At that time, YAHWEH commanded Joshua, “Make knives of flint and circumcise the men of Israel again.” So Joshua made stone knives and circumcised all the men at a place they named Circumcision Hill.
Joshua had to circumcise all the men and boys—all the fighting men. Although they had been circumcised before leaving Egypt, the male children born during the forty years they spent in the wilderness had not been circumcised. Also, by the end of that forty years, all the fighting men who had come out of Egypt had died because they had not listened to the voice of YAHWEH. So YAHWEH had made an oath that they would not see the land he had promised to give their ancestors, a fertile land. So he raised up their sons in their place, and Joshua circumcised them because they had not been circumcised on the way.
After the circumcision was completed, the whole nation waited in the camp until their wounds had healed. Then YAHWEH said to Joshua, “Today, I have rolled away your disgrace from being slaves in Egypt.” For that reason, the place is named Gilgal to this day.
While encamped at Gilgal, not far from Jericho, the Israelites celebrated the Feast of Passover in the evening of the fourteenth day of the month of Abib. The very next day, they ate for the first time food grown in Canaan—roasted grain and flatbread made without yeast. On that day, when they ate the produce of the land, the manna stopped falling from heaven. The Israelites never ate manna again, but that year they enjoyed the fruit of the land of Canaan.
When Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw standing in front of him a man holding a drawn sword. Joshua approached him and said, “Are you on our side or on our enemies’?”
“Neither,” he replied. “I have not come to take sides but to take charge. I am the Commander of YAHWEH’s armies.” At once, Joshua threw himself facedown to the ground and worshiped, and he said to him, “I will do whatever you command, my Lord.”
The Commander of YAHWEH’s armies said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground!” And Joshua obeyed.
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