Joshua is never called a king in the Bible. Yet while lacking the title, Joshua possesses the trappings of biblical kingship to a degree that it seems warranted to consider him a royal figure. There are lots of reasons for thinking this. In a 1981 Journal of Biblical Literature article, Richard Nelson helpfully summarizes eight common ones.¹ Here are some of them:

The command to Joshua to meditate on the book of the Law “day and night” comes from the law of the king in Deuteronomy 17:18-20.²

The charge to Joshua in Joshua 1:1-9 closely matches David’s charge to Solomon in 1 Kings 2:2-4.

In Joshua 8:30-35, Joshua leads a covenant renewal ceremony, which during the monarchy was a kingly function.

Joshua’s succession of Moses matches the orderly succession pattern of the monarchy, not the more haphazard and charismatic pattern in Judges.³

Nelson adds three additional arguments of his own. One, for example, is that God’s promise in Joshua 1:5 (“No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life…”) comes to Joshua in the singular, while in its original form in Deuteronomy 11:24-25 it’s in the plural. So the promise of God to his people has come to focus on one individual. This is in keeping with the royal ideology of the Psalms, which identifies the people with the king and vice versa.

The case for seeing Joshua as a royal figure is compelling. In all, Nelson provides eleven pieces of evidence, to which I’ll add a twelfth: In Numbers 27:17, Joshua is appointed as “shepherd” of the congregation of the Lord. “Shepherd” is a royal title both biblically and in the wider Ancient Near East—one carried most conspicuously by David.⁴

Nelson’s real concern in his article is actually redaction criticism. He goes on to draw parallels between Joshua and King Josiah, arguing that “the Deuteronomist” is projecting his contemporary hero (Josiah, the “ideal” king) back onto Joshua.⁵ I’ll leave that aside, and take the basic point as established that Joshua is indeed given kingly characterization.

But so what? I think there are some worthwhile connections to chase down.

Joshua and The Psalms

The Hebrew Bible comes in three main parts: The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. This is the Bible that Jesus and Paul knew (Luke 24:44; Acts 28:23). “The Prophets” begins with Joshua 1, and “The Writings” with Psalms 1-2 (a unified introduction to the Psalter).⁶ These are the two major canonical seams, and they have similar themes. Psalm 1:1-2 speaks of the blessed man who “meditates on the Torah day and night.” Joshua is commanded to do just that in Joshua 1:8. Joshua will make his way “prosperous” (tsalach) if he does this, which is true also of the blessed man in Psalm 1:3. Moving into Psalm 2, we have the opposition of the nations to the royal Son, the messianic king, and his inheritance of those nations. The concern in Joshua is likewise Israel’s inheritance and possession of the lands of the Canaanites (Joshua 1:6). As Joshua is about to enter Canaan, God says “No man shall be able to stand before you” (Joshua 1:5). Like the king in Psalm 2:9, Joshua is called to break and dash the nations to pieces.

Reading these texts together adds to Joshua’s royal cast. He can serve as a focal representative for the promises to Israel, like the king of Psalm 2. Joshua, leading the flock of Israel as a shepherd, is a blessed man who will prosper like a tree (Psalm 1:3) as he walks in faith, meditating on the Torah day and night, God destroying the wicked like chaff before him as he inherits the nations. Psalm 2:12 ends with another declaration of blessing, this time on those who “take refuge” in the royal Son. We can see an early sign of this in Rahab (Joshua 6:25), who takes refuge with Joshua and Israel—God’s son, according to Exodus 4:22.

Joshua and Jesus

The true royal Son of Psalm 2 is, of course, Jesus (Acts 4:25-28). It’s he who is the anointed of Yahweh, set upon Zion, who inherits not just the nations of the Canaanites but all the nations of the earth. Jesus likewise is the truest Blessed Man of Psalm 1, delighting in the Law of the Lord and prospering like a green tree. It’s Jesus who would “rise” (after three days! cf. Joshua 1:11) and thus bring his people over the Jordan into their inheritance (Joshua 1:2).

So in Joshua, we can easily discern King Jesus. Perhaps even more so if we remember that they share the same name. Joshua is a form of Yeshua, the Hebrew name of Jesus. In the Greek New Testament, the names are identical (Iesous/Ιησοῦς), whether referring to Jesus Christ or the Old Testament character of Joshua (Acts 7:45; Hebrews 4:8). English versions have distinguished them in translation, with “Jesus” following the Greek more closely and “Joshua” sticking closer to the Hebrew base. But the point was not lost on Greek-speaking Origen ( A.D. 184 – A.D. 253). In his “Homilies on Joshua” he highlights this identity of names, notes among other things how Joshua is first introduced as commander of the army of Israel against the Amalekites (Exodus 17:9), and says:

“To what then do all these things lead us? Obviously to this, that the book does not so much indicate to us the deeds of [Joshua] the son of Nun, as it represents for us the mysteries of Jesus my Lord. He himself is the one who assumes power after Moses [i.e. Gospel succeeding the Law]; he is the one who leads the army and fights against Amalek [i.e. the forces of darkness].”

