Joshua led the army to defeat 31 kings in all, but when he was old, God told him there was still lots to conquer. For the time being though, they went ahead and started dividing up the land by tribe for the inheritances. Gad and Reuben and half of the half tribe of Manasseh set up east of the Jordan river and the other nine tribes and the other quarter tribe of Manasseh took the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean sea, although the tribe of Levi didn’t get the same kind of plot of land, but cities spread throughout Canaan.
Caleb shows up again at 85 years old and just as strong and spry as the day Moses first sent him to scout out the promised land according to him. He was promised a bunch of land for his faith so Joshua gives him Hebron.
I’m glad to see Caleb get something good. I thought it was weird that we kept hearing in Numbers about how great Joshua and Caleb were and how much faith they had, but then only Joshua got to lead the camp afterword and we never heard about Caleb again. I guess he is a Kenizite though, which it looks like makes him not actually an Israelite. He mentions something about his fellow Israelites though so he’s clearly part of the nation. He doesn’t seem to have a tribe attached to his name now even though back in Numbers, he scouted out Canaan as a representative of the tribe of Judah, so I have no idea what the politics are here.
it will give you a headache trying to figure our the tribal associations. my take is that it was one giant sloppy mess. we think our family trees are complicated now; probably no less complicated then.
ReplyDeletegood work.