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.

Today’s passage describes the land allotted to the tribes of Joshua, Ephraim, and Manasseh.  It also gives us the first hint about the problems which are to come for the people of Israel.  All three tribes fail to completely drive the people living in the land from the land given to them.  In particular the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh are intimidated by the technology of some of those people.  We learn that later when they became powerful enough to defeat those people they enslaved them.  In other words, they did to these people what the Egyptians had done to their ancestors.  By enslaving them, the Israelites gave themselves the worst of both worlds.  They did not force them out of their land, nor did they fully assimilate them, giving them an interest in the success of their society.  Instead, they allowed them to remain among them as a separate people whose interests conflicted with those of the Israelites.