Joshua 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

When the Amorite and Canaanite kings hear that the LORD dried up the Jordan for Israel, their courage fails. God tells Joshua to circumcise the men born during the forty years in the wilderness, and the people stay in camp at Gilgal until they heal. They keep the Passover on the plains of Jericho, eat food grown in the land, and the manna stops. Near Jericho, Joshua meets a man holding a drawn sword who says he has come as commander of the LORD's army, and who tells Joshua to take his sandal off his foot because the ground is holy.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • All the kings of the Amorites west of the Jordan heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the children of Israel.
   • All the kings of the Canaanites by the sea heard that the LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the children of Israel.
   • The LORD had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the children of Israel until they had crossed over.
   • The text says the drying up lasted until we had crossed over.
   • The hearts of those kings melted.
   • There was no spirit left in those kings any more.
   • The kings lost heart because of the children of Israel.
2. 5:2
   • At that time the LORD spoke to Joshua.
   • The LORD told Joshua to make himself knives of flint.
   • The LORD told Joshua to circumcise the children of Israel again, a second time.
3. 5:3
   • Joshua made himself knives of flint.
   • Joshua circumcised the children of Israel.
   • The circumcision took place at the hill of the foreskins.
4. 5:4
   • This is the reason Joshua circumcised the people.
   • All the males who came out of Egypt, that is all the men of war, died in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt.
5. 5:5
   • All the people who came out of Egypt had been circumcised.
   • All the people born in the wilderness along the way after they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised.
6. 5:6
   • The children of Israel walked in the wilderness forty years.
   • They walked in the wilderness until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, had perished.
   • Those men of war had not obeyed the voice of the LORD.
   • The LORD swore to them that he would not let them see the land.
   • The LORD had sworn to their fathers that he would give us that land.
   • That land flows with milk and honey.
7. 5:7
   • He raised up their children in their place.
   • Joshua circumcised those children.
   • Those children were uncircumcised.
   • They had not been circumcised along the way.
8. 5:8
   • The circumcising of all the nation was completed.
   • The people stayed where they were in the camp.
   • They stayed in the camp until they were healed.
9. 5:9
   • The LORD spoke to Joshua.
   • The LORD said that on that day he had rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off them.
   • The name of that place is called Gilgal.
   • That place is called Gilgal to this day.
10. 5:10
    • The children of Israel encamped at Gilgal.
    • They kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month.
    • They kept the passover in the evening.
    • They kept the passover in the plains of Jericho.
11. 5:11
    • They ate of the produce of the land on the day after the passover.
    • They ate unleavened cakes.
    • They ate parched grain.
    • They ate this on that very same day.
12. 5:12
    • The manna ceased on the day after they ate of the produce of the land.
    • The children of Israel had no more manna.
    • They ate of the yield of the land of Canaan that year.
13. 5:13
    • Joshua was by Jericho.
    • Joshua lifted up his eyes and looked.
    • A man was standing opposite Joshua.
    • The man had his sword drawn in his hand.
    • Joshua went to the man.
    • Joshua asked the man whether he was for them or for their adversaries.
14. 5:14
    • The man answered, No.
    • The man said he was the commander of the army of the LORD.
    • The man said he had now come.
    • Joshua fell on his face to the earth.
    • Joshua bowed down in worship.
    • Joshua asked what his lord had to say to his servant.
15. 5:15
    • The commander of the army of the LORD spoke to Joshua.
    • He told Joshua to take his sandal off his foot.
    • He said the place where Joshua was standing is holy.
    • Joshua did so.

Words Worth Explaining

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

5:1

"Amorite" and "Canaanite" are broad labels for the peoples living in the land before Israel; here "Canaanite" covers those along the Mediterranean coast and "Amorite" those inland. Their "kings" were rulers of single walled towns and their farmland, not monarchs of large nations. The Israelites were approaching from the east, so crossing the Jordan brought them into this territory. Note also that the Hebrew text as written says "until *we* had crossed over", the narrator slips into the first person and counts himself among the people; an old scribal reading tradition corrects it to "they."

5:2

Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin, was the physical mark of the agreement between God and Abraham, applied to every male in the household (Genesis 17). Flint was the traditional material for the blade, still used for this rite long after metal knives were common. "Again, a second time" is awkward in Hebrew as well as in English: nobody is circumcised twice, so the sense is that the nation as a whole undergoes the rite a second time, one generation after the first.

5:3

The place name in Hebrew is Gibeath-haaraloth, which means exactly what the rendering says: "hill of the foreskins." Places were routinely named after what happened at them.

5:4

"All the men of war" means every adult male fit to fight, which in practice was the entire adult male generation that left Egypt. Their deaths in the desert are not an accident of the journey; verse 6 explains them.

5:6

The forty years refer to the episode in Numbers 14, where the generation that left Egypt refused to enter the land and was told none of them would live to see it. "A land rich with milk and honey" is a stock phrase for good country: milk from flocks grazing open hill pasture, honey from wild bees, food that comes without heavy labor. As in verse 1, the Hebrew shifts to "give *us*," including the narrator and his hearers in the promise made to earlier generations.

5:8

Adult circumcision left the men sore and unable to fight for several days (compare Genesis 34:25), which is why the text notes that the whole camp stayed put until they healed.

5:9

The name Gilgal resembles the Hebrew verb *galal*, "to roll," so the place name and the phrase "rolled away" echo each other, a play on words rather than a translation of the name. "The shame of Egypt" is left open in the Hebrew: it may mean the disgrace of having been slaves there, or the taunting Egypt directed at Israel, or the uncircumcised condition the desert generation shared with the nations around them.

5:10

Passover was the yearly meal, eaten on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month (in early spring), that marked the night Israel left Egypt. The Hebrew day begins at sunset, so "the evening of the fourteenth" is the start of that date, not its end.

5:11

Where the King James Version says "corn," it means grain of any kind, in 1611 English "corn" was the general word; maize was unknown in the ancient Near East. The grain was from a harvest already stored in the land, roasted over fire, a common way to eat new grain. Bread without yeast was required during the Passover festival, recalling a departure too hurried for dough to rise.

5:12

Manna was the flaky food that, according to Exodus 16, appeared on the ground each morning during the years in the desert and had to be gathered daily. Its stopping marks the end of that provision: from here the people live off crops like everyone else.

5:13

"Are you for us or for our enemies?" is the challenge a sentry or commander puts to an armed stranger near a battlefield. The text simply calls the figure "a man," and only his answer in the next verse indicates otherwise.

5:14

The reply refuses the question rather than answering it: the Hebrew is a flat "No," and ancient copies differ over whether it reads "no" or "neither." "Commander of the LORD's army" translates a military title; the "army" (King James "host") is the heavenly force, not Israel's troops. The gesture translated "worshiped" is prostration, lying face down, which in Hebrew could show homage to a human superior or reverence toward God, and the word Joshua uses, "my lord," works either way. The scene keeps the ambiguity.

5:15

The KJV's "shoe" means sandal. Removing footwear before holy ground was a gesture of respect, keeping the dirt of ordinary places off it and leaving the person exposed and lowered before whoever is present. The same instruction was given to Moses at the burning bush, and the wording here is close enough that readers were meant to hear the echo.