Did Joshua give Israel rest in the land?
Joshua as an anticipation, Part III | The final entry in my Joshua series
The story of Abraham and his seed is concerned with God's forming a new firstborn son of God. Having called him out of Egypt, and formed him in the wilderness, what remains is for God to bring him into a new garden, and so bring his son into his own divine rest.
The ministry of Moses had been largely concerned with preparing Israel the son to enter into God's rest: the defining sign of the Mosaic covenant was the Sabbath, which pointed to Israel's rest from its labours (most pointedly, its toil in Egypt) and its entry into the land of promise.
Of course, Moses himself does not enter the land with Israel, so the fulfilment of this promise of rest seems to fall to Joshua to provide. On the face of it, Joshua does appear to be the instrument for God's bringing his people to the long-awaited rest in the promised land:
Joshua said, "Recall the word that Moses servant of the Lord charged you, saying, 'The LORD your God is about to grant you rest and will give you this land…'" [Joshua 1:13, Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible]
Why then does the writer to the Hebrews teach us that Joshua did not give Israel rest in the land?
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on [in Psalm 95]. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. [Hebrews 4:8-10, ESV]
No king in Israel
One loose thread of Joshua’s leadership is the fact that he has nobody designated to succeed him. Though Joshua prefigures the kings of Israel in some ways, he was not granted a dynasty by which his sons would succeed him upon a throne.
Without a king, Israel had nobody to sponsor the transformation of the tabernacle into the grander, more glorious and permanent temple. Israel is left under the lacklustre leadership of the Levites, and the ad hoc leadership of the judges from time to time as the need arises.
Thus, the book of Judges has two corresponding bookends: it begins with the death of Joshua (Judges 1:1), and it ends with the absence of a king in Israel, which has the consequence that everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). These two bookends of Judges are mutually informing. (The phrase "everyone did what was right in his own eyes", as I have discussed elsewhere, refers to the use of various places of worship amongst the people, in the absence of a central place of worship.)
The fact that Joshua has no dynasty means that nobody is in a position to resolve the problem of high places throughout the land. The use of high places is not idolatry per se; it was possible to worship the true God by use of the high places in the absence of the tabernacle or temple, as Samuel and Solomon did. However, it is a situation that tends towards liturgical and social chaos, and needs to be resolved by the establishing of a central place of worship. Only a king can do that.
Worship as rest
In so far as Joshua does not bring Israel into the new era of Israel's worship, he does not fully bring them into the rest that was promised to them. In this sense, Joshua does not bring the firstborn son of God into the garden.
Under Joshua, the tabernacle which had been established at Sinai is brought into the land and set up at Shiloh. The tabernacle is, as Jacob Milgrom has argued "a portable Mt. Sinai". Though as we later see in Samuel, the Sinaitic tent became obsolete and grew old, and was ready to vanish away, which it did at the hand of the Philistines. Joshua brings Israel part of the way from Mount Sinai, but he did not bring them all the way to Mount Zion.
Israel comes to Zion by the hands of David and Solomon. Through King David, musical sacrifice is introduced to the worship of Israel. He establishes a new tabernacle for the ark on Mount Zion, where the Lord is worshipped without blood and without animal offerings, but with singing voices and musical instruments (see Peter Leithart's excellent From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution for a detailed discussion of this moment in Israel's history).
Through Solomon, however, that a more substantive rest comes to Israel. Solomon (whose name comes from shalom) establishes the temple 500 years after the exodus (that is, a tenfold Jubilee) God at last brings Israel to rest in the land.
Solomon himself resembles Joshua in a few ways. He is a successor to David, just as Joshua was a successor to Moses, and completes an unfinished work that his predecessor was prevented from achieving in his own lifetime. Appropriately, David charges Solomon to "be strong and courageous" (1 Chron. 28:20). The work of building a central place of true worship in the land perfects Joshua's corresponding work of driving out the idol worshippers during the conquest. Joshua is to Solomon as forming is to filling.
Solomon presents the building of a temple as a fuller completion of the work of Joshua, very clearly evoking the rhetoric that Joshua had used in his covenant renewal service:
And, look, I am about to go today on the way of all the earth, and you know with all your heart and with all your being that not a single thing has failed of all the good things that the LORD your God has spoken about you. Everything has befallen you, not a single thing of it has failed. [Josh. 23:14, Alter]
"Blessed is the LORD Who has granted to his people Israel as all that He spoke. Not a single thing has failed of all His good word that He spoke through Moses His servant." [1 Kings 8:56, Alter]
The rest that Joshua partially delivers is not fulfilled until Israel can enjoy worship in the presence of God in the sanctuary his hands have established. And yet, they are warned that if they do not hear his voice and harden their hearts, they will not enter into that rest.
Do not harden your hearts
Long before Nebuchadnezzar destroys the temple at the end of Kings, the people of Israel and Judah had heard the voice of the Lord in the words of the prophets at many times, and yet they hardened their hearts and refused to enter into his rest. Thus, the great symbol of rest that Solomon had established is destroyed before their very eyes.
Israel and Judah are expelled from their garden, and returned not even back to Egypt, but all the way back to Ur of the Chaldees, where their father Terah worshipped idols across the Euphrates. Through their persistent idolatry, they return to slavery in their father's house, which Joshua had implored them not to do.
The promise of entering his rest still stands
At the point of the exile, the great rest that God holds out for Israel will be even grander than the one that God offered in the exodus, justifying them even from those things that they could not be justified by the law of Moses. After seventy weeks of years, God will give them a new Joshua and a new son of David, who will at last bring them to rest in the land at Mount Zion, where they can never be exiled again.
But that's a story for another day.