Joshua 24:1

Chapter 24 The Great Covenant Ceremony.

The book closes with an account of a great covenant ceremony at Shechem. The chapter begins with an account of the gathering of the tribes by Joshua. There Joshua again addresses the people, rehearses to them the many great and good things YHWH has done for them, from the time of their ancestor Abraham to that day, and then exhorts them to fear and serve YHWH, and reject idols. Then he lays before them the stark choice as to whether they will serve the true God, or the gods of the Canaanites. When they choose the former, he advises them to abide by their choice, and finalises a covenant with them to that purpose. Then he sends them away and the chapter concludes with an account of the death and burial of Joshua and Eleazar, and of the interment of the bones of Joseph.

Joshua 24:1

‘ And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers, and they presented themselves before God.'

Shechem was the place where Joshua had previously written the words of the covenant on stones (Joshua 8:32) and had built an altar in accordance with Exodus 20:24, establishing a sanctuary there in response to God's revelation through Moses (Deuteronomy 27:5), in a great covenant ceremony. It was also the place where Moses had declared that such a covenant ceremony should take place on entering the land (Deuteronomy 27:2). It was therefore logical that for this great covenant renewal Joshua should once again gather the people at Shechem on Mount Ebal where they could again see those stones that bore witness to the words of the covenant and were a reminder of their first successful entry into the land. Shechem lay in the valley between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.

As he grew even more certain of approaching death he felt the need to remind his people of that first great and significant event, and to renew what had been done there so that they would remember it once he was gone. So he called the people together once more and then summoned the leaders of the people, but this time it was not only to an address to the nation but to a solemn covenant ceremony. During it he would recount what YHWH had done for his people (Joshua 24:2). Then he would call on them to make a solemn response as to where their loyalties lay (Joshua 24:14) which the people immediately did (Joshua 24:16), after which he would put his challenge the second time (Joshua 24:19) resulting in a second response, thus confirming the certainty of their promise. Joshua would then vocally accept their response, receiving their third and final confirmation, and write the covenant in a written record, and set up a memorial stone at the sanctuary he had previously established there. Thus was the covenant sealed.

We note that this gathering was not at Shiloh. There Eleazar or Phinehas would have been prominent. But this was a gathering re-enacting the earlier covenant ceremony at Shechem at the beginning (Joshua 8:30) and it was to the great Servant of YHWH that they all looked. At that ceremony the Shechemites had been incorporated into Israel as worshippers of ‘the Lord of the Covenant', as partly Habiru, and as being descended in part from the men of Jacob who had settled there to watch over Jacob's land and had settled the city after its male inhabitants were slaughtered (Genesis 34). (Although Judges 9 reveals that much of their worship was tainted with Canaanite influence and association of ‘the Lord of the Covenant' with Baal).

“Presented themselves.” The word can mean ‘stationed for a certain purpose'. Compare Exodus 2:4; Exodus 9:13; Exodus 14:13; Exodus 19:17; Numbers 11:16.