OVERVIEW: None of the verses in either Joshua or Judges are highly rated (i.e., that have a rating of 4 or 5). Joshua has seven passages that are all rated 3, and Judges has one verse, rated 3. Six of the seven verses in Joshua are on the same topic: basic descriptions of a divinely-condemned person’s death (e.g., they were destroyed). Interestingly, the verse in Judges relates to the dead in a quite different way: being “gathered to their ancestors.”
What happens to evil people after they die, according to ancient Israelites? How did the generation born outside both Egypt and Canaan understand the nature of death? In what way did the first generation of the sons of Israel/Jacob that lived under both Moses and Joshua see death for those who turn away from YHWH God?
The Joshua verses use terms such as annihilate, consume, destroy, and utterly destroy while the Judges verse instead describes death (for the sons of Israel and Joshua) as being gathered to their ancestors or fathers. Consider the following seven passages in the book of Joshua (with their uniformly negative portrayals – except for the one quoting Joshua’s description of his own death) compared to the verse in Judges about the death of Joshua (with its expected positive portrayal of the nature of death). First, the pleasant description of human death in Judges:
1/1: “When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.” (Jdg 2:10, NKJV).
The primary precedent in this OT study for “gathered to their ancestors” is Genesis – Section B in which this and similar phrases appear seven times in Genesis (chapters 15, 25, 35, 47, and 49). The first mention of the idea, at Gen 15:13,15, begins by saying that “God said to Abram.” Additionally, the book of Numbers uses the “gathered to your people” description of the nature of death four times (in chapters 20, 27, and 31). Deuteronomy also uses this same phrase, “gathered to your fathers (or his fathers)” twice in chapter 32. Other descriptions of death say “lie down with your ancestors” and “sleep with your ancestors.”
The verse quoting Joshua, seen next, is interesting for a couple reason. First, he uses a plural form of the phrase, “you know in your heart and soul,” which indicates the similarity between Joshua’s conception of a person’s mind (through the common use of “heart” – i.e., “leb” or “lebab” in Hebrew — and his Hebrew word for “soul,” which here is “nephesh.” Although “lebab” (H3824) is usually translated as “heart,” there are four instances in the KJV where this specific term has been translated as “mind.”
Second, this verse shows that Joshua probably understood the nature of human death as being similar to the death of animals when he said shortly before his own death that he was “going the way of all the earth.” The Modern Literal Version is used in the next verse because it is one of the eight translations to be used in 80% of all passages in this OT study (with all eight employed in this Joshua/Judges study). The goal is to use this MLV translation for 6% of all Bible verses quoted in this OT study. See the beginning of the Genesis study for elaboration on the biblical versions utilized.
1/7: “Joshua … said to them, I am old and well stricken in years. . . . This day I am going the way of all the earth. And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing has failed of all the good things which Jehovah your God spoke concerning you” (Josh 23:2,14, MLV).
To support the claim that Joshua saw human death as being similar to the type of death seen throughout the animal kingdom, consider how the following biblical expert has described the descriptions of death in the Bible. “We must, therefore, keep in mind that, in the NT, when the ‘I’ dies, then all of me dies: my body, my soul, and my spirit. In death none of me and nothing of me survives. … This is why, at the very start of any such discussion of immortality or resurrection, an understanding of the absolute nature and totality of death is indispensable. I can do no better than recall some scriptural verses which underlie this insufficiently noted fact. That death is the common fate of all mortals is a tautology underlying all OT thought” (Stanley B. Marrow, “AθANAΣIA/ANAΣTAΣIΣ: The Road Not Taken,” New Testament Studies 45 (1999), 573-574).
Joel B. Green summarized this aspect of this journal article above as such: “As Stanley B. Marrow has recently emphasized, in the Old Testament death is the common destiny of all living creatures; it allows no survivors – neither any persons nor any parts of persons” (Joel B. Green, “Eschatology and the Nature of Humans: A Reconsideration of Pertinent Biblical Evidence,” Science and Christian Belief 14 (2002), 36).
For the next six verses seen below, in Joshua, there are utterly destroyed and totally destroyed passages, and there’s also a consume you verse and an annihilate you verse, which are associated with the warrior who replaced Moses as leader and drove out and killed most of the Canaanites when Israel conquered the divinely promised land. These examples of deadly action of war, although a divine war commanded by God, may or may not be relevant to answering the main overall question about death in this OT study. A rating of 4 or 5 would have been assigned to them if their importance and relevancy were higher due to the contents of the texts.
This means that a claim in Joshua that “a person is utterly and totally destroyed and consumed by divine action” can be possibly interpreted as meaning “a very serious action of God directed squarely at the person” as opposed to it being directed at something else such as the “honor” or “self-importance” one may have, or wish to have. How should the following six verses on death be taken? Do they refer to only this world or to the next world, too?
The importance to God of the command “to utterly destroy every person” in some Canaanite city, including the king, because they were defiled (in God’s eyes) can be seen in 1 Sam 15:9-11 in which God regretted making Saul the king due to a violation of this command which ended up in costing him his throne. Also, Achan lost his life due to his violation of God’s similar command covering war conduct (in Joshua 7).
Therefore, literal death as punishment for disobedience against YHWH God has clear evidence. Given that resurrection of God’s people after death was always in the plan, a “second death” (from the NT) of an unforgiven person would be another example of being utterly destroyed as a person (from the viewpoint of conditional immortality). The action that occurs may be something that refers to both the obvious (literal death in this world) and the hidden (or yet to be revealed).
But what precisely is completely obliterated about a person at death? The best answer depends on how the rest of Scripture is interpreted on the nature of death (regarding how the following may be interpreted) due to the 3 rating for each of these verses. However, later prophets would try to fill in the blanks (and so there are many more biblical passages that may help with interpreting each layer of meaning contained within the following verses).
2/7: “Now Joshua captured Makkedah on that day, and struck it and its king with the edge of the sword; he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it. He left no survivor” (Josh 10:28, NASB).
3/7: “And every person in it he utterly destroyed that day” (Josh 10:35, NRSV).
4/7: “They took the city and put it to the sword, together with its king, its villages and everyone in it. They left no survivors. Just as at Eglon, they totally destroyed it and everyone in it” (Josh 10:37, NIV).
5/7: “They smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein” (Josh 10:39, KJV).
6/7: “Since every good thing the Lord your God promised you has come about, so he will bring on you every bad thing until he has annihilated you” (Josh 23:15, CSB).
7/7: “If you leave him to serve foreign gods, he will turn against you and punish you. He will destroy you, even though he was good to you before” (Josh 24:20, GNT).
Ω Ω Ω
This concludes my study on Joshua and on Judges. The following eight Bible versions are used here once: NIV, NRSV, NASB, NKJV, KJV, GNT, CSB, and MLV.
Quoted Passages in Joshua and in Judges (8 total / no highly rated verses):
Rating of 5:
None
Rating of 4:
None
Rating of 3:
Jdg 2:10
Josh 10:28
Josh 10:35
Josh 10:37
Josh 10:39
Josh 23:2,14
Josh 23:15
Josh 24:20
Rating of 2:
None