Open English Translation JOS Chapter 5

2 At that time, Yahweh told Yehoshua, “Make yourself flint knives and again circumcise the male Israelis.” 3 So Yehoshua had flint knives made and the male Israelis were circumcised at a place they named ‘The hill of foreskins’. 4 (This was done because all the men who’d left Egypt and who were old enough to join the army had been circumcised but had died in the wilderness since then,[ref] 5 and because all the boys who’d been born while they were in the wilderness after they’d left Egypt hadn’t been circumcised. 6 The Israelis had spent forty years moving around the wilderness until the last of those men who’d left Egypt but hadn’t listened to Yahweh had died. Yahweh had promised not to let them see the land that he’d promised to their ancestors to give them—a land flowing with milk and honey. 7 It was the sons of those people that Yehoshua had circumcised this time because they hadn’t been circumcised on the way.)

8 After all their males had been circumcised, they remained in that camp until they’d healed up. 9 Then Yahweh told Yehoshua, “Today I’ve rolled away the disgrace of Egypt from you,” and that place is named Gilgal[fn] until this day.

10 In the evening of the fourth day that the people had been camped at Gilgal there on the plains near Yericho, they celebrated the ‘pass-over’.[ref]

11 The next day they ate roasted grain that they’d taken from that area, and ate flat bread that same day. 12 The day after they’d eaten some of the produce from that area, there was no manna on the ground to be collected and so it stopped—instead they’d eat the produce from the Canaan region beginning that year.[ref]

13 While Yehoshua was in the Yericho area, he looked up and saw a man in front of him. The man had drawn his sword and was holding it in his hand so Yehoshua approached him and asked, “Are you on our side, or with our enemies?”

14 “No,” the man answered, “but I, the leader of Yahweh’s army, have come now.”

Then Yehoshua fell to his knees and bowed down with his face to the ground, and asked him, “What’s my master going to command to his servant?”

15 “Take off your sandals,” the commander of Yahweh’s army told him, “because the ground that you’re standing is holy.” So Yehoshua took them off.