Road-Food and Home-Food

Joshua 5:10-12

While the people of Israel were encamped at Gilgal, they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening on the plains of Jericho. And the day after the Passover, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. And the manna ceased the day after they ate of the produce of the land. And there was no longer manna for the people of Israel, but they ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year.

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God (Vol. 1)

The manna stops. From now on the people will draw their nourishment from “the produce of Canaan.” This . . . was a dramatic signal that the days of wandering were over, and the fulfillment of the promise for a new land was beginning to unfold before their eyes. The change must have been both frightening and exiting, especially to an entire generation that had never known life without the security of manna (July 3).

Aaron Orendorff,

Joshua 5 is about transition: leaving behind the old and taking hold of the new. This process, as Carson points out, is both “frightening and exciting.” Frightening because, up to this point, the people of Israel—an “entire generation”—had received, day after day, manna from heaven to meet their every nutritional need. The fruit of the land of Canaan must have tasted amazing by comparison, but the stability of the manna would have been a hard thing to let go of.

Joshua’s point seems to be this: there’s road-food and there’s home-food and when you finally make it home one of the first things to go is the food you ate on the way. This comparison makes me think of dorm-food on a college campus (the same slop day after day) verses a meal prepared at home. Sure, you can count on dorm food (it’s always gonna be there), and it’s certainly easier to just slide your student ID card than it is to prepare an entire meal; but that’s all part of the transition between college and career: “frightening and exciting.”