Commentaria in Josue
Chapter 1
First, God appears to Josue and strengthens him to invade Chanaan. Secondly, verse 10, Josue commands the people to be made ready within three days, that they may cross the Jordan, and charges the Rubenites and Gadites to go before the other tribes in arms, as they had promised to do.
1. And it came to pass after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Josue the son of Nun, the minister of Moses, and said to him: 2. Moses my servant is dead: arise, and pass over this Jordan, thou and all the people with thee, into the land which I will give to the children of Israel. 3. I will deliver to you every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, as I have said to Moses. 4. From the desert and Libanus as far as the great river Euphrates, all the land of the Hethites unto the great sea of the going down of the sun, shall be your border. 5. No man shall be able to withstand you all the days of thy life: as I have been with Moses, so will I be with thee: I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee. 6. Be strong and couragious: for thou shalt divide by lot to this people the land, which I swore to their fathers that I would deliver to them. 7. Take courage therefore, and be very valiant: that thou mayst observe and do all the law, which Moses my servant hath commanded thee: turn not aside from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayst understand all things which thou dost. 8. Let not the book of this law depart from thy mouth: but thou shalt meditate on it day and night, that thou mayst observe and do all things that are written in it: then shalt thou direct thy way, and understand it. 9. Behold I command thee, take courage, and be strong. Fear not, and be not dismayed: because the Lord thy God is with thee in all things whatsoever thou shalt go to. 10. And Josue commanded the princes of the people, saying: Pass through the midst of the camp, and command the people, and say: 11. Prepare you victuals: for after the third day you shall pass over the Jordan, and shall go in to possess the land which the Lord your God will give you. 12. He said also to the Rubenites and the Gadites, and to the half tribe of Manasses: 13. Remember the word which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, saying: The Lord your God hath given you rest, and all this land. 14. Your wives, and children, and cattle shall remain in the land which Moses delivered to you beyond the Jordan: but pass you over armed before your brethren, all ye that are strong of hand, and fight for them, 15. until the Lord give rest to your brethren, as he hath given to you, and they also possess the land which the Lord your God will give them: and so you shall return into the land of your possession, and shall dwell in it, which Moses the servant of the Lord delivered to you beyond the Jordan at the rising of the sun. 16. And they answered Josue, and said: All that thou hast commanded us we will do: and whithersoever thou shalt send us, we will go. 17. As we obeyed Moses in all things, so will we obey thee: only be the Lord thy God with thee, as he was with Moses. 18. He that shall gainsay thy mouth, and not obey all thy words that thou shalt command him, let him be put to death. Do thou only take courage, and behave manfully.
1. AND IT CAME TO PASS, etc., THAT HE SPOKE.—In the Hebrew it is: And it came to pass, and he spoke, that is, and he spoke. For “it came to pass” is redundant in the Hebrew manner. Hence our Vulgate clearly renders: And it came to pass that he spoke; and it joins this book with the end of Deuteronomy, for it follows the acts of that book in order; although otherwise for the Hebrews vau, or “and,” is initial, and marks the beginning of a book, as I said on Ezechiel chapter i, verse 1, on the words: “And it came to pass in the thirtieth year.”
AFTER THE DEATH OF MOSES,—after the thirty days of mourning were completed, in which the Hebrews lamented the death of Moses, Deuteronomy, last chapter, 8; for they had to mourn and rest. So Abulensis, Serarius and Cajetan, although Lyranus, Salianus and Masius, following the Talmudists, think the contrary, of which in chapter iii. Wherefore, since Moses died about the third day, and the Hebrews then lamented him for thirty days, as is clear from Deuteronomy, last chapter, 4 and 8, and immediately after the mourning Josue took up the command of the people in the place of Moses, here authorized and strengthened by God, it follows that this apparition and encouragement were made to him about the third day of the first month Nisan; on the tenth day of which the Hebrews crossed the Jordan, as is clear from chapter iv, 19; and on the 14th day they celebrated the Pasch, as is clear from chapter v, 10.
