Joshua 12 - 15

Joshua — Steve Gregg

Next in this series

Joshua 16 - 22

00:00

Joshua 12 - 15

JoshuaSteve Gregg

This section of Joshua outlines the kings conquered by the Israelites on the eastern side of the Jordan River. The Israelites were victorious against formidable enemies and claimed the land promised to them by God. The land was divided among the tribes and half-tribes, with some areas remaining unconquered. One highlight is Caleb's story, who fought to restore Israel's independence and claimed Hebron for his inheritance.

Transcript

Ok, let's turn to Joshua 12. We're pretty much done with the major wars of conquest that Joshua led Israel through. They first, as we know, came into Jericho and took Ai and probably Bethel about that same time.

Those were sort of in the center of the land of Canaan. They had to be conquered. And then, they could have moved either south or north, but the decision was made actually for them by their enemies.

Because they had entered into a covenant with Gibeon. Gibeon was to be their servant, and therefore Israel was somewhat obligated to protect them. And a coalition of five kings from the south, led by Adam-Isaac, who was the king of Jerusalem at the side, the Jebusites, and four other kings with him, attacked Gibeon, not Israel.

But because Gibeon and Israel were in a coalition, and were allies, Israel came to Gibeon's aid and ended up squattering those kings and defeating them. And then, while they were there, since that was in the southern area of the country, they just kept conquering one city after another in the region, until the whole south was largely subdued. All opposition was gone.

So, now they had gone into the center and they'd taken care of the south. But then, there was a coalition of virtually all the kings of the Canaanites in the north that gathered together and they came against Joshua. So, in a sense, although these kings were acting sort of defensively, because Joshua was clearly there to take their territory, in a sense, he didn't attack them until they militarized against him.

So, his battles against him ended up being, as it were, somewhat defensive. But, of course, if they had not mobilized against him, he would have attacked them anyway. But the point is that the decision as to which regions to fight with were pretty much made by the actions of the enemies.

And so, finally, he conquers the northern territory. And not every city has now been