Courage
Courage in Scripture is not a temperament but an obedience. The summons "Be strong and of good courage" recurs as a charge spoken by Yahweh, by Moses, by Joshua, and by David, always grounded on the presence of Yahweh himself rather than on the strength of the one being addressed. Around that charge gather a wider set of motifs the Topical Reference Bible groups under courage and fear: the fearlessness of those who trust Yahweh, the personal bravery of named figures, the snare of the fear of man, the melting heart of the coward, the terror Yahweh sends on hostile nations, the encouragement spoken to the discouraged, and the boldness of approach the New Testament ties to the blood of Jesus.
The Charge to Be Strong and of Good Courage
The formula clusters along the line of succession from Moses to Joshua to Solomon. Moses speaks it to Israel before crossing into the land: "Be strong and of good courage, don't fear, nor be afraid of them: for Yahweh your God, it is he [his Speech] who goes with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you" (Deut 31:6). The charge is then transferred to Joshua, repeated three times in the opening chapter — first as commission ("Be strong and of good courage; for you will cause this people to inherit the land"), then as obedience to torah ("Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law"), then as renewed assurance: "Haven't I commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; don't be frightened, neither be dismayed: for [the Speech of] Yahweh your God is with you wherever you go" (Josh 1:6-9). Joshua passes it on to his captains at the necks of the kings of the south (Josh 10:25) and to all Israel at the end of his life (Josh 23:6).
David repeats the same words to Solomon in turn: "Be strong and of good courage, and do it: don't be afraid, nor be dismayed; for Yahweh God, even my God, is with you; he will not fail you, nor forsake you, until all the work for the service of the house of Yahweh is finished" (1 Chr 28:20). Hezekiah, facing Sennacherib, gives the charge a military setting that turns on numerical asymmetry: "Be strong and of good courage, don't be afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him; for there is a greater with us than with him" (2 Chr 32:7). Shecaniah uses the same words to enlist Ezra to act on the matter of the foreign wives: "Arise; for the matter belongs to you, and we are with you: be of good courage, and do it" (Ezra 10:4). The verbal continuity binds the charge across very different settings — succession, temple-building, siege, reform — and keeps the same ground under it: Yahweh is the one who goes, and that fact is what makes courage a duty rather than a wish.
Fearlessness in Yahweh
Where the imperative says "do not fear," the Psalms and Isaiah supply the matching confession: I will not fear, because Yahweh is with me. "Though a host should encamp against me, My heart will not fear: Though war should rise against me, Even then I will be confident" (Ps 27:3). "[The Speech of] Yahweh is on my side; I will not fear: What can man do to me?" (Ps 118:6). Psalm 46 generalizes the same posture against cosmic threat — "Therefore we will not fear, though the earth changes, And though the mountains shake into the heart of the seas" (Ps 46:2) — and Psalm 91 extends it across the night: "You will not be afraid for the terror by night, Nor for the arrow that flies by day" (Ps 91:5). The settled heart is the mark: "His heart is established, he will not be afraid, Until he sees [his desire] on his adversaries" (Ps 112:8).
Isaiah carries the same confession into prophetic speech. "Look, [the Speech of] God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation" (Isa 12:2). Proverbs distills the contrast as a single line: "The wicked flee when no man pursues; But the righteous are bold as a lion" (Prov 28:1). Sirach states the same ground from the side of the fearer: "He who fears the Lord will not be afraid, He will not lose courage, for he is his hope" (Sir 34:16). In each case the absence of fear is not native to the speaker; it is the shadow cast by the presence of Yahweh.
Examples of Personal Bravery
Several figures act on the charge before any general principle is articulated for them. Jonathan, weighing a raid on the Philistine garrison with only his armor-bearer, reasons that numbers are not what saves: "it may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint to Yahweh to save by many or by few" (1 Sam 14:6). David, presenting himself before Saul as a candidate against Goliath, refuses to let Israel's panic decide the outcome: "Don't let the heart of man fail because of him; your slave will go and fight with this Philistine" (1 Sam 17:32). Caleb at eighty-five claims the hill country still occupied by the Anakim on the same logic: "it may be that [the Speech of] Yahweh will be with me, and I will drive them out, as Yahweh spoke" (Josh 14:12). Micaiah, alone against four hundred court prophets, sets the rule for prophetic speech: "As Yahweh lives, what Yahweh says to me, that I will speak" (1 Kgs 22:14).
The line of personal bravery extends past the conquest. Nehemiah, urged to take refuge in the temple from a hired prophet, refuses the offer of safety as itself a kind of disobedience: "Should a man such as I flee? And who is there, that, being such as I, would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in" (Neh 6:11). Hebrews reads two episodes from Moses' life through the same lens: his parents "were not afraid of the king's commandment" (Heb 11:23), and Moses himself "by faith ... forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible" (Heb 11:27). Joseph of Arimathaea stands at the close of the Gospel narrative as a late example: "a councilor of honorable estate, who also himself was looking for the kingdom of God; and he boldly went in to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus" (Mark 15:43).
In 1 Maccabees the same pattern is given exhortative form by Judas before Beth-horon: "It is an easy matter for many to be shut up in the hands of a few: and there is no difference in the sight of the God of heaven to deliver with a great multitude, or with a small company: For the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength comes from heaven. ... And the Lord himself will overthrow them before our face: but as for you⁺, don't fear them" (1 Macc 3:18-22).
