YHWH Is Deliverance
The Same Name. The Same Person. Two Moments.
Part 2 of 14
The Name
His name was Yehoshua (Joshua).
It means: YHWH is deliverance.
That is not a description of what he would accomplish. It is a declaration of who was present in him and acting through him. YHWH is deliverance, not YHWH will deliver someday, not YHWH has commissioned this man to deliver, but YHWH is deliverance, present tense, in this person, in this moment, doing this specific work.
The name Yehoshua is the longer and earlier form of the name Yeshua (Jesus). They are not similar names. They are the same name. Yeshua is Yehoshua shortened. The meaning is identical. The declaration is identical. The divine signature is identical.
There is no possibility that this is coincidence. In the Hebrew framework, names are not assigned casually. They declare the nature and work of the one who bears them. When YHWH placed the name of deliverance on the man who would lead Israel through the Jordan and into the inheritance, and then placed the same name on the one who would accomplish the ultimate deliverance, he was signing both moments with the same signature. Same name. Same presence. Same work. Different moment in the same story.
Yehoshua and Yeshua are one name. They are one person appearing in two moments of the same reign.
The Commission
When Moshe (Moses) was told he would not enter the promised land, YHWH told him to commission Yehoshua in his place.
The specific words of the commission are recorded in Deuteronomy 31: Be strong and courageous. It is YHWH your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
Moshe then says to Yehoshua directly, in front of all Israel: Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land that YHWH has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. It is YHWH who goes before you. He will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.
The commission is not Yehoshua being sent alone. The commission is YHWH going with Yehoshua, YHWH present in Yehoshua, to accomplish what the name declared. YHWH is deliverance means YHWH delivers. And the one through whom he delivers is Yehoshua. The name and the presence are inseparable.
The Jordan
The crossing of the Jordan is not a military event with a theological interpretation laid on top afterward. It is a theological event in which YHWH is present and acting, and Yehoshua is the vessel through whom that presence moves.
YHWH says to Yehoshua: Today I will begin to exalt you in the sight of all Israel, so that they may know that as I was with Moshe (Moses), so I will be with you. The ark of the covenant, the physical representation of the divine presence, enters the water first. The moment the feet of the priests carrying the ark touch the Jordan, the waters stop. The entire nation passes through on dry ground.
This is the same event as the crossing of the sea under Miriam (Mary) and Moshe. The same YHWH. The same act of stopping the water. The same people passing through to the other side. And on the other side, the inheritance. What the sea delivered them from, the Jordan delivered them into.
YHWH is deliverance. At the sea he delivered from bondage. At the Jordan he delivered into the inheritance. Both crossings. Both under the name that means YHWH delivers. Because YHWH was present in both moments, in Moshe at the sea, in Yehoshua at the Jordan, doing the same work at two stages of the same journey.
At the sea: delivered from.
At the Jordan: delivered into.
One act of deliverance in two movements. One name across both.
The Circumcision and the Passover
Before the campaign to take the land begins, YHWH tells Yehoshua to circumcise the entire generation born in the wilderness. Israel had not observed circumcision during the forty years of wandering. At a place called Gilgal, the entire male population was circumcised.
Then YHWH says: Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. The name Gilgal means rolling. The reproach, the shame of bondage, the identity of slavery, was rolled away. Not carried forward into the inheritance. Removed before entry.
Then Israel kept the Passover. The night after circumcision. The covenant sealed in the flesh. The memorial of the original deliverance observed at the threshold of the new one.
The pattern Yehoshua enacts before the first battle is the same pattern the cross establishes. The old identity, the bondage, the reproach, the Adamic nature, removed. The covenant sealed. The memorial of the original deliverance observed. Then the entrance into the inheritance.
YHWH is deliverance was not only acting in the military campaign. He was already acting in the preparation, in the rolling away of reproach, in the sealing of the covenant, in the keeping of the memorial. The name declared the entire work, not just the visible battle.
The Commander Who Met Yehoshua
Just before the walls of Yericho (Jericho) fell, Yehoshua looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Yehoshua went to him and asked: Are you for us or for our adversaries?
The man answered: No, but I am the commander of the army of YHWH. Now I have come.
Yehoshua fell on his face to the earth and worshipped.
He said: What does my lord say to his servant?
And the commander of YHWH’s army said to Yehoshua: Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.
