Jesus at Jericho

Augustine ( Answer to Faustus, a Manichean: (Works of Saint Augustine) , 12.31) observes that Joshua’s name was not “thoughtlessly” given to him at birth. Rather, he was first called “Hoshea,” and his name was changed to Joshua/Jesus to make it clear that he was a foreshadowing of a later Joshua/Jesus. Augustine calls Faustus’s attention to the analogies between the two:

“Let him see the grapes of the land of promise hanging from the tree. Let him see in Jericho, as if in this mortal age, the prostitute; the Lord says that such persons will enter the kingdom of heaven before the proud. Through the window of her house, as if through the mouth of her body, she sends forth something red. This is, of course, to confess the sign of the blood for the sake of the forgiveness of sins so as to attain salvation. Let him see that the walls of the city, like the defenses of this mortal world, fell when the ark of the covenant was carried around them seven times, just as through times, which slip by with the recurrence of seven days, God’s covenant goes around the whole world, so that at the end of time the last enemy, death, may be destroyed, and so that a single house, that is, the single Church, may be set free from condemnation with the wicked, after having been purified from the shame of forgiveness through the window of confession in the blood of forgiveness.”