Joshua 24:16–18

Joshua 24:16 — "Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh, to serve other gods"

The Hebrew idiom ḥālîlâ lānû ("far be it from us") is an emphatic repudiation, a near-oath of horror at the very suggestion. Joshua has just issued a stark challenge — choose this day whom you will serve (v. 15) — and the people's response begins not with a positive affirmation but with a vehement refusal: no, not that. This rhetorical structure is important. True covenant fidelity, Scripture implies, always has a negative dimension: to say yes to Yahweh is to say no to the idols. The phrase "other gods" ('ĕlōhîm 'ăḥērîm) is a loaded term throughout the Deuteronomistic tradition, referring to the gods of Canaan (Baals, Astartes), of Egypt, and of the surrounding nations — not merely philosophical alternatives, but active spiritual rivals whose worship entailed practices incompatible with Yahweh's covenant. The people's "far be it from us" is thus an act of spiritual discernment and rejection, not merely of social convention.

Joshua 24:17 — The Creed of Saving History

Verse 17 is the theological heart of the passage. The people do not simply assert loyalty; they give reasons, and those reasons are entirely historical-theological. Their argument has three parts:

1. "Brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" — The Exodus is the irreducible foundation. The term "house of bondage" (bêt 'ăbādîm) echoes the Decalogue preamble (Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6), situating this covenant renewal within the same framework as Sinai. By invoking their fathers, the people acknowledge that their own identity is inseparable from a history they did not personally experience — they are heirs of grace.

2. "Did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way" — The "great signs" (hā'ōtōt haggĕdōlōt) encompass the plagues, the crossing of the sea, the provision of manna and water, the pillar of cloud and fire. "Preserved us in all the way" reflects Deuteronomy's wilderness theology: God's protection was not episodic but continual, extending through enemy territories and hostile peoples. The phrase "among all the peoples through the middle of whom we passed" recalls the negotiations and conflicts with Edom, Moab, the Amorites, and others in Numbers and Deuteronomy — a sustained, providential accompaniment.

3. Joshua 24:18 — "Yahweh drove out from before us all the peoples" — The verb gāraš ("drove out") is the same word used in Genesis 3:24 for the expulsion from Eden, and throughout Joshua for the dispossession of Canaan. Here the people acknowledge that the conquest was not their military achievement but God's action on their behalf. The specific mention of "the Amorites who lived in the land" is significant: the Amorites are the paradigmatic pre-Israelite inhabitants, representing the fullness of Canaanite opposition. Their defeat is the capstone example of divine intervention.

The Logical Conclusion: "Therefore we also will serve Yahweh; for he is our God"

The pledge's grammar is decisive: therefore (gam-'ănaḥnû). The commitment to serve Yahweh is presented as a rational inference from experienced grace. This is not coercion or blind obedience; it is the logic of gratitude. "He is our God" — the possessive is mutual and covenantal. Israel does not merely acknowledge Yahweh as a cosmic power; they claim a relationship. This formula, "I will be your God and you shall be my people," runs as a golden thread from Genesis through Revelation.

Typological and Spiritual Senses

At the typological level, the Church Fathers consistently read the Exodus and entry into Canaan as prefiguring Baptism and entry into the Church. Origen, in his Homilies on Joshua, reads Shechem's covenant renewal as an image of the soul's repeated return to its baptismal commitment. The "great signs" find their fulfillment in the sacraments — especially the Eucharist as the new manna, and Baptism as the new crossing of the sea (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1–4). Just as Israel's pledge is grounded in what God has already done, so the Christian's covenant renewal in the liturgy is grounded in the Paschal Mystery already accomplished in Christ.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage along several interconnected lines.

The Covenant as Response, Not Initiative

The Catechism teaches that God "first loves" (CCC 2083), and that human religious commitment is always a response to prior divine action. The people's pledge in Joshua 24 perfectly enacts this structure: they enumerate what God has done before they state what they will do. This anticipates the Pauline logic of grace: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). The Council of Orange (529 AD), reaffirmed by Trent, taught that even the beginning of faith is God's gift — the Israelites' "therefore" is a theological statement about prevenient grace.

Memory as the Ground of Fidelity

St. Augustine in De Catechizandis Rudibus insists that catechesis must begin with salvation history, because it is the memory of God's saving acts that sustains faith. The people at Shechem are doing precisely this: they are reciting their creed in narrative form. The Catholic liturgical tradition preserves this instinct in the Eucharistic Prayers, which are anamnetic (anamnesis — "do this in memory of me"), recounting what God has done in Christ as the basis for present worship.

The Exclusive Claim of God

The First Commandment (CCC 2084–2141) demands that God alone receive the worship of latria. The people's rejection of "other gods" is the Old Testament grounding of this principle. Pope Benedict XVI, in Deus Caritas Est (2005), observed that the exclusive claim of God's love — like a covenant between spouses — is not oppressive but liberating, because it orders all other loves rightly. Israel's "far be it from us" is the covenant equivalent of the marriage vow's exclusivity.

Origen and the Battle for the Soul

Origen reads "driving out the Amorites" allegorically as the expulsion of vices from the soul through cooperation with grace — a theme developed by Cassian and the Desert Fathers. The soul that confesses "he is our God" is the soul that has allowed God to "drive out" the interior occupants of sin.

Joshua 24 was almost certainly used in Israel as a liturgical text for periodic covenant renewal ceremonies, much as Catholics renew baptismal promises at Easter. This gives a concrete contemporary application: the passage challenges Catholics to examine whether their faith is reasoned and remembered or merely inherited and passive.

The people's pledge is specific — they name the Exodus, the wilderness, the conquest. Catholics are invited to do the same: to name the specific moments in their own lives when God "preserved them in all the way," the prayers answered, the conversions experienced, the sacramental graces received. Faith that cannot narrate its own history becomes brittle.

More urgently, the people's first word is a refusal: "far be it from us." Contemporary Catholics face a proliferation of competing allegiances — ideological, consumerist, therapeutic — that function as "other gods" without being named as such. The Shechem assembly invites concrete discernment: What, practically, am I choosing instead of God? The pledge of Shechem is not made in a vacuum but against a named alternative. The examination of conscience is the personal equivalent of Joshua's "choose this day."