CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 5:2. Sharp knives] Marg. “knives of flints” (cf. Exodus 4:25). The reason for using stone knives may have been more on account of legal than of physical considerations. The use of iron was certainly forbidden in some covenant rites (cf. Exodus 20:25; Deuteronomy 27:5; chap. Joshua 8:31). [“Among the additions of the LXX. at the end of this book is the curious statement after chap. Joshua 24:30: ‘There they placed with him, in the tomb where they buried him the knives of stone (τὰς μαχάιρας τας πετρίνας) with which he circumcised the sons of Israel in Gilgal.’ ”—Dr. Bliss.] The second time] Perhaps the phrase, as is intimated in the verses which follow, has regard to the circumcising, at two different periods, or times, of the entire host of men now assembled in Canaan. Mentally, the host is divided into two parts, which are circumcised some at one time, some at another; the time of the earlier circumcision was in Egypt, and “the second time” of circumcision was this at Gilgal. The reference made by Masius to two general circumcisions, one at the time of the introduction of the rite by Abraham, and the other here, an idea often noticed since, appears too remote, and is rather opposed than otherwise to the fourth and fifth verses. A similar use of this phrase occurs in Isaiah 11:11.
Joshua 5:4. This is the cause] The cause of this general circumcision is stated at length, the explanation reaching to the close of Joshua 5:7. The reason why the rite had been omitted during the sojourn in the wilderness is given in Joshua 5:6. The people had broken the covenant, and “the Lord sware that He would not shew them the land.” The oath of the wilderness cancelled for the time the oath to Abraham, and Jehovah would not allow the people to set the oath that was suspended over against the oath which was in force.
Joshua 5:9. The reproach of Egypt] Not necessarily any one phase of the reproach arising out of their past relation to Egypt, but the reproach in all its forms. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal] Marg. = “rolling.” “It denotes liberty: they looked on themselves as freed from the miseries which they had undergone” (Josephus, Ant. v. 1. 11). “All objections (of the rationalists) indicate an utter inattention to the fact that most of the O. T. etymologies contain allusions to words and their meaning, rather than such full explanations of them as befit a lexicon” (Keil).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 5:1-9
THE RENEWAL OF THE COVENANT
Probably there is nothing throughout the entire book of Joshua which appeals to us more solemnly and more graciously than this most significant resumption of covenant rites at this particular period. The account of the giving of this covenant is contained in Genesis 15. At that time Abraham had no children, and the covenant was sealed on the side of God only, the vision of the burning lamp being its sign. Some fourteen or fifteen years later, when Ishmael was thirteen years old, the covenant was renewed, or rather completed, the seal on the human side being circumcision. The covenant was, that Abraham should have a numerous seed to inherit the land, of Canaan, or, as it was sometimes called, the Promised Land. Here, then, at the very time of entering into the land, the rite is renewed. The land can only be taken possession of under the covenant. Not an enemy shall fall, not a town capitulate, not an acre shall be really their own, till that covenant is recognised by all Israel.
I. The relation between God’s covenant and His people’s transgression. The rite of circumcision had been faithfully observed in Egypt; the rite had not been observed in the wilderness (Joshua 5:4-5). This neglect during the wilderness life was, almost certainly, not because of any difficulties of journeying, for the people sometimes encamped for an entire year in one place. The reason for the cessation of circumcision lay in the fact that the people had ignored the covenant itself. They had said with almost one voice, “Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.” They deliberately rejected the covenant then and there. At the same time God rejected them. For the time the covenant was suspended. The sixth verse, therefore, connects the cessation of circumcision with the Lord’s counter-oath. God would not have the people guilty of a solemn farce. Every act of circumcision in the wilderness would ignore this later oath of Jehovah. As confirmatory of this, it should be remembered that the passover was probably not observed in the wilderness any more than circumcision. Israel had been told to keep the passover “as an ordinance for ever.” At the end of the first year, before the rebellion, they did keep it at Sinai (cf. Numbers 9:1-5). Apparently they did not observe it afterwards till the occasion mentioned in this chapter. Here, then, is a most significant break. There is no feast of the Exodus, for the Exodus had been ignored; there is no rite of the covenant, for the covenant had been foresworn. What bearing has all this on us?
