This haftarah opens with God addressing Joshua directly and without delay: Moses, God's own servant, is dead, and Joshua must now arise and cross the Jordan with the whole people into the land God is giving them, the boundaries of that land described in sweeping terms from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great river Euphrates and the western sea.
God promises Joshua that no one will be able to stand against him throughout his life, exactly as God had been with Moses, and repeats a charge to be strong and very courageous, careful to observe the whole Torah Moses commanded without turning from it to the right or the left, meditating on this book of the law continually so that Joshua may act wisely and succeed in everything he undertakes.
The haftarah closes with Joshua instructing the people's officers to prepare provisions for crossing the Jordan within three days, and with the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh, who had already settled east of the Jordan, affirming that they will nonetheless cross armed ahead of their fellow Israelites to help secure the land, closing with the whole people pledging to obey Joshua exactly as they had obeyed Moses.
The sweeping description of the land's borders, from the wilderness and Lebanon to the Euphrates and the western sea, echoes similar large scale promises made earlier in the Torah itself, so that Joshua's commission opens not with a modest task but with the full scope of the original promise now finally within reach.