Joshua 5

This chapter is a hinge. Israel has just crossed the Jordan on dry ground ( Joshua 4), and now they're camped on the plains of Jericho — enemy territory, with a walled city staring them down. You'd expect the next scene to be war. Instead, everything stops. God makes them do surgery, throw a feast, and then Joshua meets a stranger with a sword who tells him he's not on anybody's side.

The chapter moves in three beats. First (verses 1-9), the report: Canaanite kings hear about the Jordan miracle and their courage liquefies — literally, "their heart melted" Jamieson-Fausset-Brown. Then, with the enemy paralyzed and no attack imminent, God tells Joshua to circumcise the whole generation born in the wilderness. This is startling — you don't disable your fighting men with a painful wound right next to a hostile city unless you trust something bigger than military readiness. The reason given (verses 4-7) is a quiet gut-punch: the whole generation that left Egypt died in the wilderness because they didn't trust God (that's the story of Numbers 13-14 — the spies, the refusal to enter the land, the forty years of wandering as a sentence). Their sons, born on the road, had never been marked with the covenant sign. God calls this "the reproach of Egypt" (verse 9), and rolling it away gives the camp its name — Gilgal, which sounds like the Hebrew word for "roll" Keil-Delitzsch Old Testament.

Second beat (verses 10-12): Passover, at the very spot, the very kind of meal their parents ate the night they left Egypt — except this time they also eat the actual produce of the promised land, and the manna, that daily bread from heaven, simply stops the next morning. No fanfare. No last supper of manna. It's just over, because they don't need it anymore.

Third beat (verses 13-15): Joshua, near Jericho, meets a man with a drawn sword. He asks the obvious military question — whose side are you on? — and gets an answer that reframes everything: "Neither. I'm the Commander." Joshua falls on his face. He's told to take off his sandals — the same command given to Moses at the burning bush ( Exodus 3:5). The ground under an obedient army's feet, in enemy territory, is holy ground.

The through-line: before Israel fights anything, God deals with their identity, their memory, their dependence, and their command structure. Where the chapter sits in Joshua's larger story: everything before this is entry; everything after (chapter 6 onward) is conquest. This is the pause between.

Christians have long debated exactly who this "Commander of the LORD's army" is — some (many church fathers, and later Reformed and Catholic readers alike) read it as a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ; others read it more cautiously as a created angel-messenger acting with divine authority. The text itself is spare enough to leave room for both readings.

Joshua as a book almost certainly reflects events from the Late Bronze Age, roughly the 13th century BC, though the book as we have it was likely written and shaped later, drawing on earlier records — possibly including firsthand material, since the text itself slips into first person ("until we had crossed over," verse 1) suggesting an eyewitness source behind it John Gill. Israel had just spent forty years as wilderness nomads after refusing, at Kadesh-barnea, to trust God enough to take the land the first time ( Numbers 13-14). Now a new generation stands at the edge of Canaan, a land already dotted with fortified Canaanite city-states — Jericho being the nearest and most obviously in their path.

Canaanite religion at this time centered on fertility gods like Baal and Asherah, gods tied to weather, crops, and military success. A river drying up on cue wasn't just inconvenient for the local kings — it was a direct challenge to the credibility of their gods, which is why the report of it "melted" their hearts; they read it correctly as a sign that Israel's God controlled nature itself Tyndale. Circumcision, meanwhile, wasn't unique to Israel — some neighboring cultures practiced it too, often at puberty or marriage — but for Israel it was the specific sign of the covenant God cut with Abraham back in Genesis 17, performed on infants as a mark of belonging from birth. A whole generation walking around without that mark meant, functionally, a whole generation not yet formally bound into the covenant their parents had broken. Passover, too, reached back to a specific night in Egypt ( Exodus 12) — the meal eaten in a hurry, blood on the doorframes, the last night of slavery. Eating it now, on the plains of Jericho, deliberately closes a loop that opened forty years earlier.

In verse 1, the word for "melted" comes from יָבֵשׁ (yâbêsh, H3001) — the same root can mean "to dry up" or "wither," the very word used for what happened to the Jordan's water Strong's. There's a grim irony: the river dried up for Israel, and now the kings' courage dries up in response. Water and hearts, both wrung dry by the same event.

Verse 2 tells Joshua to circumcise the sons of Israel שֵׁנִי (shênîy, H8145) — "again," or literally "a second time." This isn't calling into question the first circumcision of those who left Egypt; it's marking that the nation as a whole needs the rite renewed in its next generation Strong's. The word for "flint knives" pairs צוּר (tsûwr, H6697, "rock/cliff") with חֶרֶב (chereb, H2719) — the everyday word for "sword," here doing double duty as "knife." Same word used later in verse 13 for the drawn sword in the Commander's hand. The text quietly links the cutting instrument of covenant-making with the cutting instrument of war — both are edges God wields for his purposes.