THAT THE LORD SPOKE,—through an Angel acting in God’s stead, as through an Angel he had spoken to Moses, and given him the law on Sinai, as is clear from Galatians chapter iii, 19. “For they are all ministering spirits,” Hebrews i, 14. Wherefore as often as in the Old Testament God is said to have appeared or spoken, he did so not of himself but through an Angel, as I showed in the Pentateuch. Moreover this Angel spoke to Josue either by spiritual speech, putting into his mind the conceptions of these words, as if Josue had heard God himself present and speaking, or by bodily speech, appearing in an assumed body and speaking with his mouth to Josue; for either is probable. Josue, then, is here immediately appointed and authorized by God, through an Angel, leader of the people, and therefore is by him instructed in all things, directed, prospered with victories, adorned with spoils and enriched with kingdoms; whereas other kings and princes are appointed by God not immediately but mediately, by the election of the people or of the nobles.
St. Jerome, on the Apostle’s words, “Ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee,” Titus chapter i, 5, says: “Moses, the friend of God, could certainly have made his sons successors in the principate, and left his dignity to his posterity, but Jesus, a stranger of another tribe, is chosen, that we might know that the principate over peoples is not to be conferred on blood but on life. But now we see very many make this a favour, so that they do not seek those who can profit the Church most and raise up pillars in the Church, but those whom they either love themselves, or by whose compliance they are charmed, or for whom some great man has pleaded, and, to say nothing worse, who have obtained by bribes that they should become clerics.”
2. ARISE,—that is, up, go. For it is the word of one exhorting, rousing and encouraging, not of one commanding.
WHICH I WILL GIVE.—The Hebrew is: I give; as if to say: So surely will I give it as if I were already giving it, indeed at this very moment I begin to give it.
3. EVERY PLACE THAT THE SOLE OF YOUR FOOT SHALL TREAD UPON, I WILL DELIVER TO YOU (Hebrew natatti, that is, I have given, I have delivered, that is, most certainly I will deliver forthwith), AS I HAVE SAID TO MOSES.—“Every place,” that is, the whole of Chanaan, to which the Hebrews were going, he promised to Abraham, to Moses and to the Hebrews, Genesis chapter xv, 18; Exodus xxiii, 31; Deuteronomy chapter xi, 9, and often elsewhere. Now God fulfils his promises, and through Josue delivers it to the Hebrews to be possessed, because he is the supreme Lord of it and of the whole world. “For the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof: the world, and all they that dwell therein,” Psalm xxiii, 1.
Tropologically, Origen, homily 4: Our Chanaan is concupiscence, namely the motions of pride, anger, lust, gluttony, impatience, sloth, avarice: which if we tread upon by fighting nobly, and subject to ourselves, we shall rule over them under the leadership of Josue, that is, by the grace of Jesus Christ.
But Rupert here, chapter vi, says: Every place is every heart, or every conscience, which the foot of Jesus treads upon, that is, which submits itself to be trodden under the feet of Jesus after the manner of Magdalen; this, then, is Jesus’s own, this is the Saviour’s and of everlasting salvation, that Jesus, that is, the Saviour and salvation, may possess it.
On the contrary, those whom the foot of Jesus has not trodden upon, that is, who are not delivered and subject to him, are given to the devil, and are therefore not a people of acquisition but sons of perdition.
But St. Bernard subtly and piously, sermon 15 on the psalm Qui habitat: “Hope in the Lord, all ye congregation of the people; for whatever place your foot shall tread upon shall be yours: your foot is certainly your hope, and however far it shall advance it will obtain, provided it be wholly fixed on God, that it may be firm and not totter.” He, therefore, who hopes in God will obtain all things from him, because God has promised this everywhere in Scripture and the Gospels: wherefore, since he is most faithful, he will fulfil his promises, and since he is most merciful and most liberal, he will not suffer himself to be outdone by our hope, but will strive to surpass it. Hence the same St. Bernard, sermon 3 On the Annunciation: “Hope alone, he says, finds a place with thee (O Lord) for mercy, nor dost thou pour in the oil of mercy unless into the vessel of confidence.”