The Death of Joshua son of Nun
Twenty-eight years after the entry into the Land, Joshua dies — the last leader who had learned from Moses face to face. With him the generation of eyewitnesses departs.
Joshua led Israel for twenty-eight years: seven of war, seven of dividing the land, then years of settlement. Before he died he gathered the tribes at Shechem — where Abraham first heard the promise of this land — and retold the whole story, from idol-worshipping Terach to the day they entered cities they had not built and ate from vineyards they had not planted. Then he forced a choice: if serving God does not please you, choose today whom you will serve. The people answered, "We will serve the Lord." Joshua made a covenant with them, wrote the words in a scroll, and set up a great stone under the oak: this stone has heard everything, he said; it will be a witness against you.
He died at a hundred and ten — the same age as Joseph — and was buried in his own portion at Timnath-serah in the hill country of Ephraim. The book of Judges records what followed with unmistakable sorrow: Israel served God all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived him and had seen the great works; and then another generation arose that knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel. Between eyewitness and forgetting lay exactly one generation — and that gap is what opens the era of the Judges.