Israel has now become ritually impure, and so the Lord orders Joshua to rise and to purify the people. This will involve a confession of sin and a ritual whereby Israel’s guilt will be removed and the people will be able to appear before the Lord (that is, at the place of worship). Only by locating and destroying the objects which have been kept by Achan will Israel be able again to defeat her enemies.It is rather strange that in the Hebrew text in verse 13 “in the midst of you … you cannot stand … your enemies … you take” (Revised Standard Version) the second personal pronoun is singular; only at the end of the verse “from among you” (Revised Standard Version) is the pronoun plural. This is either a stylistic variation or else reflects the use of more than one source of the tradition.

The repetition of the command Get up may imply for some readers that Joshua did not obey the Lord the first time he gave the command (verse 10). In Hebrew the verb “get up” is frequently used in conjunction with a verb that follows, so that it means “begin to do the verb that follows.” That may also be the meaning here. Get up! Purify the people may then mean “Go and purify the people” or merely “Purify the people.”

Purify the people and get them ready to come before me translates “Purify the people” (Revised Standard Version “sanctify the people”) of the Hebrew text. The lengthy rendering of Good News Translation is intended to interpret for the reader the purpose of the purification ceremony. It may also be effectively translated as “Stand up and prepare the people for the meeting with me!” In a number of languages a causative verb may be necessary: “cause the people to purify themselves….”

Tell them to of Good News Translation represents a shift from the direct discourse of Hebrew to indirect discourse. As a rule, Good News Translation prefers to use indirect discourse so as never to go beyond a quotation within a quotation. This is primarily for the sake of avoiding double quotation marks, within single quotation marks, within double quotation marks. But the direct discourse of the Hebrew may be retained without introducing a third layer of quotation marks, if it is not felt necessary to enclose the Lord’s quoting of himself within separate quotation marks. Revised Standard Version in fact does punctuate in precisely this manner, though Good News Translation introduces a separate layer of quotation marks.

Be ready tomorrow refers back to “ready to come before me.” Once again some of the redundancy of the Hebrew and of Good News Translation could be avoided if the command for Joshua to purify the people and the command for him to tell the people to purify themselves are combined into one:

• “Go tell the people to purify themselves and get ready to come before me tomorrow. Tell them that I, the LORD God of Israel, say ‘People of Israel, I ordered you to destroy everything in the city of Jericho. But you kept back some of the things that I ordered you to destroy! …’ ”

Or:

• “Go tell the people that I, the LORD God of Israel, say to them, ‘Purify yourselves and get ready to come before me tomorrow. I ordered you to destroy everything in the city of Jericho, but you kept back some of the things that I ordered you to destroy! …’ ”

You cannot stand … until may be restructured as a coordinate construction: “Get rid of these things, and then you will be able to oppose your enemies and defeat them.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Newman, Barclay M. A Handbook on Joshua. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .