Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
The Commander of Yahweh's Army
An armed figure who meets Joshua outside Jericho and refuses to take a side.
Joshua 5:13-15, in every translation this tool compares.
Joshua meets an armed man outside Jericho and asks the obvious question: are you for us or for them. The answer is no. He has not come to take a side. Joshua pulls his sandals off and worships him, and nobody in the scene corrects him.
Answers Joshua's "are you for us or for them" with "no." He tells Joshua to take off his sandals, the signal from Exodus 3, and Joshua worships him without being corrected.
Identifying him with the Angel of Yahweh is common, and the text doesn't require it. Unlike the angels who refuse worship elsewhere in Scripture, this figure bears God's name and lets Joshua's worship stand, and the sandal command invites the comparison with the burning bush on purpose. Heiser adds a textual argument: the Hebrew Bible puts a drawn sword in a heavenly figure's hand in only two other places, Numbers 22:23 and 1 Chronicles 21:16, and both of those figures are named as the Angel of Yahweh. DDD's "Host of Heaven" article separately flags Joshua 5:13-15 as one of the few surviving glimpses of the older, military sense of the host of heaven, the armed divine retinue behind the tamer later picture of angels praising God around a throne (1 Kings 22:19).
- Joshua 5:13-15
- Numbers 22:23
- 1 Chronicles 21:16
- DDD s.v. "Host of Heaven," 428-429
- Heiser, *Angels*, 64-65, 111-112
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, ch. 18
