This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success(Joshua 1:8).
This seems like a tall order — always being ready to quote Scripture. Is Joshua 1:8 an exaggeration? What is the Book of the Law, and what do the Lord’s words really mean?
The Book of the Law
The “Book of the Law” could refer to Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy individually or to the Pentateuch.
This book provides more than rules but also the story of who God is, of Creation, of a perfect relationship between God and his people distorted by sin, and foreshadows his plan for their ultimate rescue. Readers see this last part most clearly in the account of how God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt.
So, what should the people of Israel keep on their lips always? Is God speaking of the Ten Commandments only, or just the contents of those first five books?
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).
Every part of Scripture — the Pentateuch and the other 61 books — is essential to our understanding of who God is.
Prosperity and Success?
Israel’s “good success” was a matter of obedience to his law and rescue by God in spite of their failure to keep the law.
God gave the Israelites manna and water in the wilderness, which indicates that he did (and does) care about his people’s physical needs; yet Jesus stated that “man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
“Prosperous” in Hebrew means “break out, come mightily, go over, be good, [...] be profitable, cause to, effect.” God would cause the people to overcome their oppressors.
This would be their “success,” which is the word sakal meaning “consider, expert, instruct, prosper, deal prudently, give skillfully, [...], teach.” This suggests that wisdom would be one of God’s intended rewards for his people.
God’s intended meaning for “prosperous” leads to a kind of “success,” very different from the 21st-century North American idea.
The Lord was promising to give something to his people which was more valuable than gold: he was giving them himself, and he was giving them the ability to know him, which is where wisdom comes from. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Proverbs 9:10).
God led the Israelites out of Egypt in person, and he intends to continue this relationship with his people into eternity.
God’s Word gives eternal life. Through it, we learn about our sin and about God’s solution for our sin, which was to come down and be with us and conquer sin, shame, and death.
Our prosperity is not a matter of temporal riches but of a rich relationship with our Father, although some of the faithful men and women of Scripture did, in fact, enjoy riches and power.
Consider Joseph in Egypt, who obeyed God and was raised to a position of power, or Solomon, whose early years as king were marked by wisdom and peace.
They were politically and financially successful, certainly, but in order to make God’s plans successful and glorify him. “Successful” Christians are those who submit to the King.
With confidence, these people surrender their gifts — great and small — back to the God who supplied them, and their prosperity is to see his name made famous and to enjoy peace with him. When they forget God’s law and choose to elevate themselves, they lose their way as Solomon did.
When “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” God said, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant” (1 Kings 11:6,11).
James said, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (4:7). God protects his people by using his law as a reminder of who he is and who they arein him and also to help them understand how impossible it is for us to keep the law fully.
This is why Christ came. We cannot be successful in the sense of knowing God without his instructions as to how he wants us to accomplish that. We need God in order to know how much we need God and how much we need his help.
Joseph asked, “Am I in the place of “God?” (Genesis 50:19). Realizing that the answer is “no,” but that God provides all that we need “for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3), Christians experience the peace that comes with letting go of that burden.
Sam Storms explained that “a mind filled with Scripture can critically evaluate secular society and can see through the empty values of the modern world and resist assimilation.” The world can supply knowledge, but this knowledge does not lead to life if God is not at its center.
Keeping the Word Always
But does God really expect his people to quote from Scripture at all times? Most translations say “day and night” rather than “always,” but we can go to a Jewish preacher of the Christian gospel (the writer of the Book of Hebrews) to help us understand just how literally to take “always” or “day and night.”
The Greek pas can mean “everything,” “entire,” “every respect,” and more. The word pas is translated as “continually,” as in “let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God” (Hebrews 13:15).
Because the writer of Hebrews is an expert in the Jewish faith, he is an excellent reference. His exhortation to the Hebrews is an echo of God’s own instruction, but the full sentence deepens our understanding. Praise is the “fruit of the lips that acknowledge his name.”
Keeping the Book of the Law on our lips means that we use it to pray back to God his own Words, and “always” could mean for all our days, or often, or in every aspect of our lives. We keep his law on our lips in all that we do and say — what we do communicates something to those who see us.
This is one outworking of the law, the Word, which is Jesus himself living in and through us. We speak the law not just by praising him in prayer and worshipful songs but also by the ways in which we use our mouths daily, by the words we use, and those we avoid.
How do we use our mouths? Are they on guard only while we are in church or talking with Christians? Or are we aware of the power of our words at all times, both those we use and those we withhold?
Also, as the writer of Hebrews indicates, words of praise are fruit — this is a genuine outpouring of authentic worship emanating first from the heart.
One’s words only yield good fruit if they are authentic. We need to fill up with more of God’s truth and love in order for truth and love to flow out of us.
The Psalmist begs, “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips!” (Psalm 141:3). “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29).
If we are governed by God’s law, then the result will be more faith, hope, and love.
Keeping the Word
God wants our hearts to be aligned with his; for us to desire what he desires (Psalm 37:4). His list of dos and don’ts gives us direction, but it is only a bare framework, a skeleton, without the animating piece: a heart for Christ, his Son.
With his Holy Spirit, however, preaching God’s law into the hearts of the faithful at all times, we are able to fight effectively “against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). By his Word, we are constantly reminded that we belong to him and cannot be taken.
For further reading:
How Can We Honor God’s Word in Joshua 1:8?
Should Christians Follow the Book of the Law Today?
What Does the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings Verse Tell Us about Jesus?
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