Bible Quiz: Book of Joshua
A river that stacks up in a heap miles upstream, a scarlet rope left hanging in a window, a day the sun would not go down, five kings sealed in a cave behind rolled stones, and a wedge of gold buried under a tent floor. Fifteen questions drawn from a bank of 56, covering the whole book — the crossing, Jericho, Achan and Ai, the Gibeonites’ mouldy bread, the thirty-one kings, Caleb at eighty-five, the forty-eight Levite cities, and the great stone at Shechem. Every answer shows the verse behind it, so a miss sends you straight back to the text.
That round moved across the whole book — Shittim to Shechem. The Jordan at flood stage, Rahab’s flax and her scarlet thread, seven priests and seven trumpets, thirty-six men lost outside a small town, hailstones at the going down to Beth-horon, a lost book called Jasher, Hazor burned, the land measured out field by field, and a great stone set under an oak as a witness.
30 Days Walking with Jesus (Free 3-Day Sample)
Short daily readings on what Jesus actually said and did — a next step for anyone who has just walked the length of Joshua’s story and wondered where the whole thing is heading.
Get the free guide →Free.
More games at the Free Games Hub →
Common Questions About the Book of Joshua
What is the book of Joshua about?
Joshua picks up the moment Moses dies, runs twenty-four chapters, and splits almost exactly in half. The first twelve are the campaign: a river crossing made at flood stage, the fall of Jericho, a humiliating defeat at a small town called Ai caused by one man’s theft, a treaty signed with a city that lied about how far it had travelled, and a running tally that ends with thirty-one defeated kings. The second twelve are the land office — who got which hills, which towns went to the Levites, where the six cities of refuge sat, and which tribes could not clear their own territory. Then the book closes at Shechem with an old man asking an entire nation to choose out loud who they will serve, and answering for his own household first. Most people know the trumpets and the walls and almost nothing after chapter six, which is where the strangest details actually live.
Did the sun really stand still in Joshua 10?
Joshua 10:12-14 is one of the most argued-over passages in the Old Testament. The text says Joshua spoke in the sight of Israel — “Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon” — and that the sun “hasted not to go down about a whole day.” What usually gets missed is that the passage openly cites an outside source: “Is not this written in the book of Jasher?” Jasher is quoted once more, in 2 Samuel 1:18, and no copy of it survives, so Joshua is quoting a book nobody can check. Readings range from a literal lengthening of the day, to a prayer answered by the hailstorm two verses earlier that broke the heat and the enemy together, to an ancient victory poem quoted as a poem. The line the chapter itself lands on is not astronomical at all: “there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man.”
Who was Rahab in the book of Joshua?
Rahab lived in the wall of Jericho, and the text calls her a harlot without softening it. When two Israelite spies came into the city she brought them up to the roof and hid them under stalks of flax laid out to dry, sent the search party off in the wrong direction, and then asked for her family’s lives. The agreed sign was a line of scarlet thread tied in her window — the same rope she had used to lower the two men down the outside of the wall. When the city fell, Joshua 6:25 says Joshua saved her and her whole father’s household alive, “and she dwelleth in Israel even unto this day.” She is one of only two women named in the roll of faith in Hebrews 11, James 2:25 holds her up as an example, and Matthew 1:5 places her in the family line that runs down to Jesus. The only named survivor of Jericho is the one person in the story nobody would have picked.
Why does the book of Joshua spend so long on boundaries and city lists?
Chapters 13 through 21 are essentially a property registry, and most readers skim them. They are there because the book is making an argument: every promise made back at the river gets cashed out in specific ground — this spring, this ridge, this town with its suburbs. The lists also catch things the battle story never would. Caleb turns up at eighty-five and asks for the hill country with the giants still living on it. His daughter Achsah, handed a dry southern field, rides out to ask her father for water as well and is given both the upper springs and the nether springs. The tribe of Levi receives forty-eight scattered cities and no territory at all, because “the LORD God of Israel was their inheritance.” Judah “could not drive out” the Jebusites from Jerusalem, recorded plainly, with no spin on it. And the whole section is signed off in Joshua 21:45 with the line the paperwork exists to earn: “There failed not ought of any good thing which the LORD had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.”
How do you study for a Bible quiz on the book of Joshua?
Teams that do well on Joshua tend to treat it as two different books, because the questions come out differently from each half. For chapters 1 to 12, learn the sequence and the numbers: two spies sent out of Shittim, two thousand cubits of space behind the ark, seven priests and seven trumpets, thirty-six men lost at Ai, five kings sealed in a cave at Makkedah, thirty-one kings in the closing tally. For chapters 13 to 24, learn the pairings: Caleb and Hebron, Othniel and Debir, Joshua and Timnath-serah, three cities of refuge west of the Jordan and three east, forty-eight Levite cities, the tabernacle at Shiloh, the altar named Ed. Then stop rereading and start testing yourself, because recall is what a quiz round actually measures, and rereading has a way of feeling like learning without being it. That is exactly what the quiz above is built for: fifteen questions pulled fresh from a bank of fifty-six, in a new order every round, with the exact verse shown after every answer — so play the Book of Joshua quiz above and find out which half of the book you really know.