Take off your sandals. That is the command YHWH gave to Moshe at the burning bush. Standing on holy ground. The same command. The same holiness. The same presence.
The commander of YHWH’s army is not an angel. Angels in the Hebrew scriptures do not accept worship. They correct it. This figure accepts Yehoshua’s worship. He commands him to remove his sandals on holy ground, which is the specific language of the divine presence. This is the same presence that spoke from the bush, that led the people as cloud and fire, that parted the sea. This is Yeshua (Jesus), the pre-incarnate YHWH, appearing to the man who bore his own name, commissioning the campaign of deliverance that the name had already declared.
The commander who appeared to Yehoshua received worship and commanded holy ground.
This was not an angel. This was the one whose name Yehoshua bore, appearing to his own vessel.
Yericho
The Walls That Fell
The campaign that followed was not a military campaign in the conventional sense. The strategy YHWH gave for Yericho (Jericho) was to march around the city in silence for six days, with the priests carrying the ark, the presence, ahead of the army. On the seventh day, march seven times. Then the priests blow the trumpets. Then the people shout. Then the walls fall.
The deliverance of Yericho was not accomplished by military force. It was accomplished by the presence of YHWH going before the people, the covenant testimony of the ark at the front, and the voice of Israel responding to the signal of the priests. YHWH is deliverance meant YHWH does the delivering. The people marched. YHWH brought the walls down.
This is the pattern that runs through the entire book of Yehoshua (Joshua). The victories are YHWH’s. The defeats, the single defeat, at Ai, occur when Israel acts independently of YHWH’s instruction. The name declared the reality. YHWH is deliverance means every deliverance in this account is YHWH delivering. Yehoshua is the vessel. The presence is the power.
The Same Name
The Same Moment Twice
When Yeshua (Jesus) came to the Jordan to be immersed by Yochanan (John the Baptist), the parallel is not literary decoration. It is structural identity.
Yehoshua led Israel through the Jordan into the promised inheritance. Yeshua went into the Jordan at the beginning of his public ministry, the ministry that would lead to the cross, through which the ultimate inheritance would be secured for all of humanity.
At Yehoshua’s Jordan, the waters parted and the people passed through. At Yeshua’s Jordan, the heavens parted and the Spirit descended. At Yehoshua’s Jordan, YHWH said I will be with you. At Yeshua’s Jordan, the Father said this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
Both crossings. Both commissions. Both beginnings of the work the name declared. The same YHWH, in Yehoshua the first time, fully present as Yeshua the second time, moving through water to begin the work of delivering a people into their inheritance.
Yehoshua crossed the Jordan with Israel and gave them the land of Canaan. Yeshua (Jesus) crossed the Jordan alone and gave all of humanity the inheritance of the righteousness of God. One was the type, no, not a type. One was the earlier moment of the same act. The same deliverance at a different stage. The same YHWH. The same name. The same work carried to its completion.
Yehoshua entered the water and a nation received its inheritance. Yeshua entered the water and all of humanity received theirs.
One name. One act. One person. Two moments of the same reign.
The Conclusion Paul Draws
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes about the wilderness generation, those who came out of Egypt, passed through the sea, and wandered for forty years before Yehoshua led them across the Jordan.
He says: they all passed through the sea, they all ate the same spiritual food, they all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was the Messiah.
Paul is not saying the rock was a symbol of the Messiah. He is saying the rock was the Messiah. Present. Providing. Sustaining. The same presence that would be fully manifest in Yeshua was already present in the wilderness, in the manna, in the water from the rock, in the cloud and the fire, in the ark that preceded the army, in the name of the one who led them across the Jordan.
The reign was already active. The presence was already there. The name Yehoshua bore was not pointing forward to a future arrival. It was declaring a present one.
YHWH is deliverance. He was delivering in the wilderness. He was delivering at the Jordan. He was delivering at Yericho. He was delivering through the entire campaign of the promised land. And a thousand years later, under the same name in its shorter form, he delivered once, completely, finally, universally, at the cross and through the empty tomb.
Yehoshua (Joshua). YHWH is deliverance. Not a type. Not a shadow. Not a figure pointing forward to someone who had not yet arrived. A moment in the active reign of the one who was already seated, already delivering, already present in every vessel that bore his name.
The same name. The same person. The Jordan the first time. The cross the second time. And then, as Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy defeated. The reign completed.
God all in all.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams