The Rabbis of the Hebrews think that Joshua was not filled with that spirit until after the thirtieth day from the death of Moses; and to them assents Abulensis (on Joshua ch. 1, quest. 4), in these words: “That fulfilling of wisdom is properly said to have been after the death of Moses and the completion of the mourning, as is plain from Deuteronomy 34, when it is said, ‘and the children of Israel wept [for him] 30 days in the plains of Moab, and the days of the mourning of those mourning Moses were completed.’ But Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom; therefore it seems that the 30 days of mourning over Moses were completed before Joshua was filled with wisdom. And since perhaps it will be answered that that completion does not induce this [conclusion], but only that the Israelites did not depart from the place of mourning until the 30 [days] were finished — it is to be said [that this answer] cannot stand. For to this it sufficed that it was said in the letter [text], ‘and the children of Israel wept for him in the plains of Moab 30 days’; therefore they did not depart from the plains until the 30 days were completed. Nor did it need to be added, ‘and the days of those mourning Moses were completed’ — unless there be something else to which it be referred; and it must necessarily be referred to the immediate [following]. Therefore, since there follows there, ‘But Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom,’ it must be said that the sense is: that after the days of mourning Moses were completed, Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom. And then this could not be, except in an apparition of God and a strengthening, of which is said in ch. 1.” But in the explanation of that same chapter [Josh. 1], straightway at the beginning, Masius denies these [things]. “For the rest,” he says, “by how great an interval of time, after Moses’s death, the things which are here narrated befell, no sufficiently certain reckoning seems able to be entered upon. The Talmudists indeed — who take [it] that a man’s mind, occupied neither with mourning nor with any more vehement perturbation, is ever breathed upon by the prophetic spirit — define this space [as] thirty days: namely, as many as the Israelites wept [at] Moses’s funeral. For because, after the narration of that mourning, it is continuously recorded that Joshua was full of the spirit of prudence, they think that soon after those funeral days God did these [words] to him. And that this was the seventh day of the month Nisan,—
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[the seventh day of the month] Nisan, when after three days [Joshua] himself was about to transport the people into Canaan.” But what they [the Talmudists] assume, I certainly will not easily grant them. For God can shake off whatever mists from that mind which He wills to inform and illustrate with His own divine spirit. To this [add] that Joshua does not seem to have been breathed upon and imbued with that spirit of prudence (of which there is mention in Deuteronomy) at last after the mourning of thirty days, but at the same time with the imposed hand of Moses. More likely, therefore, I think it to be, that as soon as Moses had departed from life, Joshua — mindful of the words of God which He had lately made to him from the cloud in the sacred tabernacle, and at the same time stirred by the impulse of that heavenly spirit which we said had been fostered [in him], initiated by Moses’s hand — straightway, day [and] night, with [his] whole mind, brooded upon the thought of that greatest and most difficult administration and command.