Joshua 5 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~1400 BC, in the spring of the first year after Israel crossed the Jordan River, at the end of forty years of wandering in the wilderness
Location
Gilgal, a camp on the plains of Jericho just west of the Jordan River, near the northern end of the Dead Sea
Audience
Israelites living in the land of Canaan, reading the account of how their ancestors took possession of it
Situation
Israel has just crossed the Jordan, and before any fighting begins the whole male population is circumcised, the nation keeps Passover, and the daily manna stops once they eat food grown in the land. Joshua then meets an armed figure who identifies himself as the commander of the Lord's army.
Key Background
Circumcision was the physical mark of the covenant God made with Abraham, and the generation born during the wilderness years had never received it, so the nation was technically outside its own covenant sign. Performing it left every fighting man temporarily disabled while camped within sight of a hostile walled city, which is why the surrounding kings losing their nerve matters to the story. The name Gilgal sounds like the Hebrew word for rolling, tied to God rolling away the disgrace of Egypt.
When all the kings west of the Jordan and all the kings along the coast heard that Yahweh had dried up the Jordan River for the Israelites until they had crossed over, their They completely the will to face the Israelites.
At that time Yahweh said to Joshua, "Make and the Israelite men again, a second time."
So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelite men at
Here's why Joshua circumcised them: Every male who had left Egypt — all the — had died in the wilderness along the way after leaving Egypt.
All the people who had left Egypt had been circumcised, but none of the people born in the wilderness during the journey from Egypt had been circumcised.
The Israelites had wandered in the wilderness for until the entire generation of fighting men who had left Egypt had died off — because they hadn't to Yahweh had sworn that he would never let them see the land he had promised their ancestors he would give us, a land with and
So it was their sons — the ones he raised up to replace them — that Joshua circumcised. They had never been circumcised, because no one had circumcised them during the journey.
When the whole nation had been circumcised, they stayed where they were in camp until they had healed.
Then Yahweh said to Joshua, "Today I have the of from you." So that place has been called ever since.
The Israelites camped at Gilgal and celebrated on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month, on the of
The day after Passover, on that very day, they ate some of the produce of the land: and
The stopped the day after they ate the produce of the land. There was no more for the Israelites. That year, they ate from the crops of the land of Canaan.
When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a in his hand. Joshua walked up to him and asked, "Are you on our side, or on our enemies' side?"
"Neither," he said. "I have come as the of Joshua on the in and asked him, "What does my master want to say to his servant?"
The commander of Yahweh's army said to Joshua, because the place where you're standing to And Joshua did so.