Joshua 1:1-9
In today’s passage, the reader is given a glimpse of God’s commission of Joshua to lead the Israelites into the land that was promised to them by God. As a testament to God’s sovereignty, it is worth noting that the promise was made in covenant to Abraham around 500 years earlier (Gen 12:1, 7; 13:15–17; 15:12–21) and was passed down to Issac (Gen 26:3), Jacob (Gen 28:4, 13; 35:12), and Jacob’s sons (Gen 46:1–4; 50:24). Israel is about to enter into Canaan which will cover the “wilderness and this Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites to the Great Sea.”
Rather than spend too much time in the geopolitics of the day, I would like to discuss God’s discourse to Joshua as he is about to assume leadership of Israel. Oftentimes, the primary focus of this passage is be “strong and courageous.” It is taught as though you just need to trust God so that He will help you just to say “no” to watching that movie your friends are pressuring you to see, or some other trivial matter like that one. While this application is not entirely wrong, it certainly misses the primary focus of the passage.
In Joshua 1:5b-9, we see a chiastic structure, which will help us to determine the central message of this passage. So named because of the Greek letter chi (X), chiasms are a type of rhetorical structure with which the Hebrew mind would have been very familiar. In chiasm, the first and the last idea are parallel, the second and second to last are parallel, and so on. If you imagine it like a perfectly symmetrical mountain, with the sides of the mountain being the supporting ideas and the peak being the primary one, you will have a good understanding of chiastic structure.
That said, in verses 5b-6 (at the bottom of both sides of the mountain), we see the sentence “I will not leave you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them.” In verse 9b, there is the parallel: “Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” That is the first part of the chiasm. Verse 6 states, “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you.” Verse 9a says nearly the same thing: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous.” That was the second part. The third step of the chiastic structure is in verses 7b and 8b, which mirror each other by stating, “Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success wherever you go” and, “For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
In verse 8, we finally reach the peak of the mountain. “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.” If we want God to not leave us or forsake us (first step), if we want courage to live in a manner that glorifies God (second step), and if we want our lives to be characterized by the providence of God working all things for our good (third step), then we must meditate on the Law of God.
Meditating is not clearing one’s mind and focusing on nothing, but rather delivering a soliloquy about the law and the gospel of Christ. To meditate is to muse about God and His glory, to tell oneself about His mercy and grace in one’s thoughts. True meditation on the law will not be efficacious without the renewal of the Holy Spirit.
In conclusion, while God is willing and able to give us courage to stand for the faith, we have the duty to draw closer to God through the meditation and application of the law of God. As it is stated in James 1:22-25, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”
In our meditation on the law and the gospel, may we always doers of the word.
All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Crossway Bibles.
