Joshua 24:14

[ 14. Put away the gods which your fathers served Many expositors hold that these words do not necessarily imply the actual possession of idols by the people, but rather a tendency to idolatry, which was ever too painfully prominent in Israel until after the Babylonish exile. The spirit of the exhortation is, according to this view, well conveyed by Bush: “Keep away, renounce, repudiate, have nothing to do with, idolatry of any sort; being equivalent to a charge to preserve themselves pure from a contagion to which they were peculiarly liable.” Subsequent history shows how they failed. But it is scarcely supposable, that if Joshua meant to warn them merely against tendencies to idolatry he would have used the words here employed, and those still stronger ones, in Joshua 24:23, Put away the strange gods which are among you the very words used by Jacob when his household gave up their strange gods, and he buried them at Shechem. Genesis 35:2. Better, then, to understand that many of the Hebrews had still in their houses teraphim the gods which the ancient fathers worshipped beyond the Euphrates. Laban had them in his family, (Genesis 30:19,) and Rachel carried them off, and they were probably the strange gods buried at Shechem. Genesis 35:2-4. We again meet with them in the days of the Judges, (Judges 17:5, Judges 17:18, Judges 17:20,) and in the time of David, and even in his house, (1 Samuel 19:13;) and also in the time of Josiah, who tried to put them away. 2 Kings 23:24. It is therefore by no means improbable that among many families in Israel these teraphim were zealously kept, and Joshua, knowing the fact and the danger of it, called this assembly and especially urged this matter, in order to abolish, if possible, this evil.

Though the fathers beyond the Euphrates seem to have worshipped or served these teraphim as gods, there is no sure evidence that they were ever worshipped as gods in Israel. But they were images more or less associated with a false worship, and therefore dangerous to the religion of the Hebrews.

In Egypt The fathers had carried these teraphim in their families to Egypt, and during all their captivity they had not lost sight of them. Comp. Ezekiel 20:7-8.]