About this print

Be Strong and of a Good Courage, Joshua 1:9

A man with a shepherd's staff looks across a river at sunrise toward a walled city he has never entered: Joshua on the edge of the Promised Land, with the command God gave him there.

Joshua at the river's edge

We stand just behind Joshua. He has curly brown hair held by a thin band, a long cream tunic belted at the waist, a blue-gray cloak and a heavy terracotta mantle across his shoulders. His right hand holds a tall, slightly crooked wooden staff planted on the rocks where he stands.

Below him a broad river curves away between bushes and reeds, shining in the early light. On a rise across the water, a fortified city with square towers catches the sun, surrounded by cypresses. Clouds tinted peach and lilac spread over the hills. The verse is lettered in five lines: “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.” and Joshua 1:9 below it.

What does Joshua 1:9 mean?

The book of Joshua opens right after the death of Moses. For forty years Moses had led Israel through the wilderness; now he is gone, the people are camped on the east bank of the Jordan, and his former assistant must take them across into Canaan. The river, according to Joshua 3, was in flood at harvest time.

In the first nine verses God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous three times, each with a slightly different emphasis. The first concerns the land, the second concerns keeping the law of Moses and meditating on it day and night, and the third, verse 9, concerns fear itself. It begins “Have not I commanded thee?”: courage here is not a personality trait but an order, grounded in a promise of presence. God does not say the road will be easy, only that he will be on it, wherever it leads.

The words echo what Moses had said to Joshua in Deuteronomy 31, and at the end of the chapter the people repeat them back to their new leader. A command passed from one generation to the next, it has become a verse for every threshold.

Gifts for graduates, sons and new leaders

A person standing on the brink of new territory is exactly what a graduation feels like, which is why this print is so often given to a son or daughter finishing school, starting military service, or moving away for a first job. It also suits a man taking on new responsibility: a new father, a new pastor, a new business.

The composition is strong and vertical, so it holds its own on a large wall in a study, an office or an entryway, framed in dark wood or black.

Read Joshua 1 and what it means