1. See what God thinks of services that are unreal. God would have no feast of the Exodus from the people who said, “Let us return unto Egypt;” God would have no covenant rite from the people who thought indifferently of the covenant. Both feast and rite would be hollow and false, and a mockery. How this old sermon of the desert comes preaching itself on to us, across all the centuries which roll between us and these ancient servants of Jehovah. Think of it in connection with all the worship in which we fail to worship Him. Think of it in connection with many of the hymns which we join in singing, the prayers which we offer, and the heartless service which some are tempted to render. Think of the Lord’s Supper—the feast of the new covenant—if there be no real covenant between us and God. God would have no service from us rather than a service which is unreal. He seeks the heart. Sham adoration is no pleasure to Him (cf. Isaiah 1:11-15).
2. See how solemn and sacred is God’s view of His own promises. All the time the covenant was in force the covenant rite was to be observed. The bondage of Egypt made no difference. Unlike men, God does not think His promises something to take notice of in proportion as they look promising. Difficulties and bonds and slavery made no difference whatever in the sight of God. In Egypt’s darkest days they were still to circumcise their children. But they were not to celebrate that rite a day after the rebellion. God would not have two sets of promises in force at the same time, one of which contradicted the other. Oh, how sacred to Him is His holy word! It is all yea, and all amen. It is said that Sir William Napier one day met a poor child crying bitterly because she had broken a bowl which she had been carrying along the road towards her home. Having no money with him, he promised to meet her at the same place and hour on the next day, and to give her money to buy another. On reaching his home, he found an invitation to dine out with a gentleman whom he particularly wished to see. As it would interfere with his pre-engagement with the child, he declined it, saying, “I could not disappoint her, she trusted me so implicitly.” God loves our implicit trust, too; but, excepting where He has made it thus conditional, the fulfilment of His word does not depend on our confidence. Each promise stands fast in His own eternal truthfulness.
3. This history suggests the question, Does God, when we sin, regard His covenant with us in Christ as broken? The history indicates the answer as clearly as it prompts the inquiry. It was not for every sin that God looked on the covenant as violated; it was only for this deliberate rejection of the covenant. The people often sinned, but it was only when they proposed to return to Egypt, and voted the covenant of no account, that God took them at their thought and word. So he who looks on Christ as “without form or comeliness,” and thus carelessly neglects and ignores the Saviour for the pleasures of sin, puts himself in a similar position, and where God has no covenant with him personally. No transgression is so fatal as unbelief.
4. Salvation is not in the covenant, but in the grace and love of God. It is very blessed to be able to feel that even when God regarded the covenant as solemnly broken by the people, His mercy was sufficient for all the way of the wilderness. Think of it, a broken covenant, and manna every morning; a broken covenant, and water from the rock; a broken covenant, and the man who wanted to curse, crying successively, “How shall I curse whom God hath not cursed?” “Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob;” “How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel!” Think of it, no covenant, and the ark built prospectively, in view of its renewal; no covenant, and the pillar in which the Lord abode going with them all the way; no covenant, and the trespass of Baal-peor forgiven; no covenant, and mercies that should make way for the song, “What ailed thee, O Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” God loves us enough to bless and help and save us, if there were not a single promise in the Bible. He does not propose to go on with our salvation because He has become entangled in His words; the promises are but given to still our fears and encourage us by hope and assurance. As for our salvation, that is ever in the grace and love of God.
