Choose Today

Little by little, the people came into the land. City by city and valley by valley, the land God had promised became theirs, and Joshua divided it up among the twelve tribes, so that every family had a share of it — a field, a hillside, a place to belong. And they lived in houses they had not built, and ate from vineyards and olive trees they had not planted, exactly as Moses had said they would. And the years went by, and Joshua grew very old.

But taking the land was not one easy morning; it took years, and it did not always go well. Right after Jericho, Israel lost a little battle at a town called Ai, and Joshua tore his clothes and asked God why — and it turned out that one man, Achan, had taken silver and gold out of Jericho when nobody was supposed to, and buried it under his tent. And a people called the Gibeonites, who were frightened of Israel, played a trick to save themselves: they came in worn-out sandals and patched clothes with dry, mouldy bread in their bags, and said, ‘We have come from very far away’ — and Israel promised not to harm them, and had to keep the promise even after they found out the truth. And once, when five kings came against those same Gibeonites and Joshua marched all night to help them, God threw great hailstones down out of the sky on the running armies. And Joshua stood up in front of everybody and said to the Lord, in the hearing of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon — and moon, over the valley of Aijalon.” And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the people had finished the day’s work. There was never a day like it before or since, when the Lord listened to the voice of a man like that.

So Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel together one last time, with their elders and their judges, and he stood them all before God, and he told them the whole story from the beginning. He said, “Long ago your fathers lived far away on the other side of the great river, and they served other gods. And God took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through the whole land, and gave him Isaac; and to Isaac he gave Jacob; and Jacob and his sons went down into Egypt. And in Egypt they were treated cruelly, and God brought you out, and the sea came over the chariots behind you, and your own eyes saw it. And you were in the wilderness a long time. And he brought you over the Jordan, and he gave you a land you did not work for, and cities you did not build.” And then Joshua said: “So now — fear the Lord, and serve him truly and honestly, and throw away the other gods your fathers served. But if you do not want to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve: the gods your fathers had beyond the river, or the gods of the people whose land you are living in. But I and my household will serve the Lord.”

And all the people answered, “We would never leave the Lord to serve other gods! The Lord our God — he is God. He brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, and he kept us safe on the whole long road we walked. We will serve the Lord too, for he is our God.” And Joshua said, “Then you are witnesses against yourselves that you yourselves have chosen the Lord. Now put away the foreign gods that are still among you, and set your hearts straight toward the Lord, the God of Israel.” And the people said, “We will serve the Lord, and we will listen to his voice.”

So that day Joshua wrote the words down in the book of the law of God. And he took a great stone and stood it up under a big tree, close to the holy place, and he said, “Look — this stone will be a witness among you, because it has heard everything that was said here today.” Then he sent the people home, every family to its own place. And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the old men who outlived him — the ones who had seen with their own eyes everything the Lord had done. And Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, a hundred and ten years old, and they buried him in the hill country that was his own. And the bones of Joseph, which the people had carried all the way out of Egypt and all the way through the wilderness, were buried at last at Shechem, in the field his father Jacob had bought long ago — home, in the end, in the land God had promised.