Joshua 5:6-9

5:6 Indeed, for forty years the Israelites traveled through the desert until all the men old enough to fight when they left Egypt, the ones who had disobeyed the Lord, died off. ¹  For the Lord had sworn a solemn oath to them that he would not let them see the land he had sworn on oath to give them, ²  a land rich in ³  milk and honey. 5:7 He replaced them with their sons, ⁴  whom Joshua circumcised. They were uncircumcised; their fathers had not circumcised them along the way. 5:8 When all the men ⁵  had been circumcised, they stayed there in the camp until they had healed. 5:9 The Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have taken away ⁶  the disgrace ⁷  of Egypt from you.” So that place is called Gilgal ⁸  even to this day.

¹ tn Heb “all the nation, the men of war who went out from Egypt, who did not listen to the voice of the Lord, came to an end.”

² tn Some Hebrew mss, as well as the Syriac version, support this reading. Most ancient witnesses read “us.”

³ tn Heb “flowing with.”

⁴ tn Heb “their sons he raised up in their place.”

⁵ tn Heb “nation.”

⁶ tn Heb “rolled away.”

⁷ sn One might take the disgrace of Egypt as a reference to their uncircumcised condition (see Gen 34:14), but the generation that left Egypt was circumcised (see v. 5). It more likely refers to the disgrace they experienced in Egyptian slavery. When this new generation reached the promised land and renewed their covenantal commitment to the Lord by submitting to the rite of circumcision, the Lord’s deliverance of his people from slavery, which had begun with the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, reached its climax. See T. C. Butler, Joshua (WBC), 59.

⁸ sn The name Gilgal sounds like the Hebrew verb “roll away” (גַּלַל, galal).