Joshua 24:1

Joshua 24:1-15. The Second Parting Address

1. And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel that they might listen to his last charge, and be bound by his parting words to an everlasting covenant of faithfulness to the God who had done such great things for them. The former charge had been made to the rulers only and the chiefs, this was addressed to the whole nation. Not that the whole nation was present, but that all the tribes sent representatives to the great and solemn gathering.

to Shechem The LXX. here has Shiloh, but all other versions and the MSS. read Shechem. No spot could have been more appropriate:

(a) Here Abraham, "the solitary, childless patriarch, who had listened to the voice that spake at Ur of the Chaldees," received the first recorded promise of the goodly land (Genesis 12:6-7), and here he built his first altar to the Lord;

(b) Here Jacob had settled after his long sojourn in Mesopotamia, and purified his household from the remains of idolatry by burying their Teraphim under an oak (Genesis 33:18-20; Genesis 35:2; Genesis 35:4);

(c) Here the bones of Joseph were laid (Joshua 24:32; Acts 7:16);

(d) Here, from the heights of Ebal and Gerizim, die blessings and curses of the Law had been solemnly enunciated, and the nation had already bound itself by a covenant to Jehovah (Joshua 8:30-35).

and they presented themselves before God We saw in Joshua 8:31 that the Hebrew Leader raised an altar on Mount Ebal "of whole stones," where sacrifices were offered before the building of the Tabernacle. Shechem was thus truly a "sanctuary of the Lord" (Joshua 24:26), and those now assembled there were gathered "before God;" comp. Job 1:6; Job 2:1, or, as it is in the Hebrew, with the article, "the God," the only true and living Elohim. "How grand a gathering it was! There stood the victor in a hundred battles, now -old and stricken in age;" for it was already -a long time after that the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies." Before him was gathered all Israel, -their elders, their heads, their judges, and their officers," and he opened that mouth from which such words of might, and trust, and prayer had issued in the days of their troubles, and he spake to them what all felt to be his last counsels and commandments." Bishop Wilberforce's Heroes of Hebrew History, p. 132.