I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 15-17.

    Having started the story about Caleb’s request for an allotment of land the writer resumes describing the boundaries of the land assigned to each of the tribes. However, he is not done telling us about Caleb’s conquest of his land and tells a story about Caleb’s daughter. I am not sure of any lesson for us from this, except for the fact that while Caleb gave some of the land to his son-in-law it was his daughter he got him to give her (and therefore her husband) additional land to make it a truly viable territory. We are also told that the tribe of Judah failed to drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem. The next tribes whose land allotment was described were Ephraim and West Manasseh (the other half of the tribe having been settled east of the Jordan). These accounts overlap with the earlier stories of Joshua conquering the southern and northern portions of the land. The earlier account gives the impression (I do not believe the writer necessarily intended to do so) that Joshua had completely wiped out the peoples living in the land he conquered. The description of the land allotments to the various tribes shows that was not the case. Some of the people were too strongly established for the Israelites to overcome at this time. This failure to completely control the territory which they settled sets the stage for much of what happened in the Book of Judges.