The chapter — King James Version
Joshua gathers all Israel to Shechem, rehearses the LORD's works, and calls the people to choose.
1. And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God.
2. And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods.
3. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac.
4-13. [The LORD rehearses his works: Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Egypt and the Exodus, the wilderness, the crossing of Jordan, the conquest of Jericho and the Amorite kings, the gift of a land in which the household did not labour, cities they did not build, vineyards they did not plant.]
14. Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.
15. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
16-18. [The people answer: God forbid that we should forsake the LORD, to serve other gods; for the LORD our God, he it is that brought us up out of the land of Egypt. We will also serve the LORD; for he is our God.]
19-24. [Joshua tests them: "Ye cannot serve the LORD." They insist. He warns them of the seriousness of the covenant. They confirm.]
25-27. [Joshua makes a covenant, writes it in the book of the law of God, and takes a great stone as witness beneath an oak at the sanctuary of the LORD.]
29-33. [Joshua dies at 110 years old, buried at Timnath-serah in Mount Ephraim. The bones of Joseph, carried from Egypt, are buried at Shechem. Eleazar the priest is buried at Gibeah of Phinehas.]
The full KJV text of Joshua 24 runs to 33 verses. The passages above are quoted verbatim; the intervening summaries are the household's own indication of narrative flow, not a paraphrase of Scripture.
Who wrote it
Traditional Jewish and Christian teaching attributes the book of Joshua to Joshua the son of Nun, with the concluding notes about his death and burial added by a later hand (probably Eleazar the priest or Phinehas his son, as some rabbinic sources hold). Modern historical-critical scholarship dates the book's final composition later — from the 7th century BC (a Deuteronomistic editorial layer) to the 6th century BC (post-exilic redaction). The events narrated are set at the end of the conquest of Canaan, traditionally dated to the 13th century BC. The household reads Joshua as scripture given under divine inspiration through whatever chain of hands the text passed.
Historical and geographical context
Joshua's covenant assembly takes place at Shechem, in the hill country between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. Shechem was already an ancient sacred site — Abraham had built an altar there when he first entered the land (Genesis 12:6-7); Jacob had buried the foreign gods of his household under the oak of Shechem (Genesis 35:4); Joseph's bones were carried out of Egypt to be buried there (Exodus 13:19, Joshua 24:32). By gathering Israel at Shechem, Joshua chose the very ground where the household had first pledged itself to the LORD. The city sat in a natural amphitheatre between the two mountains — the same landscape where Moses had commanded that the blessings and curses of the covenant be pronounced (Deuteronomy 27-28, Joshua 8:30-35). The covenant was made in the acoustic memory of the land itself.
The chapter's structure
Joshua 24 unfolds as a covenant renewal ceremony in five movements. First (verses 1-13), the LORD rehearses his works — from Terah, the idolater across the river, all the way to the vineyards Israel now enjoys but did not plant. Second (verses 14-15), Joshua issues the challenge: choose. Third (verses 16-24), the people respond, three times, each time more solemnly. Fourth (verses 25-28), the covenant is sealed with the great stone as witness. Fifth (verses 29-33), the chapter and the book close with three burials — Joshua, Joseph, Eleazar — each anchoring the household to the promised land through the bones of those who trusted the promise.
Christ-centred reading
The name "Joshua" in Hebrew is Yehoshua — the same name rendered in Greek as Iesous, "Jesus." The Church has read Joshua from its earliest centuries as a type of Christ: the true Yeshua leads his household into the true rest (Hebrews 4:8-10), the true land, the true inheritance. The covenant made at Shechem — "choose you this day whom ye will serve" — is answered fully in the New Covenant sealed in Christ's blood (Luke 22:20, 1 Corinthians 11:25). Joshua's charge that Israel put away the foreign gods echoes forward to every Christian baptism: "Do you renounce the devil and all his works?" — the household's answer at the font.
Verse 15's household declaration — "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" — is one of the most-embroidered, most-carved, most-painted verses in Christian home tradition. It is the covenant of a household spoken by its head on behalf of everyone under his roof, and it points forward to the household covenant Christ himself makes with those who receive him (John 1:12).
In Christian tradition
Joshua 24:15 is the load-bearing verse of Christian household piety in the Protestant tradition especially. Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1706-1710) treats verse 15 as the pattern for every Christian family head; Charles Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle sermons return to the verse repeatedly as the touchstone for household evangelism. In American Protestantism from the eighteenth century onward, the verse has been embroidered on samplers, painted on kitchen walls, and inscribed above front doors. Countless children in Christian households have first learned to read by tracing the letters of "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."
Among the Fathers, Origen's homilies on Joshua (translated by Rufinus) read the whole book as an allegory of the Christian life — the crossing of Jordan as baptism, the conquest of the land as the progress of sanctification, the covenant at Shechem as the perseverance of the saints. Augustine treats Joshua's typology of Christ throughout Contra Faustum. In the Eastern liturgical tradition, Joshua 24 is read at vespers in the week leading up to the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross, connecting Joshua's covenant to the Cross that fulfils it.
The chapter's final image — three burials on the land Israel had received — has been read by every generation of the Church as a picture of the communion of saints: the household of faith planted permanently in the ground of God's promise, waiting for the resurrection.
Iconography and setting
The nineteenth-century Christian household embroidered sampler bearing "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" is one of the most distinctive artefacts of Protestant home life. Museums from the American Northeast to the English Midlands preserve hundreds of examples — cross-stitched on linen by household daughters aged eight to twelve as part of their household formation. In an older tradition, medieval Christian book illuminations depict Joshua at Shechem beneath the oak, with the great stone rising behind him as witness. The Hexateuch illuminations of the tenth-century Aelfric manuscripts show the scene in a Northumbrian pastoral setting. In modern Christian illustration, the moment of the household covenant is often depicted in nineteenth-century "Family Bible" prints — Joshua raising his hand, the elders bowing, the great stone in the middle distance.
Household application
Write out verse 15 in the household's own hand — "As for [your family name] and their house, we will serve the LORD" — and place it visible in a common room. Not as a decoration, as a covenant.
Once a year, on a chosen day (New Year's Eve or the household's own anniversary), read Joshua 24:14-24 aloud around the table and let the head of the household speak the covenant slowly, on behalf of everyone under the roof.
Teach the children of the household to memorise verse 15 as their first covenant memory verse. Not as trivia. As inheritance.
Related Scripture
- Genesis 12:6-7 (KJV) Abraham's altar at Shechem — the ground of the household's first covenant.
- Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (KJV) The Shema — the covenant taught to children in the household.
- Matthew 6:24 (KJV) "No man can serve two masters." Christ's echo of Joshua's choice.
- Hebrews 4:8-10 (KJV) Joshua as type of Christ; the true rest.
- Hebrews 11:31 (KJV) Rahab's household — a Canaanite household grafted into Israel's covenant.
Related rooms
- FAMILY · The Kitchen — the household's heart, where Joshua 24:15 is the door verse.
- The Family Register — the household's genealogy of covenant.
- The Family Altar Kit — a printable kit for household covenant practice.
- The Children's Prayer Book — for teaching the covenant to the youngest.
Elsewhere in the Atlas
- Bethlehem — the town of David, whose household bore Christ.
- Jerusalem — the city where the household covenant reaches its centre.
- Return to the atrium.