Alright, this is lesson 17, as I said. This is the period when Israel conquers the Promised Land. This is a gigantic book, the book of Joshua, which is really what we're going to be focusing on. So before we dive into a lot of the action here with the conquest, the military tactics, all this type of stuff, let's just do some introductory work about Joshua himself and the book of Joshua, because he is a very significant person, a very significant character in salvation history.
I mean, in fact, a little Bible trivia just popped into my brain. Joshua is the first book of the Bible to be named after a person. So you can impress your friends at dinner with that one right there. But Joshua is a really important character.
So let's look at him. You can go to the Catholic Bible Dictionary, which I highly recommend for a lot more little tidbits. But for our purposes here, let's just begin with the notes. He's from the tribe of Ephraim.
So if you remember, Ephraim was the son of Joseph, the patriarch Joseph back in Genesis. So he's a descendant of the patriarch Joseph, and he is Moses' right-hand man in close confidant from the very beginning of the Exodus story. You could really see if you look at Joshua as he's popped up throughout the story, throughout the Pentateuch. It seems like he's been groomed for the position of Moses' successor all along.
So he's got a very close connection with Moses from the beginning of this entire drama. So a couple of examples in your notes right here. In Exodus 32, verse 17, you find that Joshua is, he ascends Mount Sinai with Moses. Now Moses, of course, goes to the top and receives instructions from God for the construction of the tabernacle.
But Joshua is up there as well. That's a pretty good opportunity for Joshua. In Exodus 33, verse 11, you also find that Joshua is able to go into the tent of meeting with Moses, which is pretty dynamite. What a special privilege for him to do that.
Go up to the mountain with Moses and go into the tent of meeting with Moses. Actually, he picks him as his, which is of course predictable, but picks him as his successor through the direction of God in Deuteronomy 31. But you also see that he is a warrior. In Exodus 17, if you remember this story, the Israelites, after they leave Egypt, they need to fight the Amalekites.
And Moses is there on the top of the mountain and he has his arms raised. And so long as he has his arms raised up in intercessory prayer, the Israelites are victorious. And then so he needs a couple of buddies to hold his arms up so they're getting so tired. Well, Joshua is down on the battlefield leading the Israelites in that battle.
And that's really important foreshadowing for what Joshua is going to do now in the conquest of the Promised Land. He's going to lead his people against his enemies. So he was a warrior. He was a faithful spy.
If you remember, he's only one of two faithful spies that Moses sent into the Promised Land to spy it out. There were 12. This is in Numbers 12, so it's easy to remember. There are 12 spies, 10 of them lead a mutiny and they appoint a captain to lead the Israelites back to Egypt.
And they try to stone Joshua and Caleb and by extension presumably Moses and Aaron is just a disaster at that story. Well, Joshua was faithful with Caleb. And incidentally, don't forget that Joshua and Caleb. We're the only two individuals from the first generation, from those who left Egypt to enter into the Promised Land.
That's mind blowing. Only two out of the two to three million people enter into the Promised Land. In Numbers 13 verse 16, we find a name change. And name changes are very, very important in Scripture.
If you remember, you got Abraham to Abraham, Sarah to Sarah. You have Jacob to Israel. Well, here Moses changes his name from Hosea, which means salvation to Yishwa or Joshua, which means the Lord is salvation. So remember, name changes signify a particular person's mission and destiny, if you want to call it that, what their vocation by God.
And so for our purposes here, Yishwa, Joshua means the Lord is salvation. And that's going to be very important for the people to understand that God is their salvation. God will deliver their enemies into their hand, bring them into the Promised Land, and give them rest so they can have that communal covenantal relationship with God. Now incidentally, Yishwa is the same name in Hebrew for Jesus.
It's a little confusing in our English language because Jesus and Joshua are two distinct names. They can get their name Jesus from the Greek, Yessus. But in Hebrew, Yishwa is Joshua. So Jesus' name is really Joshua.
You could call him Joshua, AKA Jesus or vice versa. And that's going to be really important for typology, which I will sum up for you at the end of this lecture. All right. And then find the letter E here in the notes, just these big points.
Moses passes on his authority to Joshua and Deuteronomy chapter 34 verse 9 with the imposition of his hands. And that's very significant because here in the period of the New Covenant, Bishop lays his hands on the man's head of new priests, he's ordained to the priesthood. And you can see here in Deuteronomy 34, a foreshadowing type of the priesthood where Moses passes this on to Joshua just like a priest is ordained to the priesthood through the imposition of the hands. So if you go to an ordination of priests and you see that bishop lay his hands on the priest's head, you can think back, of course, to Moses and Joshua in this great store here.
So a lot happens with Joshua before he gets to this point. You know, when Moses dies here and he becomes the new leader, he's totally being groomed for this position. Okay. So now the book of Joshua, like I said, a little trivia.
The first book of the Bible to be named after a person. And this is significant because we're in a new stage, I guess you could call it of the Scriptures. The Jewish people broke down their Hebrew Scriptures into three main categories. And they have a really cool little acronym that's called Tanakh.