The Courage of Conviction
A distinct strand of bravery is courage to refuse a command that would compromise allegiance to God. The three Hebrews answer Nebuchadnezzar without hedging: "O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If it is [so], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up" (Dan 3:16-18). Daniel under the edict against prayer continues without alteration: "when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house (now his windows were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem) and he knelt on his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did previously" (Dan 6:10). The shape of the courage is not bravado but continuation — doing what was already commanded, with the new prohibition simply ignored.
The Fear of Man
The opposite vice is named directly: "The fear of man brings a snare; But whoever puts his trust in Yahweh will be safe" (Prov 29:25). Yahweh through Isaiah identifies the absurdity of the fear: "I, even I, am he who comforts you⁺: who are you, that you are afraid of common man who will die, and of the son of man who will be made as grass" (Isa 51:12). Jesus speaks the same logic to his friends: "Don't be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do" (Luke 12:4).
The Fourth Gospel narrates the snare in operation. The crowd at the feast: "no man spoke openly of him for fear of the Jews" (John 7:13). The parents of the man born blind: "These things his parents said, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man should confess him [to be] Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue" (John 9:22). The rulers: "even of the rulers many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess [it], lest they should be put out of the synagogue" (John 12:42). Paul records the snare catching even Peter at Antioch: "before some came from James, he ate with the Gentiles; but when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision" (Gal 2:12). The fear of man is not unbelief simply, but belief silenced.
Faint-Heartedness and Cowardice
Where fearlessness is settled, faint-heartedness is contagious. The spies at Kadesh see the giants and read themselves accordingly: "we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Num 13:33), and the report makes the next generation's fathers melt: "Our brothers have made our heart to melt, saying, The people are greater and more numerous than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven" (Deut 1:28). The deuteronomic war code anticipates the contagion and screens for it: "What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return to his house, lest his brothers' heart melt as his heart" (Deut 20:8). On the other side of the Jordan Rahab confesses the inverted form of the same dynamic: "as soon as we had heard it, our hearts melted, neither did there remain anymore spirit in any man, because of you⁺: for Yahweh your⁺ God, he is God in heaven above, and on earth beneath" (Josh 2:11).
Heathen Nations Under the Power of Yahweh's Terror
The melted heart of Canaan is itself an act of Yahweh, named in Scripture as a "terror" sent ahead of Israel. The Song of the Sea anticipates it: "Terror and dread falls on them; By the greatness of your arm they are as still as a stone; Until your people pass over, O Yahweh, Until the people pass over who you have purchased" (Exod 15:16). It is enacted around Jacob: "they journeyed: and a terror of God was on the cities that were round about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob" (Gen 35:5). The same agency appears later under the kings: "the fear of Yahweh fell on all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, so that they made no war against Jehoshaphat" (2 Chr 17:10). The motif inverts the relation between numbers and outcome: when Yahweh sends terror, Israel's small force is enough; when he withholds it, Israel's panic does the enemy's work for him.
Encouragement Spoken by Yahweh
Across the canon the words "Don't be afraid" are spoken by Yahweh himself, or by his messenger, in moments where a human is collapsing. To Isaac at Beersheba: "Don't be afraid, for [my Speech is] with you, and will bless you, and multiply your seed for my slave Abraham's sake" (Gen 26:24). Through Moses at the sea: "Don't be⁺ afraid, stand still, and see the salvation of Yahweh, which he will work for you⁺ today" (Exod 14:13). To Elisha's servant ringed with chariots: "Don't be afraid; for those who are with us are more than those who are with them" (2 Kgs 6:16).
Isaiah gathers the formula into the most concentrated expression: "Don't be afraid, for [my Speech] is with you; don't be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness" (Isa 41:10). The reason given is consistently relational: ownership, redemption, presence. "Don't be afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, [my Speech] will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you: when you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, neither will the flame kindle on you" (Isa 43:1-2). The formula carries into the Gospel and Apocalypse: the messenger at the empty tomb tells the women, "Don't be amazed: you⁺ seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified: he is risen" (Mark 16:6); the risen Christ tells John, "Don't be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I became dead, and look, I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of Hades" (Rev 1:17-18).
Boldness Through Christ
The New Testament names a particular kind of courage tied to access. The Greek word the UPDV renders "boldness" denotes the freedom of approach proper to those entitled to enter. In Christ, "we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him" (Eph 3:12). Faithful service in office produces the same posture: those who have served well "gain to themselves a good standing, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 3:13). Hebrews makes the connection structural — boldness is what the high-priestly work of Jesus opens for those who hold to him: "Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help [us] in time of need" (Heb 4:16); "Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus" (Heb 10:19). And John presses the same boldness forward to the day of judgment: "In this love has been made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). Where the Old Testament charge to courage rested on Yahweh going with his people, the New Testament boldness rests on Jesus having already gone before them through the veil.
The Watchman Who Was Not Found
Two passages frame the absence of courage as a public catastrophe. Jeremiah is sent to look: "Run⁺ to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places of it, if you⁺ can find a man, if there is any who does justly, who seeks truth; and I will pardon her" (Jer 5:1). Ezekiel speaks the verdict in similar terms: "I sought for a man among them, that should build up the wall, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none" (Ezek 22:30). The argument is set against the courage of conviction in the previous sections: where there is no one willing to stand, the city falls; where Yahweh finds even one, the case for pardon is open. Courage in Scripture is finally judged at this scale — not personal disposition, but a willingness to take the gap when no one else will.