Joshua: a Hebrew man's name heard to mean "the LORD saves," borne above all by Moses' successor, the leader who brought Israel into the promised land.
This is a name, not an ordinary Hebrew word, and it is built out of two pieces: a short form of God's own name and the verb meaning "to save" (יָשַׁע). Israelites heard it as a small sentence, roughly "the LORD saves." Numbers 13:16 records the moment it was given. As the scouts set out for Canaan, Moses takes his young aide, whose name was Hoshea (הוֹשֵׁעַ), and changes it to this longer form. The old name already spoke of rescue; the new one names who does the rescuing.
Four different men carry the name in the Hebrew Bible:
- Joshua son of Nun, Moses' assistant and then his successor, who leads Israel across the Jordan, takes the land, and parcels it out among the tribes; he accounts for all but fourteen of the verses
- Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest of the community that came back from exile, who appears in Haggai and in the visions of Zechariah
- Joshua of Beth-shemesh, the farmer in whose field the cart carrying the ark came to a stop (1 Samuel 6:14, 18)
- Joshua the governor of the city in King Josiah's day, remembered only in the name of a Jerusalem gate (2 Kings 23:8)
After the exile, Hebrew speakers shortened the name to "Jeshua" (יֵשׁוּעַ), and the high priest turns up under both spellings: Haggai and Zechariah call him Joshua, while Ezra and Nehemiah call him Jeshua. Greek had only one spelling for both Hebrew forms, "Iesous" (Ἰησοῦς), which is why the New Testament calls Moses' successor by the very word it uses for Jesus (Acts 7:45; Hebrews 4:8). Older English Bibles printed "Jesus" in those two verses, and early Christian writers made much of the shared name, reading Joshua's entry into the land as a picture of what Jesus does.
Nuances
Whether the high priest's name stood in the original text of Zechariah 6:11, where a crown is set on his head, or replaced the name of the governor Zerubbabel.
- contestedThe oracle first crowned Zerubbabel, the descendant of David who governed Judah, and the high priest's name was put in his place once hope for a restored king had faded. The surrounding oracle speaks of a single figure who builds the temple and sits on a throne, which fits a royal candidate.; Julius Wellhausen, Die kleinen Propheten uebersetzt und erklaert, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1898); Johann Wilhelm Rothstein, Juden und Samaritaner (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1908)
- contestedThe transmitted text is sound. The crowning of the high priest belongs to Zechariah's picture of two anointed leaders, priest and governor, standing together, and there is no manuscript support for the substitution.; Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8, Anchor Bible 25B (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1987); Mark J. Boda, The Book of Zechariah, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016); David L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1-8, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984)
Disputed
How the name is put together, and whether "the LORD saves" is its actual derivation or the way Israelites came to hear it.
- majorityThe second element comes from the Hebrew verb meaning "to save," so the name says something like "the LORD saves" or "the LORD is salvation." The renaming in Numbers 13:16, which adds the divine element to a name already built on that verb, supports the connection.; BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. יְהוֹשֻׁעַ; HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. יְהוֹשֻׁעַ; Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1928); Werner Foerster, "Ἰησοῦς," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) 3:284-293
- minorityThe second element may descend from a different root, one carrying the idea of a cry for help rather than of saving, in which case "the LORD saves" is how the name was popularly understood rather than a demonstrated derivation.; Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley, eds., The Language Environment of First Century Judaea (Leiden: Brill, 2014)