Joshua 5
Joshua 5 — Commentary and Meaning
The short answer
Joshua 5 is a hinge chapter. Israel has just crossed the Jordan, and the surrounding kings are paralyzed with fear — the moment seems ripe for attack. Instead, the chapter slows everything down. Before a single battle, Israel stops for three things: circumcision, Passover, and worship.
First, God tells Joshua to circumcise the new generation. The men who left Egypt had all died during the forty years in the wilderness, and their sons — born on the journey — had never received the sign of the covenant. That forty-year figure is not random. In the Bible, forty years stands for a complete generation, a full turning of the page. The old, disobedient generation is gone; the new one is marked as God's own at Gilgal, where God declares that the "reproach of Egypt" has been rolled away. Then the people keep the Passover in the land itself, and the very next day they eat the produce of Canaan. The manna — the wilderness food — stops for good. Israel has arrived.
The chapter ends with a strange and beautiful scene. Near Jericho, Joshua meets a figure with a drawn sword who identifies himself as commander of the LORD's army. Joshua falls down in worship and is told to remove his sandals, for the ground is holy. The echo of Moses at the burning bush is unmistakable: just as Moses removed his shoes before God's presence in Exodus 3, so Joshua must do the same. The message is quiet but pointed. The conquest of Canaan does not begin with strategy or swords. It begins with covenant, remembrance, and bare feet on holy ground — a reminder that this campaign belongs to God, not to Joshua.
What scholars say
Thomas Dozeman explains why Joshua 5:6's forty years matters: it marks a complete generation, so the entire first generation dies in the wilderness before the story moves on. James Newsome, discussing Moses at the burning bush, points to Joshua 5:15 as a parallel moment of removing shoes to acknowledge God's holy presence.
“A forty-year period also represents a generation. Joshua 5:6 states that the wilderness wandering lasted forty years so that the entire first generation of the Israelites would die in the wilderness. The same thought is carried through in the story of the judges. They tend to rule for forty years (e.g., Othniel, Judg 3:11 ; Deborah, 5:31 ; and Gideon, 8:28 ). The number forty, as the time period of a generation, comes to represent completeness. It is this meaning that is likely intended when the number forty returns to describe the time required for Moses to receive the revelation of law ( Exod 24:18 ) or the length of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness ( Mark 1:13 ).”
“First, this site is a holy one, and Moses must acknowledge the presence of the numinous and supernatural by removing his shoes (compare Joshua 5:15, and note the similarity to the Muslim requirement that shoes must be removed before entering a mosque). Second, the divine presence in the burning-but-unconsumed bush is no desert jinn, but the ancestral God of the Hebrews, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (v. 6, compare 2:24). As in other places in the Bible, the book of Exodus emphasizes both continuity and newness in the events taking place in the life of Moses and of Israel. As he encountered this awesome presence, Moses hid his face because he believed that no one could look God in the face and live.”
What it means for you
Joshua 5 pushes against our instinct to rush toward the next big challenge. Israel paused at the edge of its greatest test to renew its identity, remember God's rescue, and worship — and only then moved forward. Before your own Jerichos, the passage suggests, the first task is not planning but belonging: knowing whose you are.
It also offers a picture of fresh starts. A whole generation's failure did not cancel God's promise; a new generation stepped into it. Old chapters can close completely, and what follows can begin not with striving but with worship.
Joshua 5 in context
Joshua 5 sits between the miraculous Jordan crossing of chapters 3–4 and the fall of Jericho in chapter 6. Chapter 4 ends with memorial stones at Gilgal so future generations will remember the crossing; chapter 5 opens with the Canaanite kings losing heart. Rather than exploiting that fear militarily, the chapter records circumcision, Passover, the end of the manna, and Joshua's encounter with the commander of the LORD's army — spiritual preparation that frames everything that follows in the conquest.