What Does Joshua 24:18 Mean?
And the LORD drove out from before us all the people, even the Amorites who settled in the land. So we also will serve the LORD, for he is our God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD drave out from before us all the people, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land: therefore will we also serve the LORD; for he is our God.THE KEY
The verse places service after the LORD’s forceful removal of the Amorites, making allegiance a response to prior action rather than a way to secure it.
THE MEANING
The verse puts you before a stark sequence: the LORD drives the Amorites out, and the people answer by serving him. Their stated reason is belonging, “he is our God”, so service follows the act they attribute to him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that service must earn divine action; here, the LORD’s act comes first and service follows.
THE ROOT
עָבַד
ʿābad
GROWS FROM
עבד
To work, serve.
The verb for serving shares its root with the word for a servant and the word for work or service. That connection opens “we also serve” into lived allegiance, not just a spoken declaration.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: Servant.
עֶבֶד
The servant is named by the same root as the act of serving, joining identity with allegiance.
ʿăvōdāh: Work, service.
עֲבוֹדָה
This branch shows service as work and action, giving the people’s answer a lived dimension.
THE PATTERN
The people’s response follows an act of deliverance attributed to God.
And Israel saw the great hand that the LORD did upon the Egyptians, and the people stood in awe of the LORD, and they leaned their weight on the LORD and on his servant Moses.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.We love him, for he first loved us.THE THREAD
And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you, but to stand in awe of the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your living soul,Deuteronomy repeats the same Hebrew service root and expands the picture to serving with all the heart and soul. That makes Joshua’s brief “we also serve” sound like whole-person allegiance rather than a slogan.
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