Study Desk

For our God is not as their gods: our enemies themselves are judges.

See ye that I alone am, and there is no other God besides me: I will kill and I will make to live: I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

This is the blessing, wherewith the man of God, Moses, blessed the children of Israel, before his death.

There is no other god like the God of the rightest: he that is mounted upon the heaven is thy helper. By his magnificence the clouds run hither and thither.

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.

Prepare your 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.

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.

Until the Lord give rest to your brethren, as he hath given 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 you shall dwell in it, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave you beyond the Jordan, toward the rising of the sun.

As we obeyed Moses in all things, so will we obey thee also: only be the Lord thy God with thee, as he was with Moses.

And at the hearing these things, we were affrighted, and our heart fainted away, neither did there remain any spirit in us, at your coming in: for the Lord your God he is God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath.

And began to proclaim: When you shall see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, and the priests of the race of Levi carrying it, rise you up also, and follow them as they go before:

And Josue said to the children of Israel: Come hither, and hear the word of the Lord your God.

And again he said: By this you shall know, that the Lord, the living God, is in the midst of you, and that he shall destroy, before your sight, the Chanaanite and the Hethite, the Hevite and the Pherezite, the Gergesite also, and the Jebusite, and the Amorrhite.

And when the priests, that carry the ark of the Lord the God of the whole earth, shall set the soles of their feet in the waters of the Jordan, the waters that are beneath shall run down and go off: and those that come from above, shall stand together upon a heap.

And he said to them: Go before the ark of the Lord your God to the midst of the Jordan, and carry from thence every man a stone on your shoulders, according to the number of the children of Israel,

The Lord your God drying up the waters thereof in your sight, until you passed over: (4-24) As he had done before in the Red Sea, which he dried up till we passed through:

(4-25) That all the people of the earth may learn the most mighty hand of the Lord, that you also may fear the Lord your God for ever.

And the Prince of the Lord’s host said to Joshua, Acts 10:25, 26; Rev. 19:10), and still further in the command, 'Loose thy shoe from off thy foot'" (KJV) (Robert Jamieson, A.R. Fausset and David Brown, A Commentary). The New Bible Commentary supports this position (as do J.P. Lange, The Cambridge Bible, Charles Ellicott, and many others) when it says, "We believe that this was the Son of God Himself."">[fn] oose your shoes from off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy. And Joshua did so. Exod. 3:5.">[fn]

And Josue said: Alas, O Lord God, why wouldst thou bring this people over the river Jordan, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorrhite, and to destroy us? would God we had stayed beyond the Jordan, as we began.

My Lord God, what shall I say, seeing Israel turning their backs to their enemies?