their officers to attend him before the LORD; where he repeated to them all the mercies, which God had

Some copies of the Lxx read Shiloh and not Shechem in this place, and as Joshua and the elders are said to have presented themselves before GoD, i. e. at the Tabernacle, agreeably to which sense of the expression it appears ver. 26. that they were, at their holding their meeting, by or at the sanctuary of the LORD; and as the tabernacle was set up not at Shechem, but at Shiloh, chap. xviii. 1. it may be thought, that here is some mistake, and that Shiloh not Shechem was the place to which Joshua convened the tribes of Israel. Some of the critics thought the ark and tabernacle were removed to Shechem against the holding this convention; but we have no hints of the fact having been so, nor occasion to suppose it. Shechem and Shiloh were about twelve miles distant from one another. Joshua lived

at Timnath-Serah, a place almost in the mid-way between. them. He summoned the tribes to meet in the fields of Shechem; and from thence he called the heads of the tribes and officers to attend him to Shiloh to present themselves before GoD. All the tribes of Israel were gathered to Shechem; but not all the tribes, rather the heads. Judges and officers only presented themselves before Gon. A meeting of all the tribes must form a camp, not to be accommodated, but in a large and open country. Shechem had in its bor. ders fields enough for the reception of all the people. See Gen. xxxiii. 19. Here therefere they met, and from hence made such detachments to Shiloh a place in the neighbourhood, as the purposes for which they were convened required. Take the fact to have been thus, and the difficul ties which some commentators surmise in this passage, do all vanish.

vouchsafed to their fathers and to them, from the calling of Abraham down to that day; then he desired them to consider and resolve whether they would indeed faithfully serve GoD, or whether they would choose to fall away to idolatry. Upon their assuring him that they would not forsake the LORD to serve other gods; Joshua reminded them, that to serve their GoD was a thing not so easy to be done as said; for that GOD would be strict in demanding from them a punctual performance of what he had required, and that if they should be remiss, or unmindful of it, that his vengeance would most certainly fall upon them. Hereupon they repeated their resolution to serve the LORD." Well then, said Joshua, if, after all this, ye will not do it; let your own declarations this day testify against you; unto which the people readily assented. Thus did Joshua summon them to a most strict engagement, never to vary or depart from the law which God had given them. And that a lasting sense of what they had in so solemn a manner agreed to, might remain upon them, he wrote what had passed in the book of the law;a and set up a pillar of remembrance of it," and then dismissed the people. Not long after, Joshua being a hundred and ten years old, died, and was buried on the north-side of the hill of Gaash, in the border of his inheritance in Timnath

Serah. Josephus informs us that Joshua governed the Israelites twenty-five years after the death of Moses; accordingly we must fix the time of his death about A. M. 2578.

It has been a matter of dispute among the learned, whether Joshua was himself the author of the book which is called by his name. But 1. It is obvious, that the book of Joshua seems to hint, that a person, one of the Israelites, who made the miraculous passage over Jordan, was the writer of it. This the first

verse of the fifth chapter intimates: When all the kings of the Amorites....heard; that the LORD had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the chil dren of Israel, until we were passed over.... the writer would not have here used the first person, WE were passed over, if himself had not been one of the persons who had passed the river: 2. It is evident, that this book was written before Rahab died; for we are told, that Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive,

© Ver. 29, 30.

Joseph Antiq. Lib. 5. c. 1.

Vid. Pol. Synop. Critic. Cleric. in dissert. de Scriptorib. Historic. Vet. Testam. Carpzov. introduc. ad Libros Hist. Vet. Test, et al.

The Hebrew words are [y]

8 I ought not to omit, that the marginal reference in the Hebrew bibles reads the word [ay;] but the learned allow that the Hebrew Keri and Ketib are not of such authority, that we must be absolutely determined by it. Walton. Bibl. Polyglot. Prolegom. viii. c. 26.

4

h

and her father's houshold, and all that she had, and she dwelleth in Israel to this day. The writer was here willing to record to posterity, that Rahab had not only her life given her, but that she was so well received by the Israelites, as to continue even then to dwell among them; a remark which could not have been made after Rahab was dead; and consequently the book which has it must have been composed whilst Rahab was yet alive. Rahab was afterwards married to Salmon, the son of Naasson, the head of the house of Judah; had she been so, when the book of Joshua was composed, I imagine that the author of it, as he appears, by the hint abovementioned, inclined to intimate all the good circumstances of her condition, would not have omitted that, and consequently, by her marriage not being mentioned, we have some reason to think that the book of Joshua had been written, not late in Rahab's life. 3. We are expressly informed that Joshua did himself write, and add what he wrote to the book of the law of GoD. 4. The words which inform us of this fact may, if taken in their natural sense, and according to the construction put upon words of the like import, when we find them

h Josh. vi. 25.

1

The remark is not, that Rahab's family, descendants, or father's houshold were then in Israel; but the verb is [a] in the third person feminine, and refers to Rahab in particular.

j Matt. i. 5.

1 Josh. xxiv. 26.

Numb. i. 7.

upon antient monuments or remains, be supposed to be Joshua's conclusion of his book, designed by him to inform posterity, that himself was the writer of it. Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law, &c. may fairly imply, unless we have good reason to think the fact was otherwise, that all that was found written in the book of the law, from the end of what was penned by the hand of Moses, unto the close of the period, of which these words are a part, was written by Joshua; and this was the opinion of the Talmudists.m Joshua was the only sacred penman whom we read of that the Israelites had in his age; and after he had finished the division of the land, he had many years of great leisure." In these he probably applied himself to give account of the death and burial of Moses; and from thence continued a narrative of what had been transacted under his own direction ;P filling it up with a general terrier of the settlements of the tribes, such १. as must have been expedient for the Israelites to have on record, to prevent confusion about their inheritances in future ages. After having done this, he summoned the tribes, gave them his exhortations, and having added, to what he had before prepared, an account of the conventions which he had held, and what had passed at them, he transcribed the whole into the book of the law, and then dismissed the