Joshua 5

Gilgal’s New Beginning: Renewal, Courage, and the Threshold of Promise

Joshua 5 reads like a compact map of inner transition: the psychological operations that turn a wandering consciousness into the inhabitant of a promised inner country. Read as pure interior drama, every name, act, and object is a state of mind and a functional step in the creative work of imagination.

The chapter opens with the news that the kings of the land 'heard' that the Jordan was dried up and their hearts melted. This is not news about remote commanders and rivers; it is the felt perception of inner resistances dissolving when a threshold is crossed. The Jordan symbolizes the barrier between an old self and a new assumption. When imagination coherently assumes the new state, the 'river' that seemed to separate becomes passable. The kings are the conglomerates of previous beliefs — the authorities of doubt, fear, and habit — and 'their heart melted' simply means that predatory inner attitudes lose their power once the creative person has enacted the transition. The outer world only reflects what the psyche has already adopted.

Next comes the unsettling command: make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. Circumcision is a psychological operation, not a physical historical rite here. It stands for a surgical change in the function of attention and desire. It is a cutting away of the old, protective fold that kept responses automatic and reactive. The 'second time' is crucial: those who originally came out of Egypt — the old, formed patterns — have passed away in the wilderness because they refused the inner voice. The children born in the wilderness are patterns and capacities that arose in reaction to hardship and wandering; they were not initiated into the original intent. They must be re-educated: ritually 'circumcised' so their operating edge is aligned with the promise.

Psychologically, the wilderness is the long period of habit, survival orientation, and identification with limitation. Forty years is the archetypal era of wandering identity — a prolonged habit of blaming circumstance, surviving on memory rather than creative assumption. Those aspects of us that were 'men of war' — strong-willed, competitive, argumentative ego-functions — die off when they refuse inner guidance. In their place arise new capacities: children of the wilderness who can only enter the promised state if consciously trimmed of reactivity. The circumcision here is an act of intentional self-discipline: cut off the reflexive part that answers immediately from the past; make the raw edge of attention available to a new image.

They circumcised on the hill of the foreskins and then 'abode in their places in the camp, till they were whole.' This is restoration, not punishment. The camp is the preparatory field of imagination where the newly disciplined attention rests and consolidates. 'Until they were whole' indicates integration: the psyche must digest the change before action in the outer world. Only then does the chapter say, 'This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you.' The reproach of Egypt is shame, limitation, and identification with scarcity — the story that 'this is the way things are.' Rolled away means that conscience no longer condemns the self to the identity of lack. The naming of the place Gilgal — rolled — points to a turning in consciousness, a literal rolling away of what held one to the old identity.

Passover follows immediately. The people keep the Passover 'in the plains of Jericho,' and the next day they eat the old corn of the land; the manna ceases. Passover, in psychological terms, is the conscious celebration of deliverance: a ritual recognition that the old servile hunger has been fulfilled. The manna represents the transient, miraculous support that sustains a people not yet fully established in their own inner possession. When imagination begins to live as if it already possesses the land — the state of being imagined — the manna stops because you now feed on the fruits of the land itself. This is a decisive signal: dependence upon extraordinary signs ends when you accept the normalcy of your assumed state. The first 'meal' of the land is always fragile and instructive: tasting the 'old corn' shows that the interior landscape is capable of producing natural sustenance when the mind settles into its rightful assumption.

The psychological drama culminates in Joshua's encounter by Jericho with a man standing with his sword drawn. Jericho is the citadel of entrenched belief: its walls are the protective complexes that guard the old identity. Joshua's question — 'Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?' — is an inner query we all make before action: which part of me commands this field? The figure answers with a higher identity: 'As captain of the host of the Lord am I now come.' This is not a partisan voice aligned to either the old self or the recent convert; it is the awakening sovereign within imagination — the executive consciousness that marshals the creative forces. It is the discovery of an inner commander who is above the divided interests of self-love and fear.

Joshua falls on his face and worships. That falling is surrender: no policy, no scheming, only recognition of the inner law. Worship here is acknowledgement of the authority of imagination itself — the creative faculty that issues the laws that shape experience. The command, 'Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy,' names the practical humility required in the presence of this authority. Shoes are the coverings of habitual movement, the accumulated ways we protect the foot of attention. Removing the shoe is shedding protective patterns so that the foot of imagination may touch the 'holy' ground directly — the ground of assumption.

Every element, read psychologically, teaches a step-by-step technique. First, cross the Jordan: enact a deliberate transition of assumption from lack to fullness. Second, perform the inner circumcision: cut away reactive habits so that new impulses can function. Third, camp and become whole: give the new assumption time to integrate. Fourth, celebrate the Passover: consciously mark the deliverance from servile consciousness. Fifth, eat the fruit: feed upon the inner images of abundance until the temporary supports cease. Sixth, meet the inner commander: identify and submit to the sovereign imaginative power that directs reality. Seventh, remove the shoe: act without the crutch of old defensive habits and step onto holy ground.

The creative power operating throughout is imagination itself, personified as the 'captain of the host.' It is neither merely personal ambition nor an external deity; it is the active faculty that drafts a scene, feels it real, and thereby produces corresponding outer conditions. The chapter makes clear that outer authorities and 'kings' cannot stand when this power confidently takes its place. The transformation is not magic performed on others; it is a reconfiguration of the self, and the world rearranges in obedience.

Joshua 5 is thus a manual of inner initiation. It insists that deliverance from past identity demands decisive inner surgery, a period of integration, and the audacity to live from the new assumption. The imagery of battle and kings, of bread and ritual, are all psychological functions: resistance, shame, readiness, celebration, and sovereignty. The promise of the land — 'a land that floweth with milk and honey' — is not a future external parcel but the present capacity to experience life as abundant when imagination has claimed that identity.

Approach this chapter as a protocol: imagine the new state, cut away reflexes that contradict it, celebrate the transition, feed upon the inner fruits, and recognize the commanding imagination within. Do these things inside, and the outer narrative will conform, because reality is the expression of assumed states of consciousness.