“Choose this day whom you will serve”
Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD! (Joshua 24:15 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An inspirational call to make good personal choices.
The cultural key
This beloved verse is the climax of a formal covenant-renewal ceremony at Shechem, structured like an ancient treaty: a recital of the overlord's past acts, then a call to sworn allegiance. The 'choice' is not generic self-improvement but a decisive, public break with rival gods, the ancestral gods of Mesopotamia ('beyond the Euphrates,' the very gods Abraham left) and the local gods of Canaan. 'As for me and my house' asserts the ancient household head's authority to pledge his whole family. It is a loyalty oath to one God alone, the same either-or that runs through Deuteronomy's 'choose life.'
Recovered meaning
Joshua's famous line is a covenant loyalty oath, forcing a clean choice between the LORD and every rival god, ancestral or local. It is not a call to choose well in general but to belong wholly to one Lord.