Joshua 24:2–7

Joshua 24:2 — "Your fathers served other gods." The divine speech opens with a startling admission: Israel's origins lie in paganism. Terah, father of Abraham and Nahor, worshipped the gods of Mesopotamia — most likely the moon-god Sin, patron of Ur and Haran. Joshua does not allow the assembly to romanticize its ancestry. The candor is theologically essential: Israel's identity does not rest on its own religious virtue or ethnic purity, but entirely on divine initiative. God chose Abraham not because Abraham was already righteous, but because God is sovereign in mercy. The phrase "beyond the River" (the Euphrates) marks a geographical and spiritual boundary — the world of polytheism that God called Abraham out of.

Joshua 24:3 — "I took your father Abraham." The verb lāqaḥ ("I took") is forceful and personal. God is the grammatical subject of every major action in this recital — a rhetorical pattern of enormous theological weight. The multiplication of offspring (v. 3) echoes the Abrahamic covenant promise (Gen 12:2; 15:5), reminding the assembly that they themselves are the embodied fulfillment of a divine word spoken centuries before. The march "throughout all the land of Canaan" anticipates the land-promise now largely realized by Joshua's campaigns.

Joshua 24:4 — Jacob, Esau, and the divergence of nations. The mention of both Jacob and Esau acknowledges that God's providence governs even those outside the elect line. Esau receives Mount Seir — the Edomite highlands — as his inheritance, a gift, not a consolation prize. Yet the narrative eye shifts immediately: "Jacob and his children went down into Egypt." The descent into Egypt is stated with eerie brevity and no explanation. The audience knows what it means: four centuries of bondage, the very darkness from which God would have to deliver them. The juxtaposition of Esau's settled inheritance with Jacob's descent heightens the drama about to unfold.

Joshua 24:5 — Moses, Aaron, and the plagues. "I sent Moses and Aaron" — again, God is the actor; Moses and Aaron are instruments. The plagues are not described in detail but are gestured to with the phrase "according to that which I did among them," which presupposes the audience's deep familiarity with the Exodus narrative. The phrase "afterward I brought you out" is the pivot: the plagues serve the Exodus. Judgment is in service of liberation.

Verses 6–7 — The sea crossing and the darkness. The account of the Red Sea crossing emphasizes two moments: the Egyptians' pursuit ("with chariots and with horsemen") and God's dramatic response. Notably, it is the cry of the people that precedes divine action — "when they cried out to Yahweh" — foregrounding the theology of prayer as the hinge of history. The "darkness" God places between Israel and Egypt echoes the plague of darkness (Exod 10:21–23) and anticipates the pillar of cloud, both concealing and protecting. The sea then falls on the Egyptians. The survivors — Israel — are left as eyewitnesses: "your eyes saw what I did in Egypt." This is not secondhand tradition; it is living memory handed on to those now standing at Shechem.

Typological and Spiritual Senses: The Church Fathers consistently read this recital as a type of baptismal catechesis. The passage from polytheism to covenant mirrors the catechumen's journey from "the old gods" of self and world to faith in the one God. The Red Sea crossing is the paradigmatic type of Baptism (cf. 1 Cor 10:1–2; CCC 1221), where the "old man" is submerged and the new creation emerges. The "darkness between you and the Egyptians" typifies the grace that separates the baptized from the dominion of sin and death. Joshua himself, whose name is identical to "Jesus" (Yeshua) in Hebrew, leads the people into the Promised Land just as Christ leads the baptized into the Kingdom — a typology exploited extensively by Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea.

Catholic tradition uniquely illuminates this passage through the lens of anamnesis — the living, liturgically effective memorial that does not merely recall the past but makes the saving event present. The divine recital in Joshua 24 is the Old Testament's most concentrated example of this theology. Just as the Eucharist re-presents the once-for-all sacrifice of Calvary (CCC 1363–1366), Israel's covenant renewal at Shechem re-presents the founding events of the Exodus, making them existentially real for this new generation.

Origen of Alexandria (Homilies on Joshua, Hom. 13) identifies Joshua's proclamation at Shechem as a figure of Christ gathering the Church and recounting the mirabilia Dei — the wonderful works of God — before renewing the covenant in the Eucharist. For Origen, the God who "took" Abraham is the same Word who "takes" each soul from the darkness of sin.

St. Augustine (City of God, XVI.12) meditates on God's choice of Abraham from among idolaters to demonstrate that grace is entirely gratuitous — "not because of works, but because of him who calls" (Rom 9:11). This becomes a foundational text in Catholic anti-Pelagian theology.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 2568) cites Israel's cry to God at the Red Sea as the very birth of prayer in salvation history: "God calls man first… prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation." The liturgical application is explicit in Dei Verbum (§ 14–15): the Old Testament events are not superseded but fulfilled, permanently preserving their value as preparation for the Gospel.

Finally, the repeated "I" of divine action in this passage resonates with Vatican II's insistence (Dei Verbum § 2) that God reveals himself not merely through propositions but through "deeds and words having an inner unity" — precisely what Joshua rehearses here.

Every Catholic who has made a significant retreat, received a sacrament, or survived a personal crisis knows the temptation to forget — to let the living memory of God's action calcify into vague religious sentiment. Joshua's recital is a rebuke to that amnesia. The passage invites a concrete spiritual practice: the regular, deliberate recounting of God's specific saving acts in one's own life. Just as Israel rehearsed the Exodus before renewing their covenant, Catholics are called to enter the Mass with the memory of their own baptism, conversion moments, and answered prayers actively alive.

This passage also challenges the comfortable fiction that we came to God from a neutral position. Like Terah's household, each of us comes from "beyond the River" — from families shaped by materialism, pride, or indifference to God. Acknowledging that God's initiative found us there, in our personal paganism, is not humiliating; it is the foundation of genuine gratitude and covenant loyalty. Practically, consider keeping a personal "Book of God's Acts" — a journal of specific moments when God intervened — and reading it before prayer, as Israel's liturgy read this recital before the covenant renewal.