Joshua 24: The covenant at Shechem and the death of Joshua.

In the beginning of this final chapter, Joshua recounts God’s work for Israel in great detail, spanning the time before Abraham through Isaac and Jacob, the Israelites’ time as slaves in Egypt, and the exodus through the wilderness for many years, culminating with crossing the Jordan and taking Jericho.

Joshua then told the people of Israel that they were to choose whom they would serve: the gods of their fathers, or the Lord God of Israel. The people strongly affirmed that they would follow the Lord and be faithful to Him. They repeated this several times. Then Joshua told them that they were witnesses of their choice, and he renewed the covenant with them there, at Shechem. To mark the covenant, Joshua took a large stone and set it up as a witness to remind the Israelites of what they had sworn that day.

And after all of this, Joshua died, and was buried within his inheritance at Timnath Serah. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and continued to serve the Lord for some time after. And also Eleazar, the chief priest of Israel, died.

The bones of Joseph, which had been carried by Israel since they left slavery in Egypt, were then given their final resting place at Shechem in a plot of land originally bought by the family of Joseph.

The spiritual meaning of this chapter is all about commitment and devotion in our relationship with the Lord. Joshua’s review of events at the beginning is a reminder that the Lord leads us through life, with all its trials and blessings (see Swedenborg’s work, Heaven and Hell 18). In the work of regeneration, a high state of peace and of the Lord’s presence in us is followed by a state where we are in temptation and under attack from hell. In contrast, a state of temptation in which we stand firm and depend on the Lord leads to a state of trust, confidence, and the return of the Lord’s peace (see Swedenborg’s work, Arcana Caelestia 933[2]).

Our spiritual life involves many repeated choices. This is why it is significant that the Israelites repeated their promise to serve the Lord so many times. We may feel that our decision to follow the Lord is a final one, but the reality is that we uphold (or refute) this decision in our actions each and every day. We will need to choose time and time again, even though we believe we would always choose the Lord (see Swedenborg’s work, Divine Providence 321[5]).

A covenant is a formal agreement. Biblical covenants are between people and the Lord. The Lord will always honor his part in the covenant, and we are to ensure that we will honor our part. Spiritually, the covenant is about the empowerment in declaring our commitment to the Lord. ‘This I will do.’ There is no longer any uncertainty or vagueness about our commitment to God. It has been sealed (Arcana Caelestia 1038).

The fact that Joshua commemorates the covenant with a stone also has important spiritual significance for us. A stone represents the strength and durability of truth when it becomes a permanent factor in our life. Committing to follow the Lord’s truths gives us a sturdy foundation in life.

When a story in the Bible mentions death, it always reflects the changing of some state in us. When Joshua and Eleazar the priest die, it is like moving on from a state which has served us well into a new and different state. In our regeneration, the Lord wants us to keep exploring new thoughts and decisions, so that we are always progressing and never complacent (Arcana Caelestia 1382).

The mention of Joseph’s bones at the very end of the chapter is also very significant. These bones of Joseph stand for the continuity of the Lord’s truth, wisdom and providence with us and for us. They also stand for the preservation of all that happens in a person’s life. All of these events make us the people we are, and will always keep shaping our spirit (Arcana Caelestia 6592).

321. But these need to be explained in the order just given.

(a) If we convince ourselves of the appearance that wisdom and prudence come from ourselves and are therefore within us as our own possessions, it necessarily seems to us that if this were not the case we would not be human at all, only animals or statues; and yet the truth is just the opposite. A law of divine providence says that we are to think in apparent autonomy and act prudently in apparent autonomy but are to recognize that this comes from the Lord. It follows that if we do in fact think and act in apparent autonomy and also recognize that it is coming from the Lord we are human, but that we are not human if we convince ourselves that everything we think and do comes from ourselves. Nor are we human if we simply wait for something to flow in because we know that wisdom and prudence come from God. In this case, we are like statues, while in the former case we are like animals.

Clearly, if we wait for something to flow in, we are like statues. If all we can do is stand or sit motionless, hands hanging down, eyes either closed or open without blinking, neither thinking nor breathing--how much life do we have then?

[2] We can also see that if we believe that everything we think and do comes from ourselves, we are not all that different from animals. After all, we are then thinking solely with our earthly mind, the mind that we have in common with animals, and not with our spiritual rational mind, which is our truly human mind. It is this latter mind that realizes that only God thinks autonomously and that we think from God. Then too, the only difference our earthly mind can see between us and animals is that we talk and animals make noises. It believes that death is the same for both.

