Joshua 5

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

¹ When all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that Yahweh had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the children of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in them because of the children of Israel.

Circumcision at Gilgal

² At that time Yahweh said to Joshua, "Make for yourself flint knives, and circumcise the children of Israel again, a second time." ³ So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the children of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth. ⁴ And this is the reason Joshua circumcised them: all the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, had died in the wilderness on the way, after they came out of Egypt. ⁵ For all the people who came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness on the way, after they came out of Egypt, had not been circumcised. ⁶ For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, the men of war who came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they did not obey the voice of Yahweh; to them Yahweh swore that He would not let them see the land which Yahweh had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. ⁷ Their sons, whom He raised up in their place, these Joshua circumcised; for they were uncircumcised, because they had not been circumcised on the way. ⁸ When they had finished circumcising all the nation, they stayed in their places in the camp until they were healed. ⁹ Then Yahweh said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you." So the name of that place has been called Gilgal to this day.

The Passover at Gilgal

¹⁰ The children of Israel camped at Gilgal, and they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, in the plains of Jericho. ¹¹ And on the day after the Passover they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened bread and roasted grain, on that very day. ¹² And the manna ceased on the day after, when they ate of the produce of the land; and the children of Israel had manna no more, but they ate of the yield of the land of Canaan that year.

The commander of Yahweh's army

¹³ When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and there was a man standing in front of him with his drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" ¹⁴ He said, "No; rather I am the commander of Yahweh's army. Now I have come." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and bowed down, and said to him, "What does my lord say to his servant?" ¹⁵ And the commander of Yahweh's army said to Joshua, "Take your sandal off your foot, for the place on which you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so.

Notes

• 5:2 "A second time" is usually understood of the nation as a whole rather than of any man being circumcised twice: the generation born in the wilderness (verses 4-7) now received the covenant sign given to Abraham (Genesis 17:10-11) as it entered the land. Flint was the ancient tool for this rite, as with Zipporah (Exodus 4:25), and Gibeath-haaraloth (verse 3) means "Hill of the Foreskins."
• 5:9 "I have rolled away" is galloti, from galal, "to roll," and the name Gilgal sounds like it (gilgal can mean "wheel" or "circle"). The reproach of Egypt has been understood as the shame of slavery, or as the taunt that Yahweh had brought Israel out only to let them die in the wilderness (Exodus 32:12; Numbers 14:13-16); with the covenant sign renewed in the land, that shame was rolled away.
• 5:10 This is the first Pesach (Passover) kept in the land, and the first the text records since the one at Sinai (Numbers 9:1-5). It comes right after the circumcision, because no uncircumcised male could eat it (Exodus 12:48). "At evening" (ba'erev) is the wording of Exodus 12:18 and Deuteronomy 16:6; Exodus 12:6 gives the time of the slaughter as "between the evenings."
• 5:11 "The day after the Passover" is the phrase Numbers 33:3 uses for the fifteenth day, when Israel left Egypt. "On that very day" echoes Leviticus 23:14, which forbade eating the new grain "until this very day," when the sheaf of firstfruits was brought. How this meal relates to that law has long been discussed, as has "the day after the Shabbat" in Leviticus 23:11 (see the note there); some take "produce" ('avur) here as grain stored from before.
• 5:12 "Ceased" is shavat, the verb behind Shabbat. For forty years the manna had come every morning except on Shabbat (Exodus 16:26, 35); now that the land itself could feed them, the bread from heaven stopped.
• 5:14 The text does not name the commander (sar, "prince, chief") of Yahweh's army, and Joshua calls him adoni, "my lord," the ordinary word of respect. Some understand him as a chief angel, comparing Daniel 10:13 and 10:21, where Michael is called a sar; many Christian interpreters, as early as Justin Martyr in the second century (Dialogue with Trypho 61-62), saw here the Son of God appearing before He became man, because Joshua bows down before him and the place is holy. The command in verse 15 repeats the words spoken to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:5), though here the Hebrew has the singular, "your sandal" and "your foot."

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