Joshua 24:15: the choice Joshua puts to the people at Shechem
15But if it seems evil to you that you would serve the Lord, a choice is given to you. Choose today what pleases you, and whom you ought to serve above all else, either the gods that your fathers served in Mesopotamia, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
The famous line is the second half of a sentence whose first half offers a real alternative. Without that first half, the decision turns into a slogan.
Short answer
Joshua 24:15 sets a choice before the people gathered at Shechem: if serving the Lord seems evil to them, a choice is given, between the gods their fathers served in Mesopotamia and the gods of the Amorites. Only after naming the alternatives does Joshua declare his own household’s decision.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
Few verses have been turned into decoration as thoroughly as this one. Printed on a plaque it sounds like a statement of identity. Read whole it is something else: an offer of a choice, made in public, with concrete options on the table.
Where this verse appears
Joshua is near death and has gathered the tribes at Shechem. Before this line he spends several verses retelling the people’s history: the land they received without working for it, the cities they did not build, the vineyards they did not plant.
The previous verse is a command: fear God, serve him with integrity, be truthful, and get rid of the gods their ancestors had served. Our verse opens a rhetorical exception to that command — and if that seems evil to you?
Immediately afterwards the people answer by refusing the very idea of abandoning the Lord, and the scene continues.
What it says
The structure is a choice genuinely offered. Joshua does not ask whether they want to be faithful: in the edition published here he tells them a choice is given, names two specific alternatives — the gods their fathers served in Mesopotamia and the gods of the land they now live in — and tells them to choose today. The deadline matters. The line does not invite reflection; it invites a decision that day.
The closing declaration is about a household, not about a feeling. Joshua speaks as the head of a house in a setting where that included servants and dependants, and he publicly commits all of them. It is a statement about how a home will be run, not an intimate confession.
What the verse does not do is guarantee the household will follow through. The rest of Israel’s story shows the opposite. Declaring is not the same as sustaining, and the book itself knows it.
What to do with it today
Used honestly, the verse is less comfortable than it is on a wall. It asks what you actually serve — not what you would say in an interview — and it asks with today as the deadline. For anyone who leads a household there is a second weight: the decision you make alone shows up in the routine of the people who live with you, and that is where it gets checked.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, today I choose you. Not because it makes a good line, but for what it will look like in the way my house lives this week. Help me hold to it tomorrow as well. Amen.