Promises and a Charge

In addition to commissioning Joshua to take on the leadership of the people and begin the conquest of Canaan, God extends several very encouraging promises to him in this initial communication.

First, God promises the great blessing of His presence with Joshua. We can best see the importance of this divine blessing to the Israelites by recalling the incident of the golden calf, when God threatened to fulfill His promise to bring the Israelites into the land without going with them (Ex. 33:1–3). That sent Israel into mourning (33:4) and prompted Moses to beg that God would not send them if He would not come (33:15). Without the presence of God in its midst, Moses said, Israel would not know that it had found grace in His sight (33:16). In fact, dwelling in the Promised Land without God would be judgment. Thus, it is no small thing for God to promise His presence to Joshua and, by extension, to the people. God pledges that He will be with Joshua as He was with Moses. And with God by his side, Joshua will do what he otherwise could not: He will defeat all of his adversaries and live to see the cessation of hostilities and the division of the land. He will witness Israel’s “ ‘inheritance,’ ” the fulfillment of God’s promise that His people will settle in Canaan with Him in their midst. “It is a great encouragement to him in beginning this work that he was sure to see it finished and his labor should not be in vain,” Matthew Henry writes in his commentary.

But though the promises of God are sure, Joshua’s success as the leader of Israel is not. If he slips into disobedience to God’s commands, he will fail (and God will fulfill His promises another way). God is here directing Joshua to keep the law if he would be the one to bring Israel into Canaan. He must observe it all, not deviating from the path of righteousness it lays out. He is to meditate on it continuously. It must not “ ‘depart from [his] mouth’ ”; that is, he must issue orders and render judgments in accordance with it. If he does these things, God will enable him to succeed.

Finally, given emphasis by repetition is God’s command that Joshua “ ‘be strong and of good courage.’ ” He is a valorous man, but his task is monumental now. He must have courage to follow God’s way when his eyes—or the people—will lead him astray.