Joshua 1:3

Every place. It has been supposed that verse 3 was intended to imply the ease with which the Israelites were to conquer the whole land, as illustrated by the taking of Jericho. It was only their unfaithfulness to God that, in any instance, as later at Ai, rendered the conquest more difficult than it would otherwise have been.

The sole of your foot. It was primitive custom to measure out by foot the land to be cultivated or built upon. The footprint was regarded as the symbol of possession, denoting that the land had been marked out by the foot of the supposed owner, who thereby acquired it as his own property. This still holds, figuratively, in the taking of a homestead.

The implication, then, is that they must do something to gain possession of the land. The Israelites were to have only as much of the land as they actually trod with the soles of their feet. Theirs was a bountiful promise, but it was to be realized only by their own exertion. It is a divine law, as true of our spiritual inheritance as of the ancient inheritance of literal Israel, that only as we march forward in faith, claiming the promises, do they become ours. We have the Bible, and may think we know it well; yet of this vast field of unlimited treasures we may in reality possess no more than a mere fragment. Only the “place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon” is yours. Only that which we appropriate to ourselves is our own. Large neglected areas await our possession. The same is true of the privilege and blessings of grace. It is limited only by the bounds we ourselves put upon it. What a vast, unclaimed, untrodden land of promise it is There is, finally, the heavenly Canaan, which God has promised to all true Israelites down through the ages.