II. The relation between a renewed covenant and fresh acts of faith and submission. The covenant was to be renewed by a rite which would, for some days, disable the greater part of the army in the very presence of their enemies (cf. Genesis 34:25). Too much stress, however, must not be laid on this. There would still be about a quarter of a million men between forty and sixty years of age, who were circumcised in Egypt, left to guard the camp. Still, man for man, these Israelites were probably not to be compared to their disciplined and warlike enemies, and the state of the camp would seriously encumber their operations in the event of an attack. Perhaps faith was still more tried in the trial of their patience. This time must have seemed the best of all times to press forward. The two spies had reported that their enemies’ hearts had failed them, and since then Jordan had divided to disconcert them even more. At the very moment when victory would seem easy, God detains them for one or two weeks.
1. Getting into union with God does not mean getting into a state of freedom from trial. He whom God brings near to Himself may even have to hear his Lord say, “I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
2. Neither does union with God mean liberty to follow our own ideas and wishes. The Divine teaching in this hour of covenant mercy went on to say, “Wait on the Lord; sink your thoughts and desires in His.”
3. Union with God means that God is to be first in everything. There is always time to worship and serve and honour Him.
III. The relation between a restored covenant and fitness for conflict. Israel was to stay and seek fresh union with God before attempting to fight a single battle. The position is strikingly similar to that of the apostles, to whom Christ said, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” So were these ancient servants to tarry in the camp at Gilgal.
1. If we would work for God successfully, we must seek the help of God. Israel was repeatedly taught this. When the siege of Jericho did begin, God shewed them that He must be “all in all.” The same truth was taught in a different way shortly afterwards at Ai. So all our conflict and service for Christ must fail, without God for our strength. He who would often win in the fight must often and personally reconsecrate himself to God.
2. The rule is equally absolute in our personal contest against sin. Israel learned to say in after days, “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” God had so often helped them from the hills, as at Rephidim and Sinai and Carmel, that even their enemies had come to believe “The Lord is God of the hills, but He is not God of the valleys.” It was not wonderful, with such a history, that the Israelites came to feel that everything depended on the presence of God. Let us not seek to enter into conflict with sin, unmindful of His word, who says, “Without Me ye can do nothing.” The battle will be too hard for the best of us without Jesus.
IV. The relation between an intact covenant and the removal of our reproach. “The name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day,” meaning a rolling away, or, as Josephus prefers to render it, “liberty,” still giving the idea of being no longer in bondage to this reproach. What was this reproach of Egypt? It is by no means necessary to contend, as some have done, for one selected phase of the reproach. It may be taken as bearing in at least three directions.
1. There was the reproach of the long bondage itself. The Israelites had sojourned in Egypt for more than two hundred years, and during the greater part of that time they had been treated as slaves. God had now rolled away this reproach; they were free, and were henceforth to be a nation themselves.
2. There was the reproach which came of their lunging to return to Egypt. In this longing the covenant had been broken, and in the rite which renewed the covenant, telling, as it did, of Divine forgiveness, the reproach, in this aspect also, was rolled away.
8. Then there was the reproach of the Egyptians themselves (cf. Exodus 32:12; Numbers 14:13-16; Deuteronomy 9:28). All these reproaches were removed by the covenant. Bunyan tells us of the burden which rolled away as Christian looked upon the cross. The blood of the everlasting covenant can alone assure us of the rolling away of the reproach of sin.
V. The relation between God’s recognised covenant and His people’s triumphant inheritance. When the covenant was once restored, the inheritance was only a question of time. No enemies against whom the people should be divinely led would be able to withstand them. “If God be for us, who shall be against us?” We, too, in all our struggles and fightings, may come off “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.”
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Joshua 5:2-3.—DIVINE THOUGHTS ON HUMAN SERVICE.
I. While Divine wisdom takes account of human ideas of urgency, God’s ways are ever above the ways of men. Men would feel this an unsuitable time and place to perform a rite which would disable all in the army under forty years of age. Men would feel that this time of fear on the part of enemies was the very season in which to press forward. God usually works by what we term natural means. Ordinarily He moves to the accomplishment of His purposes in ways which seem best adapted to secure the desired issues. To overcome the Midianites with Gideon’s three hundred men, to inflict terror on the Philistines, and slay them in multitudes by a single man, as by Samson, or as by Jonathan and his armour-bearer, are exceptional and not usual instances of Divine working. Yet when God would lay special emphasis on particular teachings, He often departs from plans and ways which seem best to us. He who serves under God must not wonder if he sometimes comes to places where his own favourite ideas and cherished plans have to be set aside.
