A profound heavenly court scene unfolds, revealing a symbolic process of purification and the removal of sin. In this prophetic vision, a senior angel, acting as a heavenly judge, takes charge. Raising his voice to make a formal announcement [מצודת ציון], he issues a command to the ministering angels stationed before him [אבן עזרא, רד״ק, מלבי״ם, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. As [אבן עזרא] notes, these ministering angels stand at attention before the senior angel rather than before Joshua, as it would be illogical for them to stand in honor of a man covered in filth.
The angels are ordered to strip away Joshua's soiled clothing, which serves as a metaphor for sin. The primary approach among commentators is that this filth does not represent Joshua's own personal wrongdoing. Instead, it symbolizes the guilt he carries because his sons married foreign women and he failed to protest or stop them. The act of removing these soiled clothes represents the demand to separate his sons from these women, which would formally clear Joshua of this guilt [רש״י, מצודת דוד, רד״ק, מלבי״ם]. Taking a different view, [אברבנאל] questions why the angel commands others to remove the garments rather than instructing Joshua to do it himself. Through this, he challenges the underlying assumption regarding whether Joshua was alive or dead during this vision. He reasons that if Joshua were alive, the command should have been given directly to him so he could actively earn forgiveness. Conversely, if he were already dead, there would be no need for this process at all, since a person is not punished for the sins of his children after his passing.
Once the soiled garments are stripped away, the senior angel turns directly to Joshua and declares that his guilt has been removed. According to [אבן עזרא], this removal of guilt encompasses not only the sin itself but also the punishment, sorrow, and deep disgrace that accompanied it. [מלבי״ם] adds that the sins are depicted as clothing specifically because they were completely external to Joshua; they only clung to him as a result of his sons' actions.
To complete the purification, the angel promises to dress Joshua in fresh, handsome suits of clothing to replace the discarded ones [רש״י, מצודת ציון, אבן עזרא, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Just as the dirty clothes represented sin, these clean garments represent merits. The moment the external guilt is stripped away, Joshua's true, inherent merits are brought to light, allowing him to be symbolically wrapped in them once again [רש״י, מצודת דוד, רד״ק, מלבי״ם].