Approaching Scripture

Dale Ralph Davis gifts us with some humble wisdom in the Preface to his commentary on Joshua. 

This commentary is obviously not a critical, linguistic, grammatical, archeological thesaurus on Joshua. There is a reason for that: I neither can nor want to write that sort of commentary. Certainly, you will find grammatical details or critical discussions – at least bits and pieces of them – in this study. But the focus is necessarily elsewhere. I do not know multiple Near Eastern languages ( such as Ugaritic or Akkadian) and so cannot stress linguistics; I am not a trained archeologist or historian and so do not emphasize backgrounds; and I am skeptical of the  usefulness of cerebral critical positions, which frequently seem intent on considering everything but the text as it stands, and so will not enter barren disputes.  My purpose has been to provide a model of what a pastor can do in his biblical study if he will sweat over the Hebrew text and assume that the text as we have it was meant to be bread from God for his people. My conviction is that if one is willing to keep his Hebrew Bible before his eyes, a congregation of God’s next to his heart, and the struggle of hermeneutics (i.e. what does this writer intend to proclaim to God’s people in his time, and how do I faithfully hold on to that intention and helpfully apply that text to God’s contemporary flock?) in his mind, he will have manna to set before God’s hungering people. (9)

This approach yields much fruit. A brief example–Davis comments on Joshua 1:7-8–

Joshua is commanded to be especially strong and bold ‘to be careful to do according to all the torah (instruction) which Moses my servant commanded you’ (v.7). God does not withhold the formula which leads to such obedience: ‘you shall meditate (mutter) over this torah document day and night, so that you will be careful to do according to all that is written in it’ (v.8). Constant, careful absorbing  of the word of God leads to obedience to it. Lack of study results in lack of obedience. Notice how the writer stresses this urgency of obedience to Yahweh’s words in the last chapters as well (22:5; 23:6; cf. 8:30-35). (19)

Is this not what we learn from the Psalmist?

Your word I have hidden in my heart,
That I might not sin against You.  (Psalm 119:11)