II. All successful work for God supposes submission and self-denial on the part of His people. The way to possess the land is His way, not ours. His way may disappoint us, and may be a way of suffering, but it has possessions at the end: our way may seem easy and more natural, yet it leads to nothing but shame and confusion of face. “The meek shall inherit the earth.” The words, “Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt,” may lead to the cross; they also lead to the riven sepulchre and to the ascension, and make way for the song, “He shall reign for ever and ever.” He who thus sank His will in the will of Heaven said, ere He left us, “If any man serve ME, him will my Father honour.”
III. God, who leads His people to wars and fightings, loves first to animate and strengthen them for the conflict. The Israelites, through their own sin, had to endure the toil and sorrows of the wilderness, feeling that the covenant was set aside. They would breathe as in a new atmosphere now that they were again taken into union with God. They would go up to fight, having their arms nerved by promises of victory, made not only to them, but to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
IV. The first of all our religious duties is to become reconciled to God. Nothing is acceptable from us till we ourselves are accepted. The rite of the covenant, in which the people gave themselves again to God, made fit way for the feast of the passover. No amount of going to the house of God, no constancy in hymn-singing, Bible-reading, or religious work, can be acceptable to God from any man or woman who still rejects Christ.
“The path of duty is the path of safety; and it is impossible for any soul to be injured while walking in the way of obedience.” [Clarke.]
“The Israelites were now circumcised for three reasons:—
1. To shew that they held, and would continue in, the same faith with their father Abraham, to whom this sign was first given.
2. That they would be separated from the wicked manners of the heathen Canaanites, into whose land they were now come, and would have nothing in common with them.
3. For the mystery which was chiefly respected herein, viz., our Jesus bringing of us into the land of life, by our drawing the sword, and fighting as it were with ourselves.” [Ferus.]
Joshua 5:4-7.—QUALIFICATIONS FOR RELIGIOUS ORDINANCES.
Consider:—
I. The celebration of religious ordinances as independent of outward surroundings. “All the people that came out were circumcised.” Nothing in Egypt disqualified them for those rites of formal service incidental to the dispensation of the first covenant. The spirit of religions service is ever the same. That being so, we see that—
1. Slavery is no disqualification for participating in ordinances. The Israelites were in a bitter bondage; that made no difference to the liberty which they had in God. The Lord’s Supper, ten years ago, might be partaken as acceptably to God by Christian slaves in the Southern States of America, as by any free citizen of the freest nation upon earth. The baptism of a bondsman may be as much a baptism into Christ as that of a freeman. In thus drawing near to God,
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.”
2. Poverty is no disqualification. The Israelites could call very little their own, but they might approach God in the rites which He had appointed. The poorest of Christian communicants is no farther from the Saviour because of his poverty. It is said that the late Duke of Wellington was on one occasion taking the Lord’s Supper in the country, when a poor labourer in a smockfrock, not knowing who he was, came and knelt beside him. As one of the churchwardens whispered to the labourer to retire, the Duke, noticing the action, turned and said, “Let him remain; we are all equal here.” Even so: the liberty of God’s children knows no limitation from poverty.
3. Persecution and contempt are no disqualification. The Hebrews in Egypt could not call even their children their own; it made no difference before God that they were smitten and despised of men. Our liberty to serve and follow the Saviour does not stand in the good opinion of our fellows.
4. Mental degradation is no disqualification. The abject state of these men, who on leaving Egypt were so untutored and debased by bondage, was not one jot off from their religious freedom. Even in Egypt they administered to each other the rites of the covenant. The “Education Act” is a great boon to many as earthly citizens; no man needs it as a preliminary to intercourse with the Saviour.
