Joshua 24:2

Thus saith the Lord God of Israel The title is significant. It recurs in Joshua 24:23. Joshua recalls to the minds of the people the mercies of God as displayed in five great events:

(i) The Call of Abraham;

(ii) The Deliverance from Egypt;

(iii) The Defeat of the Amorites on the east of the Jordan, and the frustration of the machinations of Balaam;

(iv) The Passage of the Jordan and Capture of Jericho;

(v) The Victories over all the nations of Canaan.

on the other side of the flood Or better, on the other side of the river, i.e. the Euphra tes, in Ur of the Chaldees, and then in Haran (Genesis 11:28; Genesis 11:31). "Biзond the flood," Wyclif.

Terah The ancestor, through Abram, Nahor, and Haran, of the great families of the Ishmaelites, Israelites, Midianites, Moabites, and Ammonites (Genesis 11:24-32). With his son Abram, his daughter-in-law Sarai, and his grandson Lot, he went in a north-westerly direction from Ur "into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there" (Genesis 11:31), and at Haran he died at the age of 205 years (Genesis 11:32).

and they served other gods The objects of nature, especially the heavenly bodies, were in those far-back times invested with a "glory" and a "freshness" which has long since "passed away" from the earth. They seemed to be instinct with a divinity which exercised an almost irresistible fascination over their first beholders. The sight of the "sun when it shined, and of the moon walking in brightness," was a temptation as potent to them as to us it is inconceivable. "Their heart was secretly enticed, and their mouth kissed their hand" (Job 31:26-27). There was also another form of idolatry, though less universal in its influence. "There were giants on the earth in those days;" giants, if not actually, yet by their colossal strength and awful majesty; the Pharaohs and Nimrods, whose form we still trace on the ornaments of Egypt and Assyria in their gigantic proportions, the mighty hunters, the royal priests, the deified men. From the control of these powers, before which all meaner men bowed down, from the long ancestral prepossessions of -country and kindred and father's house," the first worshippers of One who was above all alike, had painfully to disentangle themselves." Stanley's Jewish Church, Joshua 1:15-16. Of the worship of "images," or "Teraphim," we have traces in Genesis 31:19; Genesis 31:30; Genesis 31:34. Tradition asserts that Terah was a maker of idols, and that Abraham was persecuted in Ur of the Chaldees for refusing to take part in idolatries.