This command is given twice in the Old Testament, to both Moses and Joshua, and it raises a number of puzzling questions: Who is doing the commanding? What is the significance of the phrase “holy ground”? Why should they take off their sandals? How many sandals should they take off, one or two? Why would the same thing happen to both Moses and Joshua? There are various opinions surrounding all these issues.
Who is the speaker?
Let us first look at the incident of Moses and the burning bush. In that particular case, Gordon states, “Verse 4 makes it clear that the angel of the LORD is none other than God Himself...The concept of the angel of the LORD probably represents the nearest approach in the OT to the Christian revelation of the Divine Son.”
Blair: “there can be no doubt that this was God Himself as seen in human form.”
Rooker: “Many consider the appearances of the angel of the Lord as constituting theophanic events. There are justifiable reasons for viewing these appearances as theophanies, especially since the angel of the Lord is frequently equated with God.”
Knight: “but God's message must be alive, even as God himself is alive. So we are encouraged to envisage the living message as some kind of 'extension of Yahweh's personality', as a projection of the living Word of God reaching through to us in a thought-pattern that the human mind can grasp.”
Propp: “The relation between Deity and angel is somewhat ambiguous in 3:2-4...an angel is a visible manifestation of God.”
Childs: “As has often been observed, there is a characteristic oscillation between the angel of Yahweh being an intermediary and his being a manifestation of Yahweh himself.”
We run into the same sort of uncertainty in considering Joshua's encounter with “the commander of the army of the LORD.”
Butler translates Joshua 5:14 as “I am the prince of the host to Yahweh.” He notes that this particular phrase only appears here and Daniel 8:11, “where the reference is to God himself...Seeing the messenger can be equated with seeing God (Judg 13:22).”
On the other hand, Woudstra says, “It would seem that an angelic figure is intended here, in the sense of the Angel of the Lord (see Gen. 16:7-14; 21:14-21; Judg. 2:1; 6:12,22).”
Boling and Wright attempt to explain the situation in a little more detail: “It is not quite true that Yahweh and the commander are always identified, with the latter as hypostasis [an underlying reality or substance, as opposed to attributes or to that which lacks substance] of the former. Rather, often the angel / commander is a forerunner, as is clear in the story of the enlistment of Gideon to be savior-judge (Judg 6:11-32) and explicit in Mal 3:3. The angels bears the word of the one who sends him, just as a messenger has the authority of the sender; it is not a metaphysical question but a juridical one, as in the Gospel of John which treats the authority of Jesus as that of one sent by God with the latter's word (cf. Isaiah 55).”
What is “holy ground”?
The whole concept of holiness is expressed throughout Leviticus, which lays our three categories of people and things: holy, clean, and unclean. Holy things can come into contact with the clean, but unclean things cannot. And correspondingly, it is possible for adjacent categories to influence one another. Thus, as Woudstra states, “Holiness in the OT has its basis and origin in God. Things, places, and people can be called holy only insofar as they have been set aside for God or claimed by him.”
And Cole adds, “Israel's concept of holiness was not only dynamic but moral: it was constituted not only by the active revelation of God, but by the nature of the One who so revealed Himself. This [Exodus 3:15] is the first occurrence of the word 'holy' in the Bible, and it is significant that the concept is linked with God.”
“God's presence made ordinary ground to be holy ground (Exod 3:5; Zech 2:12).” (Grisanti) In regard to this citation of Zechariah 2:12, Mobley points out: “This is the only reference to Judah, or Israel, as the holy land in the Hebrew Bible (although see, in the Apocrypha, Wis 12:3; 2 Macc 1:7).”
Durham says that “in the ultimate certification of a theophanic site, a place were God is present, Moses is told that he stands now on holy ground.”
Rooker: “God warned Moses that he was on holy ground (Ex 3:5; cf. Josh 5:15). As long as the Lord was present in theophany, the sacred place was holy because God's presence sanctified it.”
Why should they take off their shoes?
This is perhaps the major issue to discuss in relation to these passages. McNeile compares the Muslim and Samaritan practice of removing shoes in holy places. Cole says, “This is still one of the Asian signs of worship.” And Anderson calls it “an ancient custom” before entering a holy place. And Cole reasons that “it may be a relic of very early days when men laid aside all covering and pretense to approach their god.”
Getting a little closer to the biblical world, Hamilton notes that “the fact that the OT, when dealing with priestly vestments, never says anything about covering for the feet may indicate that the priests ministered barefooted.” Van Dam agrees with this deduction.
