15 And you will see that, as all the good things which the Lord your God undertook to do for you, have come to you, so the Lord will send down on you all the evil things till he has made your destruction complete, and you are cut off from the good land which the Lord your God has given you.
But if you do not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, and take care to do all his orders and his laws which I give you today, then all these curses will come on you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the town and cursed in the field. A curse will be on your basket and on your bread-basin. A curse will be on the fruit of your body, and on the fruit of your land, on the increase of your cattle, and the young of your flock. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out. The Lord will send on you cursing and trouble and punishment in everything to which you put your hand, till sudden destruction overtakes you; because of your evil ways in which you have been false to me. The Lord will send disease after disease on you, till you have been cut off by death from the land to which you are going. The Lord will send wasting disease, and burning pain, and flaming heat against you, keeping back the rain till your land is waste and dead; so will it be till your destruction is complete. And the heaven over your heads will be brass, and the earth under you hard as iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust, sending it down on you from heaven till your destruction is complete. The Lord will let you be overcome by your haters: you will go out against them one way, and you will go in flight before them seven ways: you will be the cause of fear among all the kingdoms of the earth. Your bodies will be meat for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth; there will be no one to send them away. The Lord will send on you the disease of Egypt, and other sorts of skin diseases which nothing will make well. He will make your minds diseased, and your eyes blind, and your hearts wasted with fear: You will go feeling your way when the sun is high, like a blind man for whom all is dark, and nothing will go well for you: you will be crushed and made poor for ever, and you will have no saviour. You will take a wife, but another man will have the use of her: the house which your hands have made will never be your resting-place: you will make a vine-garden, and never take the fruit of it. Your ox will be put to death before your eyes, but its flesh will not be your food: your ass will be violently taken away before your face, and will not be given back to you: your sheep will be given to your haters, and there will be no saviour for you. Your sons and your daughters will be given to another people, and your eyes will be wasted away with looking and weeping for them all the day: and you will have no power to do anything. The fruit of your land and all the work of your hands will be food for a nation which is strange to you and to your fathers; you will only be crushed down and kept under for ever: So that the things which your eyes have to see will send you out of your minds. The Lord will send a skin disease, attacking your knees and your legs, bursting out from your feet to the top of your head, so that nothing will make you well. And you, and the king whom you have put over you, will the Lord take away to a nation strange to you and to your fathers; there you will be servants to other gods of wood and stone. And you will become a wonder and a name of shame among all the nations where the Lord will take you. You will take much seed out into the field, and get little in; for the locust will get it. You will put in vines and take care of them, but you will get no wine or grapes from them; for they will be food for worms. Your land will be full of olive-trees, but there will be no oil for the comfort of your body; for your olive-tree will give no fruit. You will have sons and daughters, but they will not be yours; for they will go away prisoners into a strange land. All your trees and the fruit of your land will be the locust's. The man from a strange land who is living among you will be lifted up higher and higher over you, while you go down lower and lower. He will let you have his wealth at interest, and will have no need of yours: he will be the head and you the tail. And all these curses will come after you and overtake you, till your destruction is complete; because you did not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God, or keep his laws and his orders which he gave you: These things will come on you and on your seed, to be a sign and a wonder for ever; Because you did not give honour to the Lord your God, worshipping him gladly, with joy in your hearts on account of all your wealth of good things; For this cause you will become servants to those whom the Lord your God will send against you, without food and drink and clothing, and in need of all things: and he will put a yoke of iron on your neck till he has put an end to you. The Lord will send a nation against you from the farthest ends of the earth, coming with the flight of an eagle; a nation whose language is strange to you; A hard-faced nation, who will have no respect for the old or mercy for the young: He will take the fruit of your cattle and of your land till death puts an end to you: he will let you have nothing of your grain or wine or oil or any of the increase of your cattle or the young of your flock, till he has made your destruction complete. Your towns will be shut in by his armies, till your high walls, in which you put your faith, have come down: his armies will be round your towns, through all your land which the Lord your God has given you. And your food will be the fruit of your body, the flesh of the sons and daughters which the Lord your God has given you; because of your bitter need and the cruel grip of your haters. That man among you who is soft and used to comfort will be hard and cruel to his brother, and to his dear wife, and to of those his children who are still living; And will not give to any of them the flesh of his children which will be his food because he has no other; in the cruel grip of your haters on all your towns. The most soft and delicate of your women, who would not so much as put her foot on the earth, so delicate is she, will be hard-hearted to her husband and to her son and to her daughter; And to her baby newly come to birth, and to the children of her body; for having no other food, she will make a meal of them secretly, because of her bitter need and the cruel grip of your haters on all your towns. If you will not take care to do all the words