5. Ecclesiastical deficiencies are no disqualification. The tribe of Levi was not then set apart for religious ministration. There was no high priest, no priest at all, no ecclesiastic of any kind; and yet, in this most ritualistic dispensation, even that made no difference. “All the people that came out were circumcised.” The ordinance was not dependent on priestly administration. Many religious men in the present day are claiming large prerogatives as to the intercourse of their fellow-men with God. These men claim an essential place of mediation between each ordinary worshipper and his God. Perhaps no Scripture is more pressed and distorted than the verse (John 20:23), “Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” The circumstances under which these words were spoken are conveniently forgotten by those who press for auricular confession and mediatorial prerogatives. At the time when the Saviour uttered these words, there were no written words of the new dispensation to guide anxious men and women who wished to know if their sins were forgiven. The Gospel, upon which we can so readily fall back to help us in our anxieties, was not a word of it written. It is almost impossible for us, with all our light, to mentally put ourselves in the position of a man who, under the new preaching of John the Baptist and the apostles, might come to cry out in an agony of spirit for some assurance that he was forgiven. So the extraordinary power bestowed on the apostles was not even the outcome of their official position, but of the urgent needs of the anxious. Jesus breathed on the apostles, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” The Holy Spirit was so to guide them, that they should be able to pronounce to the anxious whether God had forgiven them or not. The men who felt sin an intolerable burden, and who had no written Gospel to go to, as we have, might go to these God-guided men, and they in turn should be so infallibly directed, that where they declared sin remitted, it should be remitted, and where they pronounced it retained, it should be retained. In other words, they should be so instructed as to declare the mind of God on each particular case. We even see something of the exercise of this prerogative by the apostles. To the agonised jailer of Philippi, Paul says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” On the other hand, Peter says to the commercial Simon Magus, “Thy money perish with thee.” The “delivering unto Satan,” of which Paul speaks, was probably simply the exercise of this declarative power. Other instances might be named, and these expounded in fuller detail; they should be enough to shew how utterly untenable is the priestly rendering of the verse in question. Even the ritual of the Old Testament gives no such place to men as this. There might be no priests; religious ordinances might be administered notwithstanding.
II. The disqualification for religious ordinances arising from unforgiven sin. “All the people that were born in the wilderness.… they had not circumcised.” The reason for this is stated at length in the sixth verse. On account of the rebellion, God had sworn a punishment which should endure to the end of the forty years. During that time there might be no circumcision at all. All the bondage of Egypt could not break in upon their glorious liberty as the children of God; what all the tyranny of Egypt could never accomplish, their personal sin had wrought in a single day.
1. Wilful disobedience in any one thing is the rebellion of the heart. We are apt to measure our disobedience to God by the magnitude of the things in which we fail to yield. We persuade ourselves that the thing is small, and that therefore the sin is small. The sin is that we have dared to disobey. One wilful sin carries with it all the heart into an act of disobedience; it is the rebellion of the whole man, until the sin is realised and confessed and abandoned.
2. The heart that is in rebellion against God cannot worship God. It is a contradiction. It is playing at adoration, and indulging in practical despising. It is an endeavour to mix absolute and essential opposites.
3. God sometimes sees it well to punish sin even after repentance. Many of the Israelites doubtless repented of their transgression. Even this repentance may have been largely owing to the penalty of forty years’ wandering which God had sworn to inflict. If the penalties of sin could be all averted, and immediately averted, by our repentance, a premium would be put on guilt by the cheap facilities with which its painful consequences might be avoided whenever we chose.
III. The distinction made in the history between judicial pardon and Divine love. The sin could not be said to be forgiven while the punishment continued. Judicially, the offence was not put away till the penalty was withdrawn. But God’s love was every day proclaiming itself through all the forty years. The mercies which were new every morning were telling of forgiveness in the Divine heart.
1. The suffering which men feel on account of sin is no evidence that God does not love them. Given that a man has to trace his trials to his transgressions, there is still much to proclaim that God is love, and that God loves him.
