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Joshua

Moses’s successor who led Israel across the Jordan and into the promised land — whose very name means “the Lord saves”

The Name

Joshua's Hebrew name is Yehoshua, meaning “the LORD saves” or “the LORD is salvation.” In its shortened Aramaic form it becomes Yeshua — the name that was rendered in Greek as Iesous and in English as Jesus. The man who led Israel into the promised land carried, in his name, the same meaning as the one who would one day lead all of humanity into a greater promised inheritance.

This is not coincidence. The New Testament draws the connection explicitly. The author of Hebrews notes that if Joshua had given the people true rest in the land, God would not have spoken later of “another day” (Hebrews 4:8) — meaning Joshua's conquest was real but incomplete, a type pointing to the rest that only Christ would bring.

The Commission

When Moses died on the plains of Moab, the people of Israel had spent forty years in the wilderness. An entire generation of those who had murmured against God at Kadesh-barnea had died. Joshua, who as one of the twelve spies had given the faithful report — “we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30) — was now eighty years old and stood at the Jordan with a nation that had never seen the land promised to Abraham.

The Lord's commission came with a command repeated four times in the first chapter of Joshua:

Joshua 1:7–9

“Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

The charge was not military strategy. It was Scripture meditation. The source of Joshua's courage was to be the word of God, held in the mind and mouth continuously. This is the architecture of spiritual courage: not natural fearlessness, but sustained exposure to what God has said, so that the mind is shaped by promises rather than by visible obstacles.

The Jordan and Jericho

The crossing of the Jordan echoed the crossing of the Red Sea. The priests carried the ark of the covenant to the water's edge; when the soles of their feet touched the Jordan, the river stopped flowing and the people crossed on dry ground (Joshua 3:15–17). The generation that had been born in the wilderness crossed into the covenant land on the same terms as their fathers — by the direct intervention of God, not by engineering or military preparation.

Jericho was the first city of Canaan, heavily fortified, impossible to take by conventional assault. God's instructions were stripped of anything resembling military logic: march around the city once a day for six days; on the seventh day, march around seven times; when the priests blow the trumpets, shout. The people did exactly this. The walls fell (Joshua 6:20).

The pattern established at Jericho was the pattern of the whole conquest: not human capability, but human obedience releasing divine power. The victories that followed were God's victories. The defeats — as at Ai, when Achan had taken forbidden spoil — were the result of Israel's faithlessness, not God's absence.

The Sun Standing Still

During the battle of Gibeon, Joshua prayed for more daylight to complete the victory. The request was made in faith mid-battle, and the answer was one of the most dramatic interventions in the Old Testament record:

Joshua 10:12–14

“Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the Lord fought for Israel.”

Choose You This Day

At the end of his life, Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel at Shechem and reviewed the entire history of God's dealings with them — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Egypt, Moses, the wilderness, the Jordan, the conquest. Then he pressed them to a decision. He was not interested in formal agreement or ancestral loyalty. He wanted a conscious, deliberate choice:

Joshua 24:15

“Choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

The people answered three times that they would serve the Lord. Joshua pressed them each time: they could not serve the Lord without understanding what it cost; the Lord was holy and jealous, and would not accept divided loyalty. His final words were a covenant, a stone set as a witness. He died at the age of 110, having led a generation into the land their faith had claimed from a distance, and having declared his own house's allegiance in language that has carried its challenge across thirty centuries.

Key Scriptures

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