of this law, recorded in this book, honouring that name of glory and of fear, THE LORD YOUR GOD; Then the Lord your God will make your punishment, and the punishment of your seed, a thing to be wondered at; great punishments and cruel diseases stretching on through long years. He will send on you again all the diseases of Egypt, which were a cause of fear to you, and they will take you in their grip. And all the diseases and the pains not recorded in the book of this law will the Lord send on you till your destruction is complete. And you will become a very small band, though your numbers were like the stars of heaven; because you did not give ear to the voice of the Lord your God. And as the Lord took delight in doing you good and increasing you, so the Lord will take pleasure in cutting you off and causing your destruction, and you will be uprooted from the land which you are about to take as your heritage. And the Lord will send you wandering among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other: there you will be servants to other gods, of wood and stone, gods of which you and your fathers had no knowledge. And even among these nations there will be no peace for you, and no rest for your feet: but the Lord will give you there a shaking heart and wasting eyes and weariness of soul: Your very life will be hanging in doubt before you, and day and night will be dark with fears, and nothing in life will be certain: In the morning you will say, If only it was evening! And at evening you will say, If only morning would come! Because of the fear in your hearts and the things which your eyes will see. And the Lord will take you back to Egypt again in ships, by the way of which I said to you, You will never see it again: there you will be offering yourselves as men-servants and women-servants to your haters for a price, and no man will take you.
But if you do not give ear to me, and do not keep all these my laws; And if you go against my rules and if you have hate in your souls for my decisions and you do not do all my orders, but go against my agreement; This will I do to you: I will put fear in your hearts, even wasting disease and burning pain, drying up the eyes and making the soul feeble, and you will get no profit from your seed, for your haters will take it for food. And my face will be turned from you, and you will be broken before those who are against you, and your haters will become your rulers, and you will go in flight when no man comes after you. And if, even after these things, you will not give ear to me, then I will send you punishment seven times more for your sins. And the pride of your strength will be broken, and I will make your heaven as iron and your earth as brass; And your strength will be used up without profit; for your land will not give her increase and the trees of the field will not give their fruit. And if you still go against me and will not give ear to me, I will put seven times more punishments on you because of your sins. I will let loose the beasts of the field among you, and they will take away your children and send destruction on your cattle, so that your numbers will become small and your roads become waste. And if by these things you will not be turned to me, but still go against me; Then I will go against you, and I will give you punishment, I myself, seven times for all your sins. And I will send a sword on you to give effect to the punishment of my agreement; and when you come together into your towns I will send disease among you and you will be given up into the hands of your haters. When I take away your bread of life, ten women will be cooking bread in one oven, and your bread will be measured out by weight; you will have food but never enough. And if, after all this, you do not give ear to me, but go against me still, Then my wrath will be burning against you, and I will give you punishment, I myself, seven times for your sins. Then you will take the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters for food; And I will send destruction on your high places, overturning your perfume altars, and will put your dead bodies on your broken images, and my soul will be turned from you in disgust. And I will make your towns waste and send destruction on your holy places; I will take no pleasure in the smell of your sweet perfumes; And I will make your land a waste, a wonder to your haters living in it. And I will send you out in all directions among the nations, and my sword will be uncovered against you, and your land will be without any living thing, and your towns will be made waste. Then will the land take pleasure in its Sabbaths while it is waste and you are living in the land of your haters; then will the land have rest. All the days while it is waste will the land have rest, such rest as it never had in your Sabbaths, when you were living in it. And as for the rest of you, I will make their hearts feeble in the land of their haters, and the sound of a leaf moved by the wind will send them in flight, and they will go in flight as from the sword, falling down when no one comes after them; Falling on one another, as before the sword, when no one comes after them; you will give way before your haters. And death will overtake you among strange nations, and the land of your haters will be your destruction. And those of you who are still living will be wasting away in their sins in the land of your haters; in the sins of their fathers they will be wasting away. And they will have grief for their sins and for the sins of their fathers, when their hearts were untrue to me, and they went against me; So that I went against them and sent them away into the land of their haters: if then the pride of their hearts is broken and they take the punishment of their sins, Then I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with Jacob and with Isaac and with Abraham, and I will keep in mind the land. And the land, while she is without them, will keep her Sabbaths; and they will undergo the punishment of their sins, because they were turned away from my decisions and in their souls was hate for my laws. But for all that, when they are in the land of their haters I will not let them go, or be turned away from them, or give them up completely; my agreement with them will not be broken, for I am the Lord their God. And because of them I will keep in mind the agreement which I made with their fathers, whom I took out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations, to be their God: I am the Lord. These are the rules, decisions, and laws, which the Lord made between himself and the children of Israel in Mount Sinai, by the hand of Moses.
