Joshua: Son and sacrifice

Joshua is an enigmatic figure. He is present in a number of stories in the Torah and yet slips under the radar, such that people are not able to, off the cuff, recall much about him except for his being one of the “good spies” and eventually taking over from Moses.

We know nothing about his childhood or background apart from the fact that he is the son of a man named Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim. But there is a fascinating midrash from Yalkut Shimon that suggests a very formative incident:

Rabbi  Eliezer said: For all those years in which Israel sat in Egypt, the Ephraimites sat securely, tranquilly and serenely, until Nun, a descendant of Ephraim, came and declared, “The L-rd has appeared to me and commanded me to take you out.” [He felt/He did it due to the] pride in his heart that they were of royal descent and great warriors; and they got up, took their sons and daughters and exited Egypt. Then the Egyptians arose and killed all their warriors.

In this narrative, where Joshua as a young man experienced this tremendous failure on the part of his father, and perhaps his death, we could understand it if he began to see his teacher and mentor Moshe as a surrogate father figure. Moshe clearly trusts him, appointing him to be the military leader in the battle against Amalek. But we have stronger indications of a bond that is more akin to father and son.

When Moses climbs Mount Sinai, he takes only Joshua with him (although Joshua seems to vanish immediately, with Moses ascending alone – Ex. 24:13,15). Moses tells the elders “Wait here until we will return” (Ex. 24:14) in language very reminiscent of the Akeda story in which Abraham says to his servants, (Gen. 22:5) “Stay here with the donkey… and we will return to you.” Yet Abraham is misleading them. He cannot be sure that “they” will return; according to God’s command, only he will come back.  

In suggesting “And we will return”, Moses is referencing that foundational Jewish story. This does two things: (a) He is placing himself and Joshua in a father-son type relationship (b) He is placing Yehoshua into some kind of sacrificial role. But what that is unclear.

The sacrifice theme continues much later when Joshua is finally officially appointed as Moses’s successor. Moses lays his hands upon him, an action associated with sacrifices.[1] However, Joshua is not to be “sacrificed” in the sense of being put to death. How is he a sacrifice then? The answer I can think of would be that He is a sacrifice in the sense of something pure and worthy, being offered up to God’s service. The intertextuality here hints to us that he has the purity both of Isaac and of the animal at the altar.

Moses’s own children are not worthy successors; Joshua functions as his surrogate son. For Joshua, Moses replaces his failed father Nun, unlike him being someone who genuinely hears God’s voice, correctly and accurately, and leads the people into life, not death. It may even be, as is so often the case, that this early trauma propelled Joshua into his role, spurring him to take on responsibility and leadership so as to fix the crack that opened in his soul.

* * These ideas emerged during a Bibliodrama on Joshua in Efrat, August 2022, based on insights by Rabbi David Debow and others. Yael Valier was the first to suggest the connection between the language of the Akeda and that of the scene at Mt Sinai, but she takes it in a slightly different direction. Her own interpretation of the connection of Sinai with Akeda is that it is intended to indicate the selection of Joshua at this moment for something "big", just as Isaac was being selected for something important – with the others (Ishmael, Eliezer) being told to “remain behind”. 

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[1] God says “lay your hand” and yet Moses lays both hands. It seems as if Moses deviates from the details of the divine command. The Talmud (Menachot 93b) discusses the discrepancy between one hand and both hands, and there Resh Lakish concludes that in the context of animal sacrifice, it is the same thing and the language is interchangeable. He explicitly excludes this case, when the hands are laid upon Joshua; but the idea suggested in this blog would allow him to include this case too in the same category, of "animal sacrifice" so to speak, in a metaphorical sense. Which saves Moses from the charge of not properly fulfilling the divine command.