Nun

Nun (also rendered Non) is the father of Joshua, the man who succeeded Moses as leader of Israel; in Scripture he is named almost exclusively in the patronymic formula “Joshua the son of Nun.” He is a genealogical figure rather than an acting character: no word, deed, journey, or death of his own is recorded in the passages where his name occurs. For that reason the name functions in the text mainly as a stable identifier, distinguishing this Joshua from other men of the same name and tying him to a known family line.

What Scripture says about him is therefore indirect. Joshua son of Nun appears as “a young man” who would not leave the Tent (Exodus 33:11), as one of the two faithful spies alongside Caleb son of Jephunneh (Numbers 14:6), as one of only two men of that generation left alive after the wilderness years (Numbers 14:30, 14:38; 26:65), as “a man in whom is the Spirit” whom Moses commissions by laying hands on him (Numbers 27:18; Deuteronomy 31:23), and as the leader “full of the spirit of wisdom” whom Israel obeyed after Moses’ death (Deuteronomy 34:9; Joshua 1:1). He sends spies to Jericho (Joshua 2:1) and shares in distributing the inheritances (Joshua 14:1). The patronymic also carries the weight of fulfilled promise: the rebuilding of Jericho under Hiel is dated “according to Yahweh’s word, which he spoke by Joshua the son of Nun” (1 Kings 16:34). As a matter of established linguistic and historical detail, the same name appears in the shortened form Non in the genealogy of Ephraim (1 Chronicles 7:27), and the Hebrew name’s etymology is not explained anywhere in the text; suggestions such as a link to the word for “fish” remain conjectural.

Christian traditions have paid Nun himself little separate attention, and the text gives no basis for claims about his own faith or fate; where readings diverge is over his son’s commissioning. In Catholic and Orthodox teaching, Moses laying hands on Joshua and Joshua being filled with the spirit of wisdom (Numbers 27:18–23; Deuteronomy 34:9) is often read as an Old Testament precedent for ordination and the passing on of ministry; many Protestant readers treat the same episode as a single public appointment to office rather than a sacramental pattern. Patristic and later typological exegesis also read Joshua as a prefiguration of Christ, since the Greek form of his name is the same as Jesus, while historical readings treat him primarily as a settlement leader. None of these readings makes a claim about Nun that the texts themselves supply.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.