Joshua 23:14

By this time Israel has conquered and settled much of Canaan, and the land has been divided among the tribes. The book has already recorded that God kept his word in giving them the land (Joshua 21:43–45), and now Joshua says it himself to people who were there. The generation that came through the Exodus and the wilderness is growing old, and new generations are rising who did not see those events. Joshua’s words tie them to what God has done for their nation. This chapter, together with the covenant renewal at Shechem in Joshua 24, is his legacy to Israel, the last words of a leader before his death. In it he reminds the leaders of all the LORD has done for them, and he warns them against the gods of the Canaanites who remain in the land and against marrying among them.

Joshua appeals to what they already know: “ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls.” The heart, lêbâb, is the seat of thought and will, and the soul, nephesh, is a person’s life and desire. The verb yâdaʻ is to know, and here it is the knowledge of experience. Israel had watched God’s promises come true and had lived on them, so Joshua is calling to mind what they have seen with their own eyes and hold with their whole inner self.

The centre of the verse is “not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spake concerning you.” The verb for failed, nâphal, means to fall, to fall down or to fall short. A promise that failed would fall to the ground, and everything God spoke has stood. The Hebrew makes the point sharper still. “Spake” is the verb dâbar, to speak or declare, and “thing” is the noun dâbâr, which means both word and thing. So “not one thing”, ʼechâd dâbâr, is also “not one word”: every word the LORD spoke became something that happened. The “good things”, ṭôwb, are the blessings he had promised, and the one who spoke them is Yᵉhôvâh, the LORD, Israel’s covenant God. “All are come to pass unto you” uses bôwʼ, to come. The promises have arrived, and the people are living in them.

Joshua says “not one thing hath failed” twice in this verse, at the start of his claim and again at its end, so that it stands beyond any doubt. Scripture says the same of God elsewhere: “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19). Moses told Israel that the LORD is the faithful God who keeps his covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9). That covenant was made at Sinai and renewed in the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy 29), and Joshua’s generation has now seen its promises kept. Solomon later makes Joshua’s confession again, “there hath not failed one word of all his good promise” (1 Kings 8:56), and Isaiah says that God’s word accomplishes what he sends it to do (Isaiah 55:11).

Joshua’s testimony also answered the pull of the nations around Israel. They worshipped Baal, Asherah and other gods with fertility rites, and the constant temptation to marry among them and take up their ways threatened Israel’s life as the LORD’s own people. Against those powerless and unreliable gods stood the LORD, who had proved himself faithful in real events that Israel had lived through.

Verse 15 opens with “Therefore”, and it draws the hard conclusion from verse 14: “as all good things are come upon you ... so shall the LORD bring upon you all evil things.” The “as ... so” sets the blessings Israel has received beside the judgments it could receive, and the faithfulness that brought the one will carry out the other. The phrase “the LORD your God” stands twice in this verse, once for the God who promised and once for the God who gave the land, and between them stands the LORD who brings the evil things. One God does it all, true to his word whether it brings blessing or judgment, and that consistency is his justice as well as his faithfulness.

“Evil”, raʿ, can mean moral wickedness, but here it means calamity, disaster and affliction, the curses of the covenant falling on a disobedient people. The evil lies in what Israel would suffer, and the LORD who sends it acts with perfect justice. “Until he have destroyed you” uses shâmad, to destroy, a verb often used of God’s judgment. Here it means Israel’s removal from the land through defeat, famine, plague and finally exile.

The warning repeats what Moses had already set before Israel. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 set out the blessings of obedience and the curses of disobedience side by side, and Israel’s continued life in the land was a trust bound to its faithfulness. The closing words, “this good land which the LORD your God hath given you”, remind them that the land was an undeserved gift. That shows how much they stood to lose, and it shows the LORD’s right to remove them from a land he gave, above all if they defiled it and broke his covenant. The good land was the place of rest and blessing where God dwelt among his people, and losing it would mean losing their inheritance and their life as his people in it.

Verse 16 names what would bring the judgment. “When ye have transgressed the covenant of the LORD your God” uses ʻâbar, to cross over, pass through or go beyond. To transgress is to step over the line God has drawn, a willful act of disobedience. The covenant is the one God made with Israel at Sinai, with its laws, its promises and its terms for both sides, and “which he commanded you” shows how plain those terms were, leaving Israel without excuse.

“And have gone and served other gods, and bowed yourselves to them” names the worst form of that transgression. The verb ʻâbad means to work, labour, serve, till or worship, and with “other gods” it means worship. Bowing is the outward act of homage and submission. Together they break the first commandments, which require Israel to worship the LORD alone and forbid bowing down to images (Exodus 20:3–5). Idolatry is spiritual adultery, unfaithfulness to the God who bound himself to his people.

The danger was close at hand. Israel was becoming a settled farming people beside Canaanites whose religion served Baal and Asherah through fertility rites and included child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. The constant temptation was to blend the LORD’s worship with theirs, and that mixing troubled Israel through its whole history in repeated turns from apostasy to judgment to repentance.

“Then shall the anger of the LORD be kindled against you.” The verb chârâh means to burn or grow hot, and Scripture uses this one verb for human anger and for God’s. Here the picture is a fire set alight, which will surely do its work. “Ye shall perish quickly from off the good land which he hath given unto you” describes a swift judgment, and it sets the land God gave beside the people’s loss of it, so that the gift would be reversed.

Joshua could say that God had kept every promise about the land and the nation. The New Testament says that all the promises of God find their yea and amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). He is the Seed of Abraham through whom all nations are blessed (Galatians 3:16), and the mediator of the new covenant, which brings forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God and eternal life (Hebrews 9:15). Every spiritual blessing is ours in him (Ephesians 1:3), and he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The good things that never failed Israel point ahead to the greater good God gives in his Son.

Israel failed to keep the covenant, and so has all humanity. Jesus kept it perfectly. He came to fulfil the law (Matthew 5:17), and when Satan tempted him with the kingdoms of the world, he refused to bow (Matthew 4:8–10). The anger of the LORD that verse 16 warns of fell on him at the cross, where he became the propitiation for our sins (Romans 3:25) and was made a curse for us to redeem us from the curse (Galatians 3:13). Through him God has given a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6), resting on Christ’s obedience and blood (Hebrews 9:14–15). Those who trust him have an imperishable inheritance kept for them (1 Peter 1:3–5), a better, heavenly country (Hebrews 11:16), and a home in the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21:1–4).

Joshua’s last testimony gives us a God whose every word holds. Each good thing he promised Israel came, and his warnings came true as well, which shows that he means all he says. His faithfulness is the ground of our trust, and his holiness is the reason his warnings are serious. Israel could look back over its own history and see his hand at work, and we look back on the same faithful God, with Christ at the centre of all he has done. The God who brought Israel into the good land has brought his people in Christ into an inheritance kept for them, and every good thing he has spoken concerning us will come to pass.