Joshua 21:45

There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Joshua 21:45. There failed not aught — Which they themselves, as Joshua afterward tells them, (Joshua 23:14,) knew very well, and could not but confess. But it must be understood according to the explication given verse

43. For the time of fulfilling some part of the divine promises was not yet come, and the entire completion of what was already begun was partly conditional, and depended on their obedience to God. All came to pass — Such an acknowledgment as this, here subscribed by Joshua, in the name of all Israel, we afterward find made by Solomon; and all Israel did, in effect, say amen to it, 1 Kings 8:56. The inviolable truth of God’s promise, and the performance of it to the uttermost, is what all believers in Christ have been always ready to bear their testimony to. And if in any thing it has seemed to come short, they have been as ready to take all the blame to themselves.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

21:43-45 God promised to give to the seed of Abraham the land of Canaan for a possession, and now they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the promise of the heavenly Canaan is as sure to all God's spiritual Israel; for it is the promise of Him that cannot lie. There stood not a man before them. The after-prevalence of the Canaanites was the effect of Israel's slothfulness, and the punishment of their sinful inclination to the idolatries and abominations of the heathen whom they harboured and indulged. There failed not aught of any good thing, which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. In due season all his promises will be accomplished; then will his people acknowledge that the Lord has exceeded their largest expectations, and made them more than conquerors, and brought them to their desired rest.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

There is no real inconsistency between the declarations of these verses and the fact that the Israelites had not as yet possessed themselves of all the cities allotted to the various tribes Judges 1:21-36 - nor did at any time, subdue the whole extent of country promised to them Numbers 34:1-12. God had fulfilled all His part of the covenant. It was no part of His purpose that the native population should be annihilated suddenly Deuteronomy 7:22; but they were delivered into the hand of Israel, and their complete dispossession could have been effected at any time by that divine aid which was never wanting when sought. At the time referred to in the text, the Canaanites were discouraged, broken in strength, holding fast in isolated spots only up and down the land in the very midst of the tribes of God's people. The conquest of Canaan was already "ex parte Dei" a perfect work; just as in the New Testament the triumph of the individual Christian and of the Christian Church in their warfare is often spoken of as accomplished in view of the divine will that it should be so, and of divine grace that it may be so. It was therefore, only the inertness and pusillanimity of the Israelites which prevented the completion of the conquest when the allotment of Canaan was made by Joshua; as it was their subsequent backslidings which caused God to turn the tide of victory against them and even to cast them out of the land promised to their forefathers and actually won in the campaigns of Joshua. See the introduction to the Book of Joshua.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

Jos 21:43-45. God Gave Them Rest.

43-45. the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers—This is a general winding up of the history from the thirteenth chapter, which narrates the occupation of the land by the Israelites. All the promises made, whether to the people or to Joshua (Jos 1:5), had been, or were in the course of being fulfilled; and the recorded experience of the Israelites (Jos 21:45), is a ground of hope and confidence to the people of God in every age, that all other promises made to the Church will, in due time, be accomplished.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

There failed not ought of any good thing,.... Not only every good thing in general, but every part and particular of that good thing; that, with all that was included in it, or were appendages to it, or circumstances of it:

which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel; as of their deliverance out of Egypt, and passage through the Red sea and wilderness, with all conveniences for them therein; so of their passage through Jordan, success of their arms, the conquest of their enemies, possession of their land, a land flowing with milk and honey:

all came to pass; exactly, precisely, and punctually, even everything relative to their temporal and spiritual good: so all that God promises to his spiritual Israel, with respect to their present comfort or everlasting happiness, all is exactly fulfilled, all his promises in Christ are yea and amen.

Geneva Study Bible

There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

45. There failed not] Comp. ch. Joshua 23:14-15. None of the gracious promises of God to Israel remained unfulfilled.

any good thing] Or, aught of all the good word = the sum of the reiterated assurances which God had made to the nation. Of these the possession of the land of Canaan was regarded as the essence and central point, because this possession was to be for Israel the foundation of all further blessings, the pledge of the continued fulfilment of the rest of the promises of God.—See Keil’s Commentary.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 45. - Ought of any good thing. Literally, a word from all the good word. This Keil regards as the "sum of all the gracious promises that God had made." But he should have added that דָבָר, beside signifying, as it does, "word," is also the word for "thing" in Hebrew (see, for instance, Genesis 15:1; Genesis 20:10), and innumerable other passages, as well as the use of לֹא דָבָר for "nothing." The translation "thing" makes the best sense, and is more agreeable to the Hebrew idiom. All came to pass. The Hebrew is singular, the whole came, the word translated "came to pass "in our version being a different one from that usually so translated.



Joshua 21:45

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Of all the good words which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel not one had fallen, i.e., remained unfulfilled (Numbers 6:12); all had come to pass (vid., Joshua 23:14). הטּוב כּל־הדּבר relates to the gracious promises of God with regard to the peaceful possession of Canaan, which formed the basis of all the salvation promised to Israel, and the pledge of the fulfilment of all the further promises of God. Notwithstanding the fact that many a tract of country still remained in the hands of the Canaanites, the promise that the land of Canaan should be given to the house of Israel for a possession had been fulfilled; for God had not promised the immediate and total destruction of the Canaanites, but only their gradual extermination (Exodus 23:29-30; Deuteronomy 7:22). And even though the Israelites never came into undisputed possession of the whole of the promised land, to the full extent of the boundaries laid down in Numbers 34:1-12, never conquering Tyre and Sidon for example, the promises of God were no more broken on that account than they were through the circumstance, that after the death of Joshua and the elders his contemporaries, Israel was sometimes hard pressed by the Canaanites; since the complete fulfilment of this promise was inseparably connected with the fidelity of Israel to the Lord.

(Note: With reference to this apparent discrepancy between the promises of God and the actual results, Calvin observes, that "in order to remove every appearance of discrepancy, it is right to distinguish well between the clear, unwavering, and certain fidelity of God in the fulfilment of His promises, and the weakness and indolence of the people, which caused the blessings of God to slip from their hands. Whatever war the people undertook, in whatever direction they carried their standards, there was victory ready to their hand; nor was there anything to retard or prevent the extermination of all their enemies except their own slothfulness. Consequently, although they did not destroy them all, so as to empty the land for their own possession, the truth of God stood out as distinctly as if they had; for there would have been no difficulty in their accomplishment of all that remained to be done, if they had only been disposed to grasp the victories that were ready to their hand.")