at all; it is a strong expression of refusal.
24:17: "House of bondage" means the place where we were slaves. "Signs" here means the plagues and the escape from Egypt, events understood as public proof rather than private experiences.
24:18: "Drave" is simply the old past tense of "drive." Today we say drove.
24:19: "Holy" translates a word whose root sense is "set apart, belonging to a different category." "Jealous" translates *qanna'*, used of a husband's exclusive claim on a wife; it describes a demand for undivided loyalty rather than petty envy, and English has no single word that carries the sense. "Transgressions" renders *pesha'*, a political term for rebellion or breaking faith with an overlord.
24:20: "Strange gods" in older English means foreign gods, gods belonging to other peoples, not gods that are odd.
24:21: "Nay" is just the old word for no.
24:22: This is courtroom and treaty language. Ancient agreements were sealed in the presence of named witnesses who could later testify if one party broke the terms; here the people are made to serve as witnesses to their own undertaking, so no one else need be called.
24:23: "Incline your heart" means lean your whole self toward something. In the Bible the heart stands for your thoughts and choices, not your feelings alone.
24:25: The Hebrew idiom is "cut a covenant." A covenant was a formal, binding agreement of the kind made between a ruler and his subjects, with stated terms, obligations and consequences. "A statute and an ordinance" are two words for fixed, written rulings, the standing terms of the agreement.
24:26: A "book" here means a scroll, not a bound volume. The oak is spoken of as a particular, well-known tree, and large trees often marked sacred sites; "the sanctuary of the LORD" indicates there was already a recognized holy place at Shechem.
24:27: In ancient treaties the gods of both parties were called as witnesses; where that was not appropriate, a standing stone or monument could be set up to serve the same function, silently "testifying" to what had been agreed by its continued presence at the spot.
24:28: "Inheritance" is the standard term for the block of land allotted to each family and tribe. It was not bought or earned but assigned, and it was meant to stay in the family permanently.
24:29: "The servant of the LORD" is a formal title of honor, used elsewhere chiefly of Moses; applying it to Joshua at his death places him alongside Moses. In Egyptian tradition one hundred and ten years was the ideal, perfect lifespan, the same age given for Joseph's death.
24:30: Timnath-serah was the town Joshua himself had asked for and been given when the land was divided (Joshua 19:49–50). "Mount Ephraim" in the King James means the hill country belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, not a single peak.
24:31: "Overlived" is simply the older form of outlived. The verse quietly limits the loyalty it describes to one generation and the eyewitnesses who followed, which sets up the collapse recorded in the book of Judges.
24:32: Joseph had made his brothers swear to carry his bones out of Egypt when they eventually left (Genesis 50:25), and Moses took them at the exodus (Exodus 13:19). Burying him at Shechem puts him in ground his own great-grandfather had bought outright (Genesis 33:19). "A hundred pieces of silver" translates *qesitah*, an old unit of value whose weight was already unknown to later readers; coins did not yet exist, so silver was weighed out.
24:33: Eleazar was Aaron's son and successor as chief priest, and Phinehas was Eleazar's son. The Hebrew reads "Gibeah of Phinehas"; Gibeah simply means "hill," so this may be a place name rather than a description of the terrain.

Read Joshua 24