The Reproach that Rolled Text: Joshua 5:1-9
Introduction: Consecration Before Conquest
We live in a pragmatic age, an age that worships at the altar of "what works." Our military strategists, our corporate leaders, our political consultants, they all want a plan that makes sense on a flowchart. They want the most efficient path from point A to point B. If you were to present the strategy laid out in this chapter of Joshua to a board of military advisors at the Pentagon, you would be politely, or perhaps not so politely, shown the door. The enemy is terrified, their hearts have melted, and they are ripe for the taking. The Jordan River is behind you, a statement of God's miraculous power. The momentum is entirely on your side. And what is the command from the Lord of Hosts? Sharpen your swords? Prepare the battering rams? No. The command is to take up flint knives and incapacitate your entire army.
This is foolishness to the world. It is military malpractice. It is strategic suicide. But it is the very wisdom of God. Before God's people can take possession of the land, they must first be possessed by God. Before they engage in conquest, they must be consecrated. Before the battle for Canaan, there must be a battle for their own identity. God is not primarily interested in giving them a piece of real estate. He is interested in making them His holy people. The land is simply the stage upon which their holiness, their covenant faithfulness, is to be displayed to the nations.
This passage is a profound lesson in divine priorities. God's ways are not our ways. He prioritizes heart-purity over military might, covenant identity over strategic advantage, and radical, vulnerable faith over self-sufficient strength. What happens here at Gilgal, on the plains of Jericho, is the necessary prerequisite for any victory that is to follow. Without this bloody, painful, and humbling ceremony, any victories they might have won would have been their own, and would have ultimately turned to ash in their mouths. God was teaching them, and us, that the first territory to be conquered is always the self. The first enemy to be cut away is the flesh.
The Text
Now it happened when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard how Yahweh had dried up the waters of the Jordan before the sons of Israel until they had crossed, that their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the sons of Israel.
At that time Yahweh said to Joshua, "Make for yourself flint knives and circumcise again the sons of Israel the second time." So Joshua made himself flint knives and circumcised the sons of Israel at Gibeath-haaraloth. Now this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them: all the people who came out of Egypt who were males, all the men of war, died in the wilderness along the way when they came out of Egypt. For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness along the way as they came out of Egypt had not been circumcised. For the sons of Israel had walked forty years in the wilderness, until all the nation, that is, the men of war who came out of Egypt, were completely destroyed because they did not listen to the voice of Yahweh, to whom Yahweh had sworn that He would not let them see the land which Yahweh had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. And their sons whom He raised up in their place, Joshua circumcised; for they were uncircumcised because they had not circumcised them along the way.
Now it happened that when they had completed circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. Then Yahweh said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you." So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.
(Joshua 5:1-9 LSB)
The Fear of God's Enemies (v. 1)
We begin with the state of affairs in Canaan.
"Now it happened when all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard how Yahweh had dried up the waters of the Jordan... that their hearts melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the sons of Israel." (Joshua 5:1)
The first victory in the conquest of Canaan is a bloodless one, and it is won entirely by God. Notice the cause and effect. The pagan kings hear what Yahweh has done, and their courage evaporates. Their hearts melted. This is the same language used to describe the effect of fear on the Israelites themselves when they heard the report of the spies forty years earlier. God is now visiting the faithless terror of His own people upon His enemies. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but the terror of the Lord is the end of pride.
God's reputation has preceded His army. The stories of the plagues in Egypt, the drowning of Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea, the victories over Sihon and Og, and now this dramatic, impossible crossing of the Jordan at flood stage, have all served as God's psychological warfare. He is dismantling the enemy from the inside out before Israel ever lifts a spear. This is a critical principle for the church. Our primary weapon is not our own cleverness or strength, but the manifest power of God. When God acts, the world takes notice, and the proud are terrified.
A Strange Command for a Time of War (vv. 2-7)
At this moment of supreme tactical advantage, God issues a command that is, from a human perspective, utterly baffling.
"At that time Yahweh said to Joshua, 'Make for yourself flint knives and circumcise again the sons of Israel the second time.' ... For all the people who came out were circumcised, but all the people who were born in the wilderness... had not been circumcised." (Joshua 5:2, 5 LSB)
God's timing is intentional. It is precisely because the enemy is paralyzed with fear that Israel has the space to obey this command. But the command itself is the point. Why now? Because for forty years, the covenant sign had been in abeyance. The generation that came out of Egypt had been circumcised, but they were a faithless and rebellious people. They did not believe the promises of God, and so God swore in His wrath that they would not enter His rest. Their bodies were scattered across the desert. And as a sign of this covenantal judgment, their sons, the new generation, were not given the sign of the covenant. They were physically alive, but corporately, they were in a state of covenant suspension.
