Covenant Renewal at Shechem
c. 1380 or c. 1195 BC, traditional dateTraditional date
Near the end of his life Joshua gathers the tribes at Shechem, recounts their history from Abraham to the conquest and calls on them to choose whom they will serve. The people pledge themselves, and he sets up a stone as witness.
When the wars were over and the land had been divided among the tribes (Joshua 11:23), Joshua, by now an old man, called Israel together twice (Joshua 23:1–2). The second assembly was at Shechem, with the elders, heads, judges and officers of all the tribes (Joshua 24:1). The place had a history. Abraham had built his first altar in Canaan there when the land was promised to him (Genesis 12:6–7), and Joshua himself had earlier read out the law to the whole people between the nearby mountains Ebal and Gerizim (Joshua 8:30–35).
Joshua spoke in the name of the Lord and went through the story from the beginning. Their ancestors “beyond the River” had served other gods. Abraham was brought to Canaan; Jacob and his children went down to Egypt; Moses and Aaron were sent, and Egypt was struck. Then came the sea, the wilderness, the victories east of the Jordan, the crossing and Jericho. They now lived in cities they had not built and ate from vineyards they had not planted (Joshua 24:2–13).
Then he put the choice. They were to put away the gods their ancestors had served and serve the Lord. If they were unwilling, they should choose that day whom they would serve; “but as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh” (Joshua 24:14–15). The people answered that they too would serve the Lord, who had brought them out of Egypt. Joshua warned them that this God was holy and jealous and would not overlook unfaithfulness. They repeated their promise, and he declared them witnesses against themselves (Joshua 24:16–24).
So Joshua “made a covenant with the people that day”, gave them statutes, wrote the words “in the book of the law of God”, and set up a large stone under the oak by the sanctuary as a witness (Joshua 24:25–27). He died at the age of 110 and was buried on his own land in the hill country of Ephraim. The bones of Joseph, brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the plot that Jacob had bought (Joshua 24:29–32).
The scene closes the story that began at Sinai: the generation that had entered the land takes on the covenant for itself. Judges opens by saying that Israel kept faith while Joshua and the elders who outlived him were alive, and that the generation after them did not (Judges 2:7–11). That is the starting point of the Age of the Judges.
How this is dated
Traditional date. From later tradition or from internal biblical chronology, with no outside anchor.
The book of Joshua does not date the assembly. It places it “after many days”, when Joshua was old (Joshua 23:1), and before his death at the age of 110 (Joshua 24:29). Caleb’s ages show that the main campaigns were over about seven years after the crossing of the Jordan (Joshua 14:7–10) (Deuteronomy 2:14). The Bible does not say how long Joshua lived after that. Josephus, writing in the first century AD, well over a thousand years later, says that he led Israel for twenty-five years after the death of Moses (Josephus, Antiquities 5.117). The year shown here follows that figure, which is Josephus’s own and not evidence from the time.
It is counted from the Exodus from Egypt and shares its uncertainty: about 1380 BC if the exodus is put at about 1446 BC from (1 Kings 6:1) (Bryant G. Wood, “The Rise and Fall of the 13th-Century Exodus-Conquest Theory”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48, 2005), or about 1195 BC if it is put about 1260 BC under Ramesses II (Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 2003). No Egyptian record of the exodus is known, no source from the time outside the Bible mentions Joshua, and many scholars doubt that an exodus on the scale the Bible describes took place; the note on the Exodus from Egypt sets out the question. The timeline places the event at the earlier date and shows both.
Primary sources
In context
Grows out of
- c. 1406 or c. 1220 BC, traditional date
- c. 1446 or c. 1260 BC, traditional date
Leads to
- c. 1375 or c. 1200 – c. 1050 BC, traditional date