TEXT [Commentary]

2.   First Passover in the land (5:10-12)

10 While the Israelites were camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month.[*] 11 The very next day they began to eat unleavened bread and roasted grain harvested from the land. 12 No manna appeared on the day they first ate from the crops of the land, and it was never seen again. So from that time on the Israelites ate from the crops of Canaan.

NOTES

5:10 on the plains of Jericho. See note on 4:13.

celebrated Passover. See Exod 12–13 and commentary below.

5:11 unleavened bread. Passover inaugurates the Festival of Unleavened Bread, observed for the next seven days (Lev 23:6). Thus, the notice about eating “unleavened bread and roasted grain” confirms that Israel observed the Festival of Unleavened Bread that year.

roasted grain. This was a favorite food of the harvest season, because it is quick, easily made, and tasty (cf. Ruth 2:14). As the name indicates, heads of ripe barley or wheat are placed in the fire until the kernels are roasted.

5:12 manna. These were the small, sweet, round grains or flakes with which God fed Israel during the wilderness sojourn. Manna appeared every morning with the dew (except on Sabbath days), until this day (cf. Exod 16:13-36).

from that time on. Lit., “in that [very] year.” In the Hebrew text the word is “year” rather than “day” or “time” because crops grow year to year, rather than day to day. This phrase is a small indication of the editorial process by which the text reached its present form. (Neither a text frozen early, nor wholesale late invention, accounts for the evidence of the biblical text as it stands.)

COMMENTARY [Text]

Joshua and Israel’s second significant action, before turning their attention to Jericho, was the celebration of the first Passover in the land. As the inaugural Passover in Egypt had marked the exodus from slavery, so this first Passover in Canaan marked attainment of the goal toward which God had been leading them ever since. The Passover has always commemorated God’s ancient act of deliverance from Egypt. This one also anticipated God’s new act of giving his people the promised rest in the new land.

Apparently, this was the first Passover Israel had celebrated since the encampment at Sinai (Num 9:1-5). For the younger ones, then, this was their first Passover; for the older, their first since childhood (or early adulthood). For all, celebrating the Passover after such a long lapse, and celebrating it on the eve of the campaign to take the Promised Land, heightened both the joy and the solemnity of the occasion.

This Passover was connected also with cessation of the daily provision of manna (5:12). Miraculous provision, by definition, is not the norm. Now that the produce of the land was available, the manna no longer was needed. Even in this detail, the completeness and graciousness of God’s provision is evident. The people of Jericho had not had time to harvest all their grain before Israel crossed the Jordan, forcing Jericho’s citizens to seek the protection of the city walls. Israel was thus able to harvest the grain planted by the people of Jericho. Living off the land was standard practice for invading forces until quite recently; we ought not pass moral judgment on Israel for doing so at Jericho. The Joshua narrative and the archaeological data from Jericho agree that Israel took the city during the harvest season, after some of the early harvest, at least, had been completed (Wood 1990a:51, 56-57). As Jericho is in the Jordan Valley, below sea level, its harvest is earlier than that of the hill country.

God had brought Israel across the uncrossable Jordan. The generation born in the wilderness had been circumcised. Israel had observed its first Passover in the land. The provision of manna had ceased. The sense of turning a corner, of opening a new chapter, is climaxed by the matter-of-fact, understated tone of 5:12 (lit.), “Now the manna ceased on the morrow, after they had eaten of the produce of the land, and manna did not come again to the people of Israel.” The wilderness experience was behind them; the Land of Promise lay ahead. It was time to move.