Their uncircumcision was an outward symbol of their parents' inward rebellion. It was a visible reminder of the breach in fellowship. Now, standing on the edge of the Promised Land, ready to claim the inheritance, God demands that the sign be restored. Before you can receive the covenant promise (the land), you must embrace the covenant sign (circumcision). You cannot have God's blessings on your own terms. You must come under the knife. You must be marked as His.
This was a national "second time." The first time was with the generation of the Exodus. This is the renewal of the covenant with the generation of the conquest. Before they can dispossess the Canaanites, they must be repossessed by Yahweh. Their identity as the covenant people of God had to be sealed in their flesh before they could act as the instruments of God's judgment in the world.
Vulnerable Faith (v. 8)
The response of the people is as remarkable as the command itself.
"Now it happened that when they had completed circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed." (Joshua 5:8 LSB)
Imagine the scene. An entire army, hundreds of thousands of fighting men, willingly submitting to a painful procedure that renders them completely defenseless for days, all while camped on enemy soil. This is not presumption; this is faith. They are not trusting in the melted hearts of the Canaanites to keep them safe. They are trusting in the God who melted their hearts to be their shield and their defender. Their helplessness becomes the very stage for God's power to be displayed. They are obeying God and leaving the consequences entirely in His hands.
This is the posture of true Christian faith. We are called to obey God's commands, even when they seem foolish or make us vulnerable to the world. We are called to trust that when we are weakest in ourselves, we are strongest in Him. Our security does not lie in our own defenses, but in the faithfulness of our covenant-keeping God. Israel, laid up and healing, was safer than the strongest army in the world that trusts in its own might.
Gilgal: The Place of Rolling (v. 9)
After their obedience and healing, God provides the theological meaning of the entire event.
"Then Yahweh said to Joshua, 'Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.' So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day." (Joshua 5:9 LSB)
This is the climax of the chapter. The name of the place, Gilgal, sounds like the Hebrew verb galal, to roll. God Himself gives the interpretation. What was the "reproach of Egypt?" It was multifaceted. It was the shame of their slavery, their identity as the property of a pagan tyrant. It was the taunt of the Egyptians, and likely their own hearts, that God had brought them into the wilderness only to kill them. It was the shame of forty years of faithless wandering, a generation of judgment symbolized by their uncircumcised bodies.
In one decisive, bloody, and obedient act, God rolls all of that away. He is publicly declaring: "You are no longer slaves of Egypt. You are My sons. The period of judgment is over. The covenant is renewed. Your shame is removed." The cutting of the flesh was the rolling away of the reproach. By bearing the sign of the covenant, they were shedding the identity of the world and taking on the identity of the people of God. Gilgal became the place of new beginnings, the base of operations for the conquest, a permanent memorial to the grace of God that rolls away the shame of the past.
The Circumcision of Christ
This entire event is a brilliant, flashing type of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We, like Israel, were born in a wilderness of sin, slaves to a greater Pharaoh. We bore the reproach of our sin, a shame and guilt that we could not remove. We were covenant-breakers, spiritually uncircumcised, with hard and rebellious hearts.
But God, in His mercy, did not call us to take up flint knives. He sent His Son. The Apostle Paul makes the connection explicit in his letter to the Colossians. He says that in Christ "you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God" (Colossians 2:11-12).
Our circumcision is the cross of Jesus Christ. There, He was "cut off" from the land of the living for our transgressions. The judgment we deserved fell upon Him. And when we are united to Him by faith, His death becomes our death. The "body of our sins," our old identity, our reproach, is cut away. Baptism is the sign of this spiritual surgery, just as circumcision was the sign for Israel. It is our Gilgal.
When we come to Christ, we come to the one who "rolls away" our reproach. The shame of our past, the guilt of our sin, the slavery to our flesh, is removed. God declares over us, "Today, your reproach is gone. You are no longer defined by your past, but by my promise. You are no longer a slave, but a son." And from that place of grace, from our Gilgal, He sends us out to the work of conquest, not with our own strength, but in the power of the one who was cut off for us, and raised for our justification.