“The people of Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua.”
This verse is very positive when read by itself, out of context. Overall, the people of Israel were very inconsistent in serving the Lord. Moses struggled to get a complaining, wayward people through the wilderness. Their faithlessness grieved the Lord so much that of the hundreds of thousands who crossed the Red Sea who were twenty years of age or older, only two—Joshua and Caleb—lived to actually enter the promised land. The Lord had determined the rest would die in the wilderness. Now Joshua and Caleb were gone. A new generation was in the promised land, but would they prove more faithful to the Lord than their parents had been?
