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The book at a glance
Joshua tells how Israel, after the death of Moses, crossed the Jordan and entered the land promised to Abraham: the crossing and the first victories (chapters 1–12), the sharing out of the land among the tribes (chapters 13–22), and Joshua's farewell and the renewal of the covenant at Shechem (chapters 23–24). Jewish tradition ascribed the book to Joshua himself. Most scholars today read it as part of a longer history running from Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, given its final shape in the later monarchy and the exile, and they debate how its accounts of conquest relate to what archaeology shows of Jericho and Ai. The Church receives it as inspired Scripture either way. Its accounts of war belong, as the Catechism says of the Old Testament, to a divine teaching that also contains “matters imperfect and provisional” and that prepares for Christ (CCC 122).
Joshua is history, not prediction, and holds no prophecy in the strict sense. It looks forward almost entirely through types: Joshua himself, the crossing of the Jordan, Rahab's scarlet cord. It also gives images that Revelation takes up again, above all the seven trumpets. The New Testament names Joshua and Rahab directly, and the Fathers, Origen in his Homilies on Joshua above all, read the whole book as a story of Jesus. Each card below names which kind of passage it is, and marks where a reading is the Fathers' rather than the New Testament's.
Key to the labels
How a passage stands
Fulfilled Accomplished in history, above all in Christ.
Unfolding Being worked out now in the life of the Church.
Future Clearly still to come at Christ's return.
Mystery Its meaning or moment is not yet settled.
What kind of passage it is
Prophecy God's word through a prophet, or Christ, about what will come.
Promise A pledge God makes, kept over generations.
Type A person or event that foreshadows Christ or the Church.
Image A picture Scripture returns to and completes at the end.
Apocalypse A vision unveiling history from heaven's side, in symbols.
More on the labels
| Passage | Subject | Standing |
|---|
| 1; 21:43–45 | Joshua, Jesus and the promised rest | Fulfilled Future |
| 2; 6:22–25 | Rahab and the scarlet cord | Fulfilled |
| 3–4 | Crossing the Jordan with the ark | Fulfilled |
| 5:13–15 | The commander of the army of the LORD | Fulfilled Mystery |
| 6 | The seven trumpets and the fall of Jericho | Fulfilled Future |
| 24:14–24 | “As for me and my household” | Unfolding |
The passages
After the death of Moses, God tells Joshua, son of Nun, to lead the people across the Jordan into the land, and promises to be with him as he was with Moses. At the end of the conquest the book says the LORD gave Israel rest on every side.
- Reading
- Moses had renamed Hoshea as Joshua, “the LORD saves” (Numbers 13:16), and in Greek the name is Iēsous, Jesus. The angel gives the same name to Mary's child, “because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21); the Catechism explains that the name means “God saves” (CCC 430). Hebrews draws the line between the two: “Now if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterwards of another day. Therefore, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God” (Hebrews 4:8–9).
- Fulfilled
- The Fathers' reading, set out most fully by Origen in his Homilies on Joshua: Moses, the Law, dies on the far side of the Jordan, and it is Joshua, Jesus, who brings the people in. The Law leads us to the edge of the promise; Jesus gives it. He is the true leader of his people, who enters first and opens the way (Hebrews 4:14; 6:20).
- Future
- The land was a gift and a pledge, not the end. The rest that Hebrews promises is God's own rest, still ahead: “whoever enters into God's rest, rests from his own works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:10).
- See also
- Prophecy in Hebrews; Moses sees the land and dies.
“When they were gone, she tied the scarlet cord in the window.” (2:21)
- Reading
- Rahab, a prostitute of Jericho and a Canaanite, hides Joshua's two spies and confesses the God of Israel: “the LORD, your God, is God in heaven above and on earth below” (2:11). She asks for kindness in return, and the spies tell her to tie a scarlet cord in her window and gather her family into her house (2:18). When the city falls, everyone in that house is spared, and she lives on in Israel (6:25). It echoes the Passover, when the blood on the doorposts marked the houses the destroyer would pass over (Exodus 12:13).
- Fulfilled
- The New Testament remembers her three times. Hebrews praises her faith: “By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish with the disobedient, for she had received the spies in peace” (Hebrews 11:31). James praises her works: she “welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route” (James 2:25). And Matthew names her in the genealogy of Jesus as the mother of Boaz (Matthew 1:5). A foreign woman with a sinful past stands among the ancestors of the Messiah.
- The Fathers
- St. Clement of Rome, in his Letter to the Corinthians (chapter 12), saw in the scarlet cord a sign that redemption would come through the blood of the Lord to all who believe and hope in God. Many later Fathers saw in Rahab's house, the one place of safety in a falling city, a figure of the Church.
