The whole assembly of the Israelites gathered at Shiloh and set up the Tent of Meeting there. The country was brought under their control, but there were still seven Israelite tribes who had not received their inheritance. So Joshua said to the Israelites: "How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you?" (18: 1-3).
Five tribes had claimed their territory: Reuben and Gad on the east side of the Jordan, Manesseh straddled the river, Ephraim was just to their south and Judah in the southernmost territory. The other seven tribes...Simeon, Naphtali, Asher, Dan, Zebulon, Issachar and Benjamin...had not yet claimed their land. Levi, as we were reminded over and over, would not have a territory assigned to them.
So, since those seven tribes had not laid any claim to territory, Joshua proposes a solution. He asked for three men from each tribe to form survey teams to go out and survey the whole of the land they had conquered and divvy it up into equal portions, then bring back descriptions of each portion, which would be assigned by lot to the seven tribes who had no designated territory.
It had to take a while.
So the men left and went through the land. They wrote its description on a scroll, town by town, in seven parts and returned to Joshua in the camp at Shiloh. Joshua then cast lots for them in Shiloh in the presence of the LORD, and there he distributed the land to the Israelites according to their tribal divisions. (18: 9 - 10)
First up, Benjamin, who drew the lot that was between Judah and Ephraim. Notable cities listed in the territory of Benjamin included Jericho, Bethel, Gibeon, and Jerusalem.
Second, Simeon. But the surveyors had determined that Judah had more land than they could handle, so Simeon's portion was actually carved out of what had previously been assigned to Judah. Their cities included Beersheba and Ziklag.
Zebulun came up next; their territory was just southwest of what was later known as the Sea of Galilee (note: I'm going by the map in the footnote of my Bible). Bethlehem is listed in the cities of Zebulun, but this is NOT the same Bethlehem that was later known as the City of David. That was within walking distance of Jerusalem, a good distance to the south of the territory of Zebulun.
Issachar was fourth, and their allotment came between Manesseh and Zebulun, and actually bordered on the Jordan River just south of the Sea of Galilee. Their cities included Jezreel and Shunem.
The fifth lot went to Asher, and it ran along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, bordered on the south by Zebulun. Cities included in the inheritance of Asher included Carmel and Tyre.
Naphtali drew the lot between Asher and the Jordan River, north of the Sea of Galilee. The towns listed for Naphtali are not well known.
The last portion was then given to Dan. I actually pulled out the NIV Atlas of the Bible to make sure I could see what happened with Dan. Dan was originally given the bit of territory wedged between Ephraim, Benjamin, the Mediterranean and the Philistines to the southwest; they had territory near Joppa. But apparently they had problems clearing the towns, so at least a portion of the tribe went all the way up north to Leshem (also known as Laish), captured that city and named it 'Dan' and settled there. Whether the tribe ended up split between the two territories or all moving north is hard to tell from the passage here.
Joshua was given a specific plot of ground for his inheritance...in the hill country of Ephraim (if you go back to Numbers 13, you will see that Joshua was actually an Ephraimite).
And so they finished dividing the land. (19:51b).
I was most struck by the challenge in 18:3...How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land that the LORD your God has given you?
It occurred to me that 'Take possession" = "Take responsibility for".
There are things that the LORD our God has given us. Gifts, talents, opportunities, positions...how long will we wait before we step up and take responsibility for those areas? What is the 'land' that God has given me the I have yet to possess? What is holding me back? How much longer am I going to wait to step into it and claim it?
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