[3] Something more needs to be said about people who wait for something to flow in. The only people of this kind who actually receive anything are the few who deeply long for it. They occasionally receive a kind of answer through a vivid impression or a subtle voice in their thinking, but rarely through anything obvious. In any case, what they receive leaves them to think and act the way they want to and the way they can. If they act wisely they become wise, and if they act stupidly they become stupid. They are never told what to believe or what to do; otherwise their human rationality and freedom would be destroyed. That is, things are managed so that they act freely and rationally, and to all appearances, autonomously.

If some inflow tells us what to believe or what to do, it is not the Lord or any angel of heaven who is telling us but some fanatical spirit, perhaps Quaker or Moravian, and we are being led astray. Everything that flows in from the Lord flows in by an enlightenment of our understanding and by a desire for what is true, actually through the desire into the enlightenment.

[4] (b) It seems as though it would be impossible to believe and think in accord with the truth that everything good and true comes from the Lord and everything evil and false from hell, when in fact to do so is truly human and truly angelic. It seems possible to think and believe that everything good and true comes from the Lord as long as we say no more than that. This is because it is in accord with the official faith, and we are not allowed to think to the contrary. However, it seems impossible to think and believe that everything evil and false comes from hell, because if we believed this we would not be able to think at all. Still, we seem to think for ourselves even if it is coming from hell, because the Lord provides that no matter where our thinking is coming from it seems to be happening within us and to be ours. Otherwise, we would not live like humans. We could not be led out of hell and led into heaven--that is, reformed, as I have explained so often already [96, 114, 174, 210].

[5] So too, the Lord provides that we realize and therefore think we are in hell if we are bent on evil and that our thoughts are coming from hell if they come from evil. He also enables us to think of ways that we can get out of hell and not accept thoughts from hell but instead come into heaven and there think from him. He also gives us a freedom to choose. We can therefore see that we can think what is evil and false in apparent autonomy; and we can also think in apparent autonomy that one thing or another is evil and false. We can think that this autonomy is only the way things seem, and that otherwise we would not be human.

It is essentially human and therefore angelic to base our thoughts on the truth; and the truth is that we do not think on our own but that the Lord enables us to think, to all appearances autonomously.

[6] (c) Believing and thinking like this is impossible for people who do not acknowledge the Lord's divine nature and who do not acknowledge that evils are sins; but it is possible for people who acknowledge these two facts. The reason it is impossible for people who do not acknowledge the Lord's divine nature is that it is only the Lord who enables us to think and to intend, and if we do not acknowledge the Lord's divine nature, in isolation from him we believe that we are thinking on our own. The reason it is also impossible for people who do not acknowledge that evils are sins is that their thoughts are coming from hell, and all the people there believe that they are doing their own thinking.

We can tell from the abundance of material presented in 288-294 above that this is possible for people who acknowledge these two facts.

[7] (d) If we make these two acknowledgments, we simply reflect on the evils within ourselves and, to the extent that we abstain and turn from them as sins, throw them back into the hell they came from. Is there anyone who does not know--or who cannot know--that what is evil comes from hell and what is good comes from heaven? Can anyone, then, fail to see that we abstain from hell and turn away from it to the extent that we abstain and turn away from evil? On this basis, can anyone fail to see that we intend and love what is good to the extent that we abstain and turn away from evil, and that in fact the Lord releases us from hell to that same extent and leads us to heaven? All rational people can see this provided they know that hell and heaven exist and know where evil and good come from. If, then, we reflect on the evils in ourselves, which is the same as self-examination, and abstain from them, then we extricate ourselves from hell, turn our backs on it, and make our way into heaven where we see the Lord face to face. We may say that we are doing this, but we are doing it in apparent autonomy, and therefore from the Lord.

When we acknowledge this truth from a good heart and a devout faith, then it is subtly present from then on in everything we seem to ourselves to be thinking and doing, the way fertility is present in a seed at every step until the formation of a new seed, or the way there is pleasure in our appetite for the food that we realize is good for us. In a word, it is like the heart and soul of everything we think and do.

[8] (e) This means that divine providence is not charging anyone with evil or crediting anyone with good. Rather, our own prudence is making each of these claims. This follows from everything that has just been said. The goal of divine providence is goodness. That is what it is aiming at in everything it does; so it does not credit anyone with goodness, because that would make our goodness self-serving; and it does not charge anyone with evil, because that would make us guilty of evil. We make both of these claims out of our own sense of independence, because this sense of ours is nothing but evil. The claim to independence of our volition is self-love, and the claim to independence of our discernment is pride in our own intelligence; and that is where our own prudence comes from.