“The priests carrying the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood on dry ground in the Jordan riverbed while all Israel crossed on dry ground…” (3:17)
- Reading
- Joshua tells the people, “Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will perform wonders among you” (3:5). The ark goes ahead; when the priests' feet touch the water, the river halts, and the people cross into the land. Twelve stones are set up so that children will ask what they mean, and the answer is to be that God dried up the Jordan “just as the LORD, your God, had done at the Red Sea” (4:23). The Exodus that began at the sea ends at the river.
- Fulfilled
- The Church reads this crossing as a figure of Baptism: “Finally, Baptism is prefigured in the crossing of the Jordan River,” by which God's people received the promised land, an image of eternal life (CCC 1222). Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, made the same comparison. It is in the Jordan that Jesus, whose name is Joshua's, is himself baptized and the heavens open (Matthew 3:13–17).
- See also
- The ark that went before the people appears once more at the end of the Bible: “Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple” (Revelation 11:19), just before the woman clothed with the sun (Revelation 12).
“I am the commander of the army of the LORD: now I have come.” (5:14)
- Reading
- Near Jericho, Joshua meets a man with a drawn sword and asks, “Are you one of us or one of our enemies?” (5:13). The answer is neither: he belongs to no side but God's. Joshua falls down in worship and is told, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy” (5:15), the same command Moses heard at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5). The battle for Jericho will be the LORD's, not Joshua's.
- Fulfilled
- Many of the Fathers, St. Justin Martyr among them in his Dialogue with Trypho, read this commander as the Word of God appearing before his Incarnation. Revelation shows the same figure at the end: a rider called “Faithful and True,” whose name is “the Word of God,” and “The armies of heaven followed him” (Revelation 19:11, 13–14).
- Why mystery
- The text does not say who the commander is. Some read him as an angel, the leader of the heavenly host; others, with Justin, as a visible manifestation of God himself, since Joshua worships him and is not corrected. The Church has not settled the question.
“On the seventh day march around the city seven times, and have the priests blow the horns.” (6:4)
- Reading
- For six days the people circle Jericho in silence behind the ark, with seven priests carrying ram's horns. On the seventh day they circle it seven times; the horns sound, the people shout, and “The wall collapsed, and the people attacked the city straight ahead and took it” (6:20). No siege engine is used. The city falls to worship and obedience, and Hebrews says the same: “By faith the walls of Jericho fell after being encircled for seven days” (Hebrews 11:30).
- Fulfilled
- Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, read the priests' horns as the preaching of the apostles, at whose sound the walls of the world's resistance to God fall down. The victory of Jesus is won not by force but by the word.
- Future
- Revelation takes up the pattern of seven: “And I saw that the seven angels who stood before God were given seven trumpets” (Revelation 8:2). As at Jericho the walls fell at the last blast, so at the seventh trumpet “The kingdom of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The resemblance is one of images and numbers, not a timetable; this site sets no dates.
- See also
- On the trumpets, The Lamb's Victory, chapter 8. On the ban and the destruction of the city, see the note in “The book at a glance” above.
“As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.” (24:15)
- Reading
- At Shechem the old Joshua gathers the tribes, retells what God has done since Abraham, and sets a choice before them: “choose today whom you will serve” (24:15). The people answer, “Therefore we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God” (24:18), and Joshua makes a covenant with them. It is the same choice Moses set before Israel, “Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
- Why unfolding
- The choice was not made once for all at Shechem. When many disciples left Jesus, he asked the Twelve whether they too would go, and Peter answered as Israel had: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). Every Christian household that says Joshua's words is making the same choice again, and it remains open until the end.
Joshua and Jesus
The Fathers read the book as a story told twice, once in Joshua and once in Jesus. A few of the correspondences they saw:
| Joshua | Jesus |
|---|
| Joshua, “the LORD saves” (Numbers 13:16) | Jesus, the same name, who saves his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21) |
| Moses dies outside the land; Joshua leads the people in (Deuteronomy 34; Joshua 1) | The Law prepares; Christ brings us into the promise (Hebrews 4:8–9) |
| The crossing of the Jordan (3–4) | The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and Christian Baptism (Matthew 3:13–17; CCC 1222) |
| Twelve stones taken from the river (4:1–9) | Twelve apostles, the foundations of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:14) |
| The manna ceases; Israel eats the fruit of the land (5:12) | The true bread from heaven (John 6:32–35) |
| Seven trumpets and the walls fall (6) | Seven trumpets and the kingdom of the world becomes Christ's (Revelation 8–11) |
| Rahab's house spared under the scarlet cord (2; 6:25) | Salvation through the blood of Christ (1 Clement 12) |
Still to come on this pageFurther passages to add: God's charge to Joshua to be strong and steadfast (1:1–9), the circumcision and Passover at Gilgal and the end of the manna (5:2–12), the sun standing still at Gibeon (10:12–14), the cities of refuge (20; compare
Hebrews 6:18), the altar of witness by the Jordan (22), and the Gibeonites who deceived their way into the covenant (9).
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