Joshua
The Book of Joshua: An Introduction
The short answer
The book of Joshua picks up the story right where the Pentateuch leaves off. Moses has died, and Israel is camped on the far side of the Jordan River, looking across at a land God promised to Abraham generations earlier. Joshua, Moses' longtime assistant, now leads the people across the river and into Canaan. The book tells how the land is taken, divided among the tribes, and settled — and it ends with Joshua calling Israel to renew its commitment to God.
But Joshua is not simply a war chronicle, and its first two battles show why. At Jericho, the Israelite army does essentially nothing: the people march, priests blow trumpets, and the walls come down. It is pure miracle. At Ai, the next city, the opposite happens. There is no miracle at all — just a clever ambush, a feigned retreat, and careful human strategy. Two victories, two completely different playbooks. The point seems deliberate: God sometimes acts through dramatic intervention and sometimes through ordinary human planning, and neither is more 'godly' than the other. The storyteller also leaves room for an uncomfortable feeling — sympathy for the people of Jericho and Ai, who are on the receiving end of it all.
Joshua also matters because of where it sits in the Bible. It opens the long run of Historical Books — Joshua through Esther — that carry Israel's story from the conquest of Canaan through judges, kings, exile, and return, a span of more than seven hundred years. Joshua is the hinge: the moment when the promises of the Pentateuch stop being anticipation and start being lived history in the land itself.
What scholars say
In the first excerpt, John Goldingay compares God's very different game plans at Jericho and Ai — one a miracle, the other pure human stratagem — and notes how the story stirs sympathy for both cities' people. In the second, Tyler D. Mayfield places Joshua at the head of the Historical Books, the long sweep of Israel's story that continues from the Pentateuch.
“At Jericho and at Ai God gave Joshua game plans, quite different plans for the two places, yet both expressing how it was not by military power that Israel was going to take Canaan. At Jericho the Israelite army had no role at all. God made the city walls collapse. In contrast, the Ai plan involved no divine intervention. If you had been there and things happened as the story relates them, at Jericho you would have been wondering what made Jericho’s walls fall, and you would be feeling sorry for its people. At Ai you would be admiring Joshua’s stratagem and feeling a bit sorry for its people because they were so gullible. Sometimes God acts by miracles, and sometimes God acts through human means.”
“The Historical Books (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther) continue the story of the Pentateuch by telling of the Israelites’ conquest of the land of Canaan, their intermittent alliances under the judges, the United Monarchy, the Divided Monarchy, the fall of the northern kingdom to the Assyrians, the fall of the southern kingdom to the Babylonians, and life back in Israel after the exilic period. They narrate then a major portion of the history of Israel and Judah, a history that occurs over more than seven hundred years.”
What it means for you
Joshua invites readers to loosen their assumptions about how God works. If you expect God only in the dramatic — the walls-falling-down moments — you may miss God at work in a well-made plan, a wise decision, or ordinary human effort. And if you trust only your own strategy, Jericho stands as a reminder that some things arrive as sheer gift.
The book also models honest reading. Its narrator lets us feel the weight of what victory costs the defeated. Faith that can hold both gratitude and compassion — celebration without gloating — is closer to the spirit of this book than any simple triumphalism.
In context
Joshua stands between the Pentateuch and the rest of Israel's story. The five books of Moses end with promise unfulfilled: Israel outside the land, its great leader dead. Joshua narrates the crossing into Canaan, the campaigns that follow (including Jericho in chapter 6 and Ai in chapters 7–8), the division of the land among the tribes, and a closing covenant renewal. From here the Historical Books continue through the era of the judges, the monarchy, the fall of both kingdoms, and life after exile — a story spanning more than seven centuries.