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

Todays passage discusses the territory given to the tribe of Judah and to the tribe of Joseph (as given to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh).  Contained within the description of the territory given to Judah is a partial account of Caleb receiving his portion.  It contains the story of Caleb promising his daughter in marriage to the man who takes a particular town and then his daughter asking Caleb for springs to go with the other land he gave to her and her husband.  I am not sure why the account about Caleb’s daughter is here rather than earlier in chapter 14 where the book first discusses Caleb claiming his portion.

Once the passage concludes describing the territory which was claimed by the tribe of Judah, it goes on to discuss the territory given to the tribe of Joseph to claim.  I am not quite sure what is going on here, this is one of the few places where the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh are lumped together as the tribe of Joseph.  I think if I were to read this without any context from other parts of the Old Testament I would conclude that Joshua initially planned to give territory to Ephraim and Manasseh as if they were a single tribe.  A plan which was disrupted by the numbers of these two tribes and the difficulty which they had displacing the Canaanites living in the territory they were assigned.  And yet, part of this also reads as if they were already given two separate portions.  Perhaps, the way to read it would be that the portion of the tribe of Manasseh which did not settle east of the Jordan was being settled with the tribe of Ephraim , calling the combined group the “tribe of Joseph”.    In any case, both here, and earlier in the description of the territory assigned to Judah, we see indications of the problems which would later face the Israelites due to their failure to expel all of the peoples living in the land which they settled.

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

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

Yesterday I mentioned that the account of Caleb claiming his inheritance in the land probably took place during the events described in Chapters 10 and 11.  The additional information concerning Caleb claiming his inheritance makes me think it took place during the events described in Chapter 10.  Following up on that, I would think that the description of the territory allotted to Ephraim and Manasseh would have then happened during the events described in Chapter 11.   We also learn from this passage that the two tribes of Joseph failed to completely drive the Canaanites out of the land of which they took possession.  I am tempted to think that the writer is making a contrast between the tribes of Joseph failing to drive out all of the Canaanites from their territory and the tribe of Judah doing so.  However, they did mention that the tribe of Judah failed to drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem, so perhaps that is not the point being made here.

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

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

I have never understood why the blurb about Caleb taking possession of his portion is in the middle of the description of the allocation of land to the Tribe of Judah instead of immediately following the part where Caleb asks for his allocation in yesterday’s passage.  For that matter, I am unsure why the bit about Caleb’s daughter asking him for springs in addition to the other land he gave to her and her husband is included.  That being said, it is a good lesson to us that it never hurts to ask for what you would like to have.

In the description of the land allotted to the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh the passage tells us that some of the Canaanites living there were too strong for them to drive out.  The passage tells us that some of the Canaanites were still living among the Israelites “to this day”.  In other words, Canaanites were still living among the Israelites when this book was first written down.  This gives us some insight into the population of the land when the kingdom of Israel first formed and provides some context for understanding what was going on during the Book of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel.  We see that despite God’s instructions otherwise, the Israelites lived alongside those who practiced different religious practices for probably the entire existence of the Ancient Kingdom of Israel.

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

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.