Verse 9's key word is גָּלַל (gâlal, H1556), "to roll" — the root behind the place-name גִּלְגָּל (Gilgâl, H1537). And what gets rolled away is חֶרְפָּה (cherpâh, H2781) — "reproach," but the Strong's definition is blunter: it can mean disgrace tied to exposure, even shame connected to the body itself Strong's. That's fitting — this is a chapter about uncovering flesh and having shame removed at the very same moment.

Finally, in verse 14, the stranger calls himself שַׂר־צְבָא־יְהֹוָה — sar (H8269, "chief/head") of tsâbâʼ (H6635, "army, host") of Yᵉhôvâh (H3068). "Commander of the LORD's army" — not Israel's army. Joshua salutes the wrong flag until this correction lands.

The command "take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy" (verse 15) is nearly word-for-word what God told Moses at the burning bush ( Exodus 3:5). That's not accidental — the text is telling you this Commander carries the same weight of presence that spoke from the fire. Many readers through church history — going back to early Christian writers — have taken this figure as Christ himself showing up before his incarnation, since he receives worship (verse 14, "fell facedown") without correcting Joshua the way angels do elsewhere in Scripture ( Revelation 19:10). Others read him as a created angelic commander acting as God's representative. The text doesn't settle it definitively, but the pattern — a divine figure who commands worship, claims holy ground, and leads God's people into battle — points forward to the one who would later say "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" ( Matthew 28:18).

There's a second, quieter thread. The manna stops the day after Israel eats the land's own produce (verse 12) — daily bread from heaven giving way to bread grown in the promised inheritance. Jesus later calls himself "the bread of life" and contrasts himself with the manna: "your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died... I am the bread that comes down from heaven" ( John 6:49-51). The manna was temporary provision for a people not yet home; Christ is provision that doesn't expire when you arrive.

And the whole circumcision scene — cutting away flesh to remove reproach and mark belonging — becomes, in Paul's hands, a picture of what Christ does in the heart. "In him you were also circumcised... by the circumcision performed by Christ" ( Colossians 2:11). The knife was never really about the skin.

Here's what should unsettle you about this chapter: right before the biggest fight of their lives, God tells Israel's fighting men to make themselves weak. Circumcision as adults meant days of pain and vulnerability, camped in the open, next to a city that could see them. From a purely tactical standpoint, this is insane. But God isn't building an army that wins by strength. He's building a people who know, in their bodies, that the win was never going to come from their strength in the first place.

Ask yourself where you're doing the opposite — where you're gearing up for a battle in your life (a hard conversation, a diagnosis, a decision) by making yourself harder, more armored, more self-reliant, instead of letting God deal with the parts of you that are still, spiritually speaking, uncircumcised. What have you never let him cut away? What old reproach are you still carrying around like a scar you think defines you, when he's offering to roll it off you the way he rolled Egypt off Israel at Gilgal?

And then there's Joshua's question to the Commander: "Are you for us or for our enemies?" It's a completely reasonable question, and God's answer refuses it. He's not a mascot for your side. He's not for your career, your church, your nation, your grudge. He's the Commander, and the real question was never whose side he's on — it's whether you're on his. That's the posture the chapter ends on: face down, sandals off, listening. Before you ask God to bless your plans this week, try asking what he's commanding instead.

• Lord, show me what "reproach" I'm still carrying that you want to roll away — some old shame I keep treating like it's still true of me.
• I confess the times I've asked whether you're on my side instead of asking whether I'm on yours. Realign me.
• Give me the courage to let you cut away what needs cutting, even when it costs me strength I thought I needed.
• Thank you for provision that doesn't run out when I finally arrive somewhere new — teach me to trust you for what's ahead, not just what got me here.
• Like Joshua, let me recognize holy ground when I'm standing on it, and take off whatever keeps me from reverence.

• What would it cost you, practically, to make yourself vulnerable right before a fight you're facing — instead of armoring up?
• Is there a "reproach" from your past you still narrate as though it defines your present? What would it mean for God to roll it away?
• Where in your life have you been treating God like a resource for your side, rather than submitting to whichever side he's actually on?
• What has been your "manna" — a temporary provision you've clung to out of fear, even after God gave you something better and more permanent?
• When was the last time you actually fell facedown before God, rather than just asking him for things while standing?