Joshua points to the true King, but his commission to be strong and courageous (repeated multiple times) both before God’s enemies and in faithfully meditating on and keeping to the word of the Lord is a commission to all God’s people, just as all God’s people should seek to live into the blessed man of Psalm 1, and in Christ will inherit and rule the nations (Revelation 2:26-27).⁷ Joshua is a type of Christ, but also a type for us.

Joshua and the Christian

Consider Timothy. In some ways, Timothy played the Joshua to Paul’s Moses as his closest co-worker. Timothy was charged to “wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience,” and was to do this “in accord with the prophecies previously made about you” (1 Timothy 1:18-19). Not unlike Joshua: “So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him. Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation, and you shall commission him in their sight’”(Numbers 27:18-19). Like Joshua, Timothy was to be a good soldier (2 Timothy 2:2), fighting the good fight and taking hold of the promise (1 Timothy 6:12). Like Joshua who was commanded to not be afraid (Joshua 1:9), Timothy was not given a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). Timothy was charged to entrust faithful men after him to hold fast to God’s revealed word, as Joshua had done (cf. 2 Timothy 2:1-2; Joshua 23:1-6).

We can see Jesus in Joshua, and we can see faithful believers like Timothy in Joshua also. So here is an exhortation for us to model ourselves accordingly.

Be strong and courageous (Joshua 1:6-7, 9, 18)? The church has always had enemies and detractors, but they are more brazen by the day, at least in the West. If we have a spirit of fear before them, it isn’t the Spirit of Christ.

Meditate on the word of the Lord day and night (Joshua 1:8)? Yes, we should do that as well. God tells Joshua not to let it depart “from his mouth,” and actually, the Hebrew word for “meditate” implies vocalization, not just keeping it inside your own head. God’s word should still be proclaimed, sung, and counseled.

Do we not still have the promise of God’s presence (Joshua 1:5, 9)? Of course, we do. It was Jesus’ parting words to his disciples, “I am with you always; even to the end of the age.”

Has Christ not inherited the nations (Joshua 1:3), and are we not to go out “conquering” them with baptism and discipleship (Matthew 28:19-20)? Again, yes.

Origen was right, Joshua represents to us “the mysteries of Christ.” As a royal figure he points to Christ the King, but believers will reign with Christ (Revelation 22:5), and so he points also to what we are called to be and to do. The sanctification of the believer is nothing less than growing into the kingly character of Christ, and Joshua can help us see what that looks like. It was by faith that the walls of Jericho fell (Hebrews 11:30), and with the courage and strength of Joshua, and pursuing faithfulness to the word of God without swerving to the right or left, God will prosper his church and give us the nations.

Daniel Hoffman received his M.Div from Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS) in 2012. He spent five years teaching Bible and history at Cherokee Christian School in Woodstock, GA, and then moved to Gwangyang, South Korea, where he and his wife currently teach English.

1. Richard D. Nelson, “Josiah in the Book of Joshua,” JBL 100/4 (1981), 531-540. ↩︎
2. Nelson also points out that in Joshua 8:32, Joshua does in fact record a copy of the Law, and here and Deuteronomy 17:18 are the only occurrences of the expression “copy of the Law” (mishneh tora) in the Old Testament. ↩︎
3. He also points out Joshua’s parceling of the land (cf. 1 Kings 4:7-19), the people’s pledge of obedience in Joshua 1:16-18, and the sign of God’s favor (Joshua 3:7) and people’s awed response (Joshua 4:14), a pattern matched with Solomon (1 Kgs 2:12; 3:12-13, 28). There is also Joshua’s double installation to office, a doubling seen also with Saul, David, Solomon, and others. ↩︎
4. In Numbers 27:16-17, Moses has been told that he will not enter the Promised Land, and pleads with the Lord to appoint someone over the congregation so that they would “not be like sheep that have no shepherd.” By implication Moses was the “shepherd” to that point, but the focus is on Joshua, his successor, and Moses is never called “shepherd” directly (except as a literal shepherd in Midian). In the Former and Later Prophets, David the King is the most conspicuous “shepherd” under God himself. ↩︎
5. The “Deuteronomist” is the supposed final editor of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samuel, and 1-2 Kings, working around the time of Josiah’s reformation. ↩︎
6. I take the first two Psalms as intended to be taken together, as a joint-prologue to the whole Psalter. Besides several verbal connections, Psalm 2 ends the way Psalm 1 begins, with the “Blessed” man, so that it creates an inclusio framing the whole. Conspicuously, they are also the only Psalms with no title until the 33rd (the 10th Psalm has no title either, but that’s because it’s really a continuation of the titled Psalm 9; they are one Psalm in the LXX). ↩︎
7. It may be worth noting that in Joshua 1:6, when speaking of confronting the Canaanites, God tells Joshua to be “strong and courageous,” while in the next verse when speaking of being careful to obey the Law of Moses, God tells him to be strong and “very” courageous. Almost as if simple obedience to God can be a greater challenge than enemy armies. ↩︎