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Verse of the day Courage

The Jordan in spring flood at first light, running brown and fast through a drowned thicket of tamarisk, with a small encampment of dark tents far back on the eastern bank.
This image was made for EmberKeeper. It is an imagined scene, not a photograph of a biblical place, person or event.

Have I not commanded you to be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.

Joshua 1:9 Berean Standard Bible

It was said to a man stepping into a dead leader's place, and the courage it asks for is tied to keeping the law.

This verse ends up on a lot of things. Locker rooms, graduation cards, team shirts. Be strong and courageous. On its own it could belong to anybody.

In Joshua it belongs to one man, and the chapter opens with what has just happened to him. Moses My servant is dead. Joshua had been Moses’ assistant since he was young. Now he is told to get up and take the people across the Jordan, in front of everyone who had followed Moses through the wilderness for forty years.

God says be strong and courageous three times in nine verses. The middle time is the one that rarely makes it onto a shirt. Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to observe all the law that My servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left. This Book of the Law must not depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night.

The first courage asked of Joshua, then, is to keep doing what he has been told, day after day, in a place too big for him.

Verse 9 opens with a question: Have I not commanded you? Courage arrives as an order, and there is mercy in that. Joshua is not asked to feel brave before he starts. He is asked to obey, and he is given the reason: the LORD your God is with you wherever you go. It is the promise made to him four verses earlier. As I was with Moses, so will I be with you.

At the end of the chapter the eastern tribes pledge to follow him and close with the same words back to him. Above all, be strong and courageous. Perhaps they could see he needed to hear it.

If you are picking up what someone else carried until they died, this verse was written closer to you than to the locker room.

Why this passage

Context checked: the book opens after Moses' death (1:1-2), with Israel east of the Jordan in the plains of Moab, where the people had mourned Moses thirty days (Deuteronomy 34:8). Joshua is called Moses' assistant (1:1; compare Exodus 33:11), and Moses had already charged him with the same words, "be strong and courageous," in Deuteronomy 31:7. In Joshua 1 God says it three times (1:6, 7, 9), and the middle charge is joined to observing all the law of Moses and keeping the Book of the Law on his lips day and night (1:7-8). The eastern tribes end their pledge to Joshua with the same words (1:18). The verse is spoken to Joshua in his office; its promise of God's presence echoes 1:5.

Scripture in English is from the Berean Standard Bible, which its publisher placed in the public domain on 30 April 2023.