2. To walk gratefully in the sense of God’s love is to have the promise that any present suffering for sin will be ultimately put away. Just as every year in which the Israelites walked in submission to God, and in the consciousness that He loved them still, told of an ever-narrowing margin to that life in the wilderness; so he who yields where he has rebelled, and rejoices in Divine mercy, may contemplate the time when the love of God will remove all his present suffering. Even the cross of Christ may not at once put away the penalties of past transgressions; yet, to accept Christ crucified is to know the love and to have the promise of the salvation of God.
Where God speaks, it matters not whether we read prophecy or history; they are ever alike. Thirty-eight years before, the sentence had gone out against every living man of the host, saving Caleb and Joshua; it is only a matter of course that we read here, “All the men of war died in the wilderness.”
The fact that the fulfilment of God’s word is recorded so quietly, and that it excites in us so little surprise, assures us of the absolute truthfulness of Divine words, and of our inward acquiescence in their statements.
Divine promises are not more sure than Divine threatenings. The graves of the rebels are as certainly found in the wilderness as the homes of the obedient are found in Canaan. When all the theories of men on the improbability of final punishment have been elaborately expounded and carefully proved, hell will still remain as sure as heaven; the “lake of fire,” though ever so figurative, will be seen to have as much reality as the “sea of glass like unto crystal,” or the “streets of pure gold.” During those thirty-eight years which followed the sentence on Israel, there would have been time and room for a great many sermons on Numbers 14:28-35, in which some of the gentlest hearts and noblest spirits might have clearly proved the mercy of God, and the improbability of so many deaths in so short a time. For all that, when the years had ended, there were exactly as many graves in the wilderness as had been predicted.
Joshua 5:4.—FRUITS OF SIN.
I. Sin as the cause of our disappointments. “The Lord sware that He would not shew them the land.”
II. Sin as the occasion of much of our poverty. The Lord would not give them the land “flowing with milk and honey.”
III. Sin as the instrument of death. “They were consumed because they obeyed not the voice of the Lord.”
IV. Sin as revealing Divine mercy even more than Divine anger. The deaths were spread over forty years. Space was given for repentance, and opportunity offered for securing eternal life. God’s anger is not vindictive; it has little in common with the anger of men; it waits to save with an everlasting salvation; if it destroy some suddenly, it generally appears that these are so evil that they will probably prevent the repentance of others. Thus the very anger of God seems rooted and grounded in love.
Joshua 5:7.—DIVINE PATIENCE AND MERCY.
I. The Lord’s independence of particular men. If the fathers failed, He would raise up the children.
II. The Lord’s steady persistence in His purposes. Although the generation then living had proved themselves unfit for Canaan, God would not be defeated in His promise to Abraham.
III. The Lord’s abundant and stately patience. “One day with Him is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
IV. The Lord’s merciful beginning with individual men. The children of the slain are permitted to begin their new life in the full covenant rights which their fathers had once enjoyed.
Joshua 5:9.—REPROACH ROLLED AWAY.
I. The reproach of man is ever of men and by men.
1. It has its occasion in man’s sin.
2. It is ever ministered by men: “God, who upbraideth not,” is said to cause those who sin to be a reproach, and to bring reproach upon them; but He Himself reproaches not. The word partakes of the idea of taunting, and God could not descend to that. It is men, who also have sinned, who reproach their fellows when suffering for sin.
II. The effectual rolling away of reproach is ever of God. The Scriptures abound with records of prayers to God to take away reproach, of praises to God for taking it away, or of God’s assurances that He will deliver His people, and vindicate them against those who have held them in contempt. It is only God who dares to say, “I will blot out thy transgressions.”
III. The removal of man’s reproach should lead to the perpetuation of God’s praise. “Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day.” The place was named after the mercy, thus declaring the goodness of the Lord throughout many generations. What memorials should we raise for the rolling away of our reproach on Calvary! The Israelites had only Gilgal; we have Golgotha. “Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach,” who has taken ours away, that it should be remembered against us no more for ever.