Land Division - Joshua 12-16

The IM only has a short paragraph to cover chapters 12-21 and TB has some lectures, but I started listening to one and I think I’m going to skip those because they mostly go over borders and land disputes and I’m not interested in listening to him go on his Pro-current state of Israel rants, so I’m just going to skip those and cover these chapters in chunks and go over what I think it important.

Israel and Joshua have conquered the south and north parts of the land of Canaan and have taken that land to settle, and now they move on to the east and west parts. Chapter 12 is basically summed up by the header which says, “two kings on the east of the Jordan and thirty-one on the west are conquered by Israel.” The whole chapter is just a list of those conquered cities, which just listed out like that makes it seem insignificant, but that’s a lot of warfare and a lot of time and a lot of killing, especially when we’re talking about not only killing combatants but also women and children, it’s a lot, so it’s not a surprise when God comes to Joshua in chapter 13 and says “thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.” God goes on to list all the places that are yet to be conquered and it’s a lot. Joshua is an old man and I’m not sure, I guess we’ll see, but it doesn’t seem like there is a clear successor to Joshua like there was to Moses and so God might be saying, “hey you’re old and tired, but no one else will conquer this land except you so you need to get on it.”

I understand why Joshua might have been hesitant, you can only kill everyone for so long before it starts to wear on you, especially if you are a righteous man like Joshua was. TB said it best, “We must not be naïve and think that Joshua did everything exactly as he was supposed to, neither should we think that he was a failure or rebellious against the Lord. He did a very good job; he was loyal and trustworthy. But he was just a man with flaws and faults and an inherent evil inclination that battled against his good inclination. Perfection was never an option.” I get it, it was a lot and he probably did his best and was exhausted, but regardless, there was a lot of native peoples who stayed in the land of Israel who were supposed to be killed off, who were not, and the problems that Israel had with them for the next thousand years were the exact reason why God commanded them to be destroyed in the first place. I don’t think that the problems were caused by like these people trying to start wars with Israel, although I’m sure that that happened, the problem was that Israel was constantly influenced by these native peoples to rebel against God, to worship other gods, and to break the commandments of Israel’s God. Who knows what the outcome would have been if all those who God demanded to be destroyed were killed instead of allowed to live there with Israel and influence them. I think it's also important to note that my opinion is that large groups of people didn’t deserve to die just because Israel as a whole was too weak to resist outside influence. But God noted earlier that these cities were ripe for destruction due to their severe wickedness, and TB says included child sacrifice, ritualized rape and prostitution under the guise of religion, etc. All the stuff that other societies have been destroyed for as well. And I want to make clear that this isn’t my own personal opinion on the morality of the command to kill everyone, nor do I think that God would command that again today, I’m just commenting on what was written in the Bible here.

The rest of chapter 13 goes over the divisions of land for Israel which included the land on the east of the Jordan river which went to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh. Chapter 14 is more land division with a speech by Joshua noting that he is 85 years old, that he was 40 years old when Moses sent him into the land of Canaan as a scout initially, meaning that the 40 years wandering in the wilderness, leaving only 5 years that they had been engaged in clearing out the people of the land of Canaan, I thought it would have been longer. In the speech, Joshua gave Caleb a land that was special to him, the land of Hebron, because he was faithful just like Joshua was. I would imagine that they were friends throughout this 45 year ordeal, so this makes sense. It’s also interesting to point out that the selection of the land was done by lots, which drawing lots is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, interesting.

Chapter 15 starts with Judah’s inheritance of the land of Jerusalem, where the Jebusites lived. The Jebusites apparently were not destroyed so they lived along side the tribe of Judah in Jerusalem. Verse 63 says, “As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.” This begs the question, why couldn’t the tribe of Judah expel the Jebusites from the land if they were commanded to by God? Assuming they actually tried, their failure to achieve victory would have stemmed from wickedness on their part and so instead of repent and do it God’s way, they probably were just like “forget it, we’ll all just live here.” It seems like they divided up the land and settled the tribes prematurely. I, of course, don’t really know what’s going on, so this is me just speculating based on very limited information, but if the whole army had gone through the land and systematically destroyed the natives with Joshua at the head, managing the plans, trying to keep the soldiers and people in line righteously, then it would have been more effective keeping the people spiritually aligned so that God could give them victory.

Which begs the question, why didn’t he do that? Again, just speculating, the soldiers would have been doing the fighting, and it seems like at that point, they had been fighting for 5 years, maybe the soldiers and the people were tired of fighting and wanted to be settled and begin building their lives, ok fair. Maybe the people were just supposed to wait a little bit longer. If they had to wait another 5 years for the land to be fully cleared out, then that 5 years is compared to the hundreds of years of problems that followed because they didn’t wait. The conversation the Lord had with Joshua in chapter 13 doesn’t really have an end where the writer is basically done quoting God and then goes back to narrating, but verse 7 does clearly say “now therefore divined this land for an inheritance,” so at that point God does command Joshua to start settling the people in the land so maybe I just misread that, maybe the whole point was that Judah should have remained righteous enough to expel the Jebusites and they just weren’t and weren’t willing to repent in order to regain that righteousness. It’s an interesting concept, they had spent 5 years winning and winning, miracle after miracle, but even in that short period of time, they fell into disobedience to the point that they couldn’t win anymore and were just like “forget it, let’s not bother.” Just goes to show what can happen to any of us if we aren’t vigilant in maintaining that level and how easy it is to disregard the hand of God that we’ve experienced in our lives when we don’t want to listen anymore. Chapter 16 mentions that the tribe of Ephraim was also unable to drive the Canaanites out of their portion, “and they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezar: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute.”

The phrase “serve under tribute” makes me wonder if Ephraim was able to conquer the people of Gezar, but chose not to kill them all or drive them out, but instead made them pay tribute. Because in order to make a community pay tribute to them you would have had to defeat them in battle, so the defeat was there but the finality was not and they took the opportunity to exploit the people for their own personal gain instead of doing what God commanded them to do and they suffered for it spiritually for their while existence. The main difference I see is that it said that Judah “could not” drive out the Jebusites, but that Ephraim simply “drave not out,” thus the tribute showing that the DID defeat them, but they DID NOT drive them out like commanded. Interesting.