But none of the above really deals with the reason why foot coverings need to be removed. Here are some of the opinions in the scholarly literature regarding that question, and these reasons are not necessarily mutually exclusive but may be complementary to one another :
1. a sign of respect
F.F. Bruce says, “The removal of the shoes was a mark of reverence in the Divine Presence, as it was a mark of respect to one's host when paying a visit.”
“Moses...must remove his shoes in reverence.” (Durham)
“It is a sign of respect for holy ground.” (Dictionary of Biblical Imagery)
2. to not contaminate holy ground
“The simplest explanation for this restriction is that one should not track dirt into God's house.” (McNeile) Oswalt echoes this sentiment by stating: “The dirt on the soles of Moses' shoes was ordinary dirt, whereas God's presence in the bush made the dirt immediately around it of a different quality.” But this seems to me to be an inadequate explanation since the dirt on Moses' sandals should have become holy also if that were the case.
Milgrom's reasoning at least seems to make more sense. He suggests that leather sandals, which are made of skin from dead animals, might be considered as ritually impure. Hamilton also considers this to be a possible reason.
3. a sign of humility
McNeile explains that “ancient Egyptians removed their shoes before social superiors and there is evidence that bare feet symbolized humility and mortification in Israel (2 Sam 15:30; Isa 20:2; Ezek 24:17,23). Thus, it would be presumptuous to appear before Yahweh shod.”
Cole: “It may be a sign of acceptance of a servant's position, for a slave usually went barefoot (Lk. 15:22).
Two additional OT passages may be of pertinence here although I have not found any Bible scholar who has cited them in the present context. Taking off a sandal was a sign in Ruth 4:7-8 that the closest relative was not willing to carry out his expected duties in regard to a widowed relative. This probably harks back to the levirate marriage regulations in Deuteronomy 25:5-10 in which an unwilling participant was to have his sandal removed as a means of humiliating him. The only problem with this explanation in regard to the Exodus and Joshua passages in question is that there is a world of difference between humbling a person in the presence of someone superior and humiliating him in the sight of others for some personal sin he has committed.
4. they are not needed
As one possible reason, Hamilton says, “In the presence of God there is neither dirt nor possibility of injury, and so sandals are unnecessary.” But that seems to be the least likely explanation of all since it would have also been just as unnecessary to go to the trouble of removing them.
5. to communicate God's holiness to his servants
If holy items can be contaminated with clean and unclean items, then the reverse is also possible. Thus, I remember reading one commentator stating that by removing their sandals, Moses and Joshua might thereby be able to share in God's holiness. Unfortunately, I cannot locate the source of that idea.
How many shoes are involved?
Propp notes that some manuscripts read “sandal” in place of “sandals” just as some have “foot” in place of “feet.” He concludes: “The use of the singular must be distributive: 'each sandal.'”
Why is there such a similarity between the same event happening to Moses and Joshua?
The first fact to establish is that there was indeed a similarity. Thus, Nelson is only one of many scholars to state: “Joshua's encounter with the commander of Yahweh's army at Jericho echoes the experience of Moses at the burning bush.” Younger points out that the commander's command in Joshua 5:15 is “a direct quotation from Ex 3:5, again showing that Joshua was the divinely appointed successor of Moses.”
On a more negative note, Butler says, “The words are borrowed from the experience of Moses to attest once more the dependence of Joshua upon Moses. Even his 'call experience' with the divine messenger is simply a replica of the Mosaic one. Wherever he turns, Joshua cannot escape the Mosaic shadow.”
New Testament Application
There is actually a third place in the Bible where the phrase “Take off your sandals” appears. That is in Stephen's long speech before an angry crowd, as recorded in Acts 7. As part of his recounting of Jewish history in order to get these Jews to repent, Stephen reminds them of Moses' experience at the burning bush. Here is what four prominent commentators have to say regarding verses 30-33:
Bruce: “Here, then, we have a central principle of the gospel: that no place on earth possesses an innate sanctity of its own.”
Stott: This statement was central to Stephen's thesis. There was holy ground outside the holy land. Wherever God is, is holy.”
Neil: “Not only the Temple was a 'holy place' (6:13); wherever God choose to reveal himself was holy ground (verse 33).”
Fitzmyer: “Moses does not build there a shrine or a temple, and this has a bearing on Stephen's argument to come.” See Acts 7:44-50.
Stephen's cavalier attitude toward the exclusive position the Jews felt they had in relation to God, along his disregard for the supposedly unique holiness of the Jerusalem temple, was met with expected violence.
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