And the children of Israel again did evil in the eyes of the Lord when Ehud was dead. And the Lord gave them up into the hands of Jabin, king of Canaan, who was ruling in Hazor; the captain of his army was Sisera, who was living in Harosheth of the Gentiles.
And again the children of Israel did evil in the eyes of the Lord, worshipping the Baals and Astartes, and the gods of Aram and the gods of Zidon and the gods of Moab and the gods of the children of Ammon and the gods of the Philistines; they gave up the Lord and were servants to him no longer. And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the children of Ammon.
But they put shame on the servants of God, making sport of his words and laughing at his prophets, till the wrath of God was moved against his people, till there was no help. So he sent against them the king of the Chaldaeans, who put their young men to death with the sword in the house of their holy place, and had no pity for any, young man or virgin, old man or white-haired: God gave them all into his hands.
For these are the days of punishment, in which all the things in the Writings will be put into effect. It will be hard for women who are with child, and for her with a baby at the breast, in those days. For great trouble will come on the land, and wrath on this people. And they will be put to death with the sword, and will be taken as prisoners into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be crushed under the feet of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles are complete.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Joshua 23
Commentary on Joshua 23 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 23
Jos 23:1, 2. Joshua's Exhortation before His Death.
1. a long time after that the Lord had given rest unto Israel from all their enemies—about fourteen years after the conquest of Canaan, and seven after the distribution of that country among the tribes.
2. Joshua called for all Israel—The clause which follows seems to restrict this general expression as applicable only to the officers and representatives of the people. The place of assembly was most probably Shiloh. The occasion of convening it was the extreme age and approaching death of the venerable leader; and the purport of this solemn address was to animate the chosen people and their posterity to a faithful and unswerving continuance in the faith and worship of the God of Israel.
Jos 23:3. By Former Benefits.
3. ye have seen all that the Lord your God hath done unto all these nations because of you—The modesty and humility of Joshua are remarkably displayed at the commencement of this address. Dismissing all thoughts of his personal services, he ascribed the subjugation and occupation of Canaan entirely to the favoring presence and aid of God; and in doing so, he spoke not more piously than truly. This had been promised (De 1:30; 3:22); and the reality of the divine aid was seen in the rapid overthrow of the Canaanites, which had already led to the division of the whole land among the tribes [Jos 23:4].
Jos 23:5-11. By Promises.
5-11. the Lord your God, he shall expel them from before you, as the Lord your God hath promised you, &c.—The actual possessions which God had given were a pledge of the complete fulfilment of His promise in giving them the parts of the country still unconquered. But the accomplishment of the divine promise depended on their inviolable fidelity to God's law—on their keeping resolutely aloof from all familiar intercourse and intimate connections with the Canaanites, or in any way partaking of their idolatrous sins. In the event of their continuing in steadfast adherence to the cause of God, as happily distinguished the nation at that time, His blessing would secure them a course of brilliant and easy victories (Le 26:7; De 28:7; 32:30).
11. Take good heed, therefore, that ye love the Lord your God—The sum of his exhortation is comprised in the love of God, which is the end or fulfilment of the law (De 6:5; 11:13; Mt 22:37).
Jos 23:12. By Threatenings in Case of Disobedience.
12, 13. Else if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations—As marriage connections with the idolatrous Canaanites would present many and strong temptations to transgress it, these were strictly prohibited (Ex 34:12-16; De 7:3). With his eye, as it were, upon those prohibitions, Joshua threatens them with the certain withdrawal of the divine aid in the further expulsion of the Canaanites (a threat founded Ex 23:33; Nu 33:55; De 7:16).