Moses's assistant since the wilderness years, one of only two of the original twelve spies who urged the people to go in to Canaan. Commissioned by God at the book's opening with the repeated charge — be strong and courageous — and by the people with an oath of loyalty. Leads the crossing of the Jordan, the siege of Jericho, the campaign against Ai, the southern and northern coalitions, and finally the apportionment of the land. He gathers the tribes at Shechem at the end and issues the covenant challenge. Dies at one hundred and ten and is buried at Timnath-serah. The book's final note about him: Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord had done.
Joshua — who's who
The leaders, the survivors, and the figures the book will not let you forget.
Joshua has a relatively small named cast for a book of its length. The action is concentrated on Joshua, the leaders of the tribes, a handful of central figures in the conquest narrative, and two figures from Jericho — Rahab and the Gibeonites — whose presence complicates the herem rhetoric. The cast page follows them through the chapters they appear in.
The leaders
The high priest who serves alongside Joshua throughout the book. Carries the breastplate with the urim and thummim used for divination. Stands with Joshua at the apportionment of the land in chapters 13–21, which is done by lot before the Lord at Shiloh. He is the priestly counterpart to Joshua's military and civil leadership — the pairing of general and high priest is the book's working model of how the new community is governed. Dies in the closing chapter and is buried in the hill country of Ephraim on his son Phinehas's land.
The central figures
A woman of Jericho who hides the two Israelite spies under stalks of flax on her roof, misdirects the king's messengers, and extracts a sworn promise of safety for her family before letting the spies down through her window on a rope. She ties a scarlet cord in the window as the agreed signal, and when Jericho falls, only her household survives the herem. She settles in Israel and becomes part of the people. Matthew's genealogy of Jesus includes her as an ancestor of David. Hebrews 11 names her among the heroes of faith alongside Abraham and Moses. She is the most morally complicated and the most quietly elevated figure in the book.
Of the tribe of Judah, the other of the original twelve spies who came back from Canaan urging the people to go in. Forty-five years later, in chapter 14, he comes to Joshua at Gilgal and claims the hill country of Hebron that Moses had promised him — I am still as strong this day as I was then. Joshua blesses him and gives him Hebron. He drives out the three sons of Anak who had lived there. His daughter Achsah marries his nephew Othniel after Othniel takes Kiriath-sepher. Caleb at eighty-five is the embodiment of the promise long deferred and still kept — and of the kind of faithfulness the book is asking of the whole people.
Of the tribe of Judah, the man whose hidden plunder from Jericho brings disaster on the army at Ai and through whom the book stages its terrible insistence on collective integrity. He saw a beautiful Babylonian mantle, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold weighing fifty shekels — and coveted and took them, burying them under his tent. After the rout at Ai, the lot falls on him by tribe, clan, household, and individual. He confesses. The plunder is dug up. He and his sons and daughters and animals are stoned and burned in the Valley of Achor. His name becomes proverbial in later Hebrew literature; Hosea, centuries later, will speak of the valley of Achor as a door of hope, redirecting the dark name into a vision of restoration.
The inhabitants of a small confederation of cities in central Canaan — Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, Kiriath-jearim — who hear what has happened at Jericho and Ai and decide their best chance is a deception. They dress in worn-out clothes, load their donkeys with mouldy bread and patched wineskins, and come to Joshua at Gilgal claiming to be ambassadors from a far country wanting a treaty. Joshua and the elders, the text notes pointedly, did not ask the counsel of the Lord. They make a covenant with them. Three days later they discover the deception. By then the oath sworn in the name of the Lord cannot be undone. The Gibeonites become hewers of wood and drawers of water for the assembly — and their attack by the southern coalition triggers the long day at Aijalon. They reappear in 2 Samuel with a grievance against Saul that David has to settle.