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Daily Broadside | A Brief Reflection on the Amazing Name of Joshua

Daily Verse | Joshua 2:9
“I know that the Lord has given this land to you and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you.”

Friday’s Reading: Joshua 6-8
Saturday’s Reading: Joshua 9-12

Happy Friday and welcome to the weekend. If you’re following the Bible reading plan, we’re now in the book of Joshua—which is an amazing name.

Why? Glad you asked.

Joshua was the successor of Moses, the man brought up in Pharaoh’s household and the leader who brought the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Joshua is described as Moses’ “young aide” (Exodus 33:11) and one “who had been Moses’ aide since youth” (Numbers 11:28).

Joshua was commissioned by God Himself to lead the Israelites just before the LORD took them into the land of Canaan (Deut. 31:23):

The Lord gave this command to Joshua son of Nun: “Be strong and courageous, for you will bring the Israelites into the land I promised them on oath, and I myself will be with you.”

Here are some facts about the name “Joshua” that give us a more robust (and inspiring!) understanding of how the Old Testament (the Jewish Tanakh) points to Jesus.

In Hebrew, Joshua is spelled יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (Yehoshu’a) (and always reading right to left in Hebrew). It means, “Yahweh is salvation,” from the roots יְהוֹ (yeho) referring to the Hebrew God and יָשַׁע (yasha’) meaning “to save.”

Included in the name Joshua is a shortened form of the Tetragrammaton, i.e. the name of the Lord: YHWH (יהו). YHWH is unpronounceable,

“… and wherever the text called for YHWH, a reader would pronounce the Hebrew word for lord, namely Adonai. In the Middle Ages, the Masoretes began to fear that the traditional pronunciation of the written text might become lost and inserted symbols to help preserve it. That caused the pronunciation of the word Adonai to be linked to the spelling of YHWH, which in turn resulted in the impossible hybrid “name” Jehovah.

Other Jewish traditions handled the vocalization of YHWH by inserting the word Hashem, which is the word for “name” … plus the definite article: The Name.

The name Joshua, then, is associated with God and with salvation.

Second, Joshua is the original Hebrew form of the Greek name Jesus, which comes from a Greek translation of the Aramaic short form יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshu’a). As The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (ed. Colin Brown) puts it,

Iēsous is the Gk. form of the OT Jewish name Yēšua‘, arrived at by transcribing the Heb. and adding an -s to the nom. to facilitate declension. Yēšua‘ (Joshua) seems to have come into general use about the time of the Babylonian exile in place of the older Yᵉhôšûa‘. The LXX rendered both the ancient and more recent forms of the name uniformly as Iēsous … It is the oldest name containing the divine name Yahweh, and means “Yahweh is help” or “Yahweh is salvation” (cf. the vb. yiisa’, help, save).

The name Joshua, then, is also associated with Jesus.

Finally, the name Joshua is the exact reverse of the name Isaiah (ישעיה).

The name Isaiah(u) consists of two parts: The final part is יה or יהו, both abbreviated forms of יהוה; YHWH or Yahweh. The first part of the name Isaiah comes from the verb ישע (yasha’), meaning to be saved or delivered … The verb ישע (yasha’) means to be unrestricted and thus to be free and thus to be saved (from restriction, from oppression and thus from ultimate demise). A doer of this verb is a savior.

Where have we heard that before?

The name Joshua, then, is also associated with Isaiah and thereby reinforced in its meaning of “Yahweh is salvation.”

One more interesting and related fact. The name Moses is the Latin version of the Greek name Μωσης (Moses), which in turn is a transliteration of the Hebrew name משה (Moshe). If you spell the name of Moses backward in Hebrew (השם), it spells the word Hashem, which is Jewish for The Name.

Remember that from above?

Mind, blown.

Let’s put it all together. Moses, whose name is associated with “The Name” leads the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage into the Promised Land with the help of his young aide, Joshua, whose name means “Yahweh is salvation” and is associated with Jesus.

What you’re reading in the account of the exodus from Egypt and the conquest of the land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8) is a type which, in scripture, is a person or thing in the Old Testament that foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament.

An Old Testament type’s details don’t all necessarily have a one-to-one correlation in the New Testament, but the broad parallels in the account of Moses, Joshua and the Israelites with Jesus Christ and his work are pretty hard to miss.

Exciting!

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | No, God Isn’t Safe, But He Is Good

Daily Verse | Exodus 40:35
Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

Wednesday’s Reading: Leviticus 1-3

The following is adapted from a Facebook post I wrote on January 29, 2017

It’s Wednesday, and if you’re reading through the Bible with me this year, we recently read Exodus 20:18-21. The Israelites are standing at the foot of Mount Sinai and are trembling with fear because of the trumpet blast, the shaking and smoking mountain, the thunder and the lightning—all manifestations of God’s presence—and they are terrified.

It reminds me of the disciples in the presence of Jesus when he calmed the storm on the lake: “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!'” (Mark 4:41). It must be overwhelming to be confronted with a manifestation of transcendent, supra-human power.

What struck me most is Moses’ response: “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

Don’t be afraid, yet fear God? What’s going on?

Believers debate what it means to fear the Lord. Some suggest that fear means reverential awe and deferential respect. Others say that doesn’t go far enough, that it literally means to be scared of God, to be frightened of Him. I think, perhaps, the truth is closer to a combination of both.

We must accept that God is the Supreme Being, the One who spoke everything into existence, the great I AM, with no beginning and no end. Nothing—neither man, beast, nor nature—can successfully oppose his authority or will. God has the power to raise up and to put down, to reward and condemn, to create and destroy.

Remember God’s challenge to Job: “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him!” (40:2). Or Isaiah 29:16, “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘You did not make me’? Can the pot say to the potter, ‘You know nothing’?”

We don’t have words to describe the perfect power, wrath and justice of God. The writer of Hebrews says, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31) and Paul said, “God cannot be mocked” (Ephesians 6:7). This is why we must have “the fear of God” in us. 

But we don’t need to be afraid. Why?

Because God is love (1 John 4:8). We don’t have the words to describe the immense love and benevolence that God has toward us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God “is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

So we find these two properties held in tension: God’s unimpeachable and invincible authority on one side and his “great love for us” (Ephesians 2:4) on the other.

That is why Moses can say to the Israelites, “Don’t be afraid.” Don’t faint under the demonstration of God’s power; he doesn’t intend to destroy you. You will not die as you fear. But it’s also why he can follow that with “the fear of God will be with you” for the express purpose of keeping the Israelites from sin.

Perhaps the best explanation of this tension is found in C.S. Lewis’s novel, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. In one scene, Susan and Lucy ask Mr. and Mrs. Beaver if Aslan is a man. Mr. Beaver tells them that, no, Aslan is not a man, but a lion, “the great Lion.” Here is the rest of the conversation:

“’Ooh!’ said Susan. ‘I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’

“’That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver, ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’

“’Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy.

“’Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver. ‘Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about being safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.’”

There it is: “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” God isn’t safe. Not by a long shot. But he’s good.

Just don’t take His goodness for granted.