It's the Tanakh. If you go to buy a Hebrew Scriptures volume and wherever the book's on whatever you want, wherever you buy your books, you might find it's the Tanakh version. And the acronym, it takes the T, the N, and the K and puts little vowels with the A there. The T, the N and the K, Tanakh.
And it stands for these three main categories of the Scriptures. The Torah is what this T stands for. And those, that's the law, the instruction of Moses, all the way through Genesis, all the way through Deuteronomy. We just completed that with our last lesson, looked at the whole period of salvation history from Adam all the way through Moses.
That's the Torah. Now with Joshua, we're in the Nevi Eam, which means the prophets and that includes the historical books as well. The historical books, which are from Joshua here all the way through 2nd Maccabees. So Joshua, judges, Ruth, Samuels, the kings, the chronicles, etc, etc.
Right? Those are the historical books, but the Jews called them the former prophets because the role of prophecy was very strong. You have Samuel and Nathan and Gad and Elijah and Alicia and all these prophets as well in the historical books. So the Nevi Eam included historical books as well as the prophets which we know of Isaiah and Jeremiah and these dudes who have their own books.
That's what the end stands for. So there's T, there's N, then there's the K, which stands for the Ketuvim, which are the writings. That's the wisdom literature of the Jewish people, like the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and these types of things. Sirak.
So you've got the Torah, the Nevi Eam, the Ketuvim, the Tanakh, T, N, and K. So here with Joshua, as I said, it's the first of the historical books. So it's a very, very important time in salvation history because it's this hinge or this bridge between the Pentateuch, which is Genesis through Deuteronomy, and the rest of Israel's salvation that runs through second Maccabees. But I don't want you to look at it as a clean break.
Deuteronomy is boom, done, there's end of the Exodus and now we're into the historical period. Obviously it's all history, it's all salvation history. And in a particular way, Joshua has a large overlap because as I'm going to explain to you in a variety of different ways, he's a new Moses. He's being depicted in so many ways as a new Moses who completes the mission of the Exodus.
Really with the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34 and the close of the Pentateuch, the drama, the story of the Exodus is not yet complete because they haven't taken the promise land. God hasn't given the promise land yet. So Joshua completes that mission. So if you remember Moses when he died in chapter 34 of Deuteronomy, he died because if you think back to Numbers, chapter 20, he disobeyed God.
He said, God said to him, speak to the rock and the rock will yield forth its water. The Moses didn't do that for a variety of reasons. He struck the rock twice and his punishment was that he wouldn't be able to enter the land. So Joshua steps into his sandals, so to speak, to continue that mission to bring the people into the land of their fathers.
So with the conquest of the promised land, with this mission of the Exodus being completed under the leadership of Joshua, God is going to fulfill the first of the three promises that he made to Abraham back in Genesis chapter 12. I want to reread this for you because we're beginning to see these three promises being fulfilled in the course of salvation history. So if you think back way when we're looking at Genesis in this course, in chapter 12, verse 1, it said, the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country and your kindred in your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you one, a great nation and I will bless you and I will make of you two, a great name so that you will be a blessing, then I will bless those who bless you and he who curses you will curse and then three, all the families of the earth shall bless themselves. So these are the threefold promise and then later, of course, it's the threefold oath of a great nation, a great name and worldwide blessing.
Well, now at this period of salvation history, the promise, the oath of a great nation is being fulfilled through Moses and Joshua. It's not enough to say it's just through Moses because it's Joshua who completes the mission and brings the people into the land. So I think I told you before, I'm sure back in Genesis chapter 12, those three promises really become the plot points or signal markers if you want to call them for the rest of salvation history and that's exactly what we're seeing being fulfilled now. And the second promise out of a great name of kings that will come from Abraham, we're going to see that through David and Solomon and then we're going to see worldwide blessing through Jesus Christ, right?
So it's all coming together, like it's all a masterful journey of history, it's God's history, right? It's salvation history. Okay, so when we look at the book of Joshua, you need to understand that not in the conquest of the promise land, not all of the battles are going to be narrated here. Only the main points and events that really highlight to the establishment of God's people and the land are going to be narrated here.
So it's a theological and a spiritual history, but it's true history. It absolutely are events that actually happened and the miracles did actually happen for reasons that I'll tell you in a moment. So there's a lot of kind of front-loaded, in fact, that's a perfect segue into this next point in your notes here with the structure of the book of Joshua. The conquest of the promise land takes place in three stages and the conquest is really front-loaded in the first number of chapters.
So the people enter into Canaan and destroy the strongholds beginning with Jericho, right? In fact, in this lesson, we're going to spend most of our time in chapters one through eight, giving you the highlights. And then you've got the southern campaign and a couple of chapters, the northern campaign and a couple more chapters. And it's just pretty fast pace, but a lot of the main details happen at the beginning with Jericho and then really quickly a little story of I.
I'll share that with you later on. And then the second main portion is the division of the land. Amongst all the tribes, they get their inheritance finally, except for Levi, right? Levi belongs to the Lord.
That's typically the part that most people skip over. You begin to nod off a little bit when Joshua's there just dividing up the land and handing it out to the various tribes. But it is significant and it explains the maps that you're going to find here and there of the inhabitants or Israelites and where they dwell. And then finally the last two chapters here is Joshua's farewell speeches before he dies.