Joshua: Unfinished

Transitions from a founder to their successor are notoriously difficult, often fraught with challenges for everyone involved. Founders are frequently reluctant to leave, as their identity is deeply intertwined with the organization they created. Successors may struggle with self-doubt, and the people within the organization often feel torn between loyalty to the founder and adapting to the new leader. Sometimes they adjust, but other times they do not, resulting in simmering rejection. All of these factors can work against the success of the transition.

However, some transitions work better than expected. For example, the transition from Moses to Joshua in the Bible was remarkable. While Joshua had doubts about himself, Moses doubted the people’s ability to follow him. In his last words to Joshua and the Israelites, Moses expressed his concerns, saying, “For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die? For I know that after my death, you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you.” Following Moses may have seemed like a fool’s errand.

For Moses, this statement reflected the complicated relationship he had with the Israelites throughout his life. From the beginning, there was conflict and misunderstanding. The people accused him of wanting to lord over them, while he viewed them as rebellious and unfaithful. Left to their own devices, they struggled to manage his absence. At times, Moses despaired of them, while at others, he pleaded with the Lord to save them. Without him, why would they be any different under Joshua?

Yet, they were. Joshua was not a carbon copy of Moses. His leadership style was entirely different. Moses led the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness, but he could not have accomplished what Joshua did. Under Joshua, there was no recorded conflict with the people, no anger, no complaints to God about the burden of leadership. Instead, with only one exception, his leadership was marked by success. He conquered entrenched and powerful enemies and divided the land among the competitive tribes.

Still, if we read to the end of the story, we see something unfinished. While Joshua accomplished what Moses could not, something critical was left undone. The people remained incapable of governing themselves. For reasons we can only speculate about, neither Moses nor Joshua left behind a system for self-governance. As long as Joshua and his generation lived, the people served the Lord. But when they died, the people “forsook the Lord God of their fathers and followed other gods.” In time, they forgot.

Why didn’t Joshua appoint a successor or establish a system of governance? We don’t know. In his defense, he had only nine years from the time the Israelites entered Canaan to his death. His mission, as he saw it, was to lead the people into the land and divide it among the twelve tribes, and he completed this task. Yet, after that, there was no system of governance, leaving each tribe to fend for itself. While there was a central place of worship, this alone was not enough. The people had been led, but they had not been taught to lead or govern themselves. As Thomas Jefferson noted, “The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.”

The Lord raised up judges to deliver the Israelites from their enemies, but this was only a temporary solution. When a judge died, the people returned to even greater corruption than before. This cycle continued for generations until the Israelites demanded a king. As they had been warned, this marked the beginning of their decline.

One wonders how the story might have been different if the Israelites had been taught to govern themselves and resist the allure of corruption and idolatry. What if, instead of relying on a series of judges or craving the authority of a king, they had developed, in Jefferson’s words, “an established habit of self-government”? How might such a nation have provided us not only with a cautionary tale but also with an example to emulate?

Eleanor Roosevelt observed, “Our children must learn to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices, and cope with the results… the whole democratic system depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.”

The challenge for those who follow founders remains the same: to establish self-governance instead of perpetuating dependence on champions—or worse, kings.

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Art by Lucian Freud

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