Joshua related passages

Within the Bible

• Previous: Deuteronomy closes with Moses’ death and the commissioning of Joshua (Deuteronomy 34), leaving Israel poised on the plains of Moab. Joshua takes up the story at once, carrying the covenant across the Jordan into the land Moses could only see from afar.
• Next: Judges records what came after Joshua’s generation died: a spiral of forgetting God, falling to oppressors, and being rescued by judges, showing how quickly Israel abandoned the wholehearted devotion Joshua had urged.
• Thematic Connections:
  • Genesis 12-17 - The land promised to Abraham, now given, so that Joshua is the fulfillment of the patriarchal covenant.
  • Hebrews 3-4 - The rest of Canaan as a shadow of the greater Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God in Christ.
  • Hebrews 11:30-31; James 2:25 - The faith of Israel at Jericho and the faith of Rahab held up as examples for the church.

Cross-Testament Connections

Joshua supplies images and patterns that the New Testament takes up in Christ:

• The name of Jesus: Yehoshua (“the LORD saves”) is the Hebrew form of Iesous, Jesus, who saves His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21) and leads them into rest.
• The true rest: The incomplete rest of Canaan points forward to the Sabbath rest entered by faith in Christ (Hebrews 4:1-11; Matthew 11:28-30).
• Rahab the outsider: Saved by faith and grafted into the messianic line (Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:31; James 2:25), a firstfruits of the nations coming to Israel’s God.
• The commander of the LORD’s army: A pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord who fights for His people, whom Joshua worships on holy ground (5:13-15; compare Revelation 19:11-16).
• The cities of refuge: A picture of the refuge sinners find in Christ, “who have fled for refuge... to lay hold of the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18).
• The inheritance: Israel’s land inheritance foreshadows the believer’s inheritance “kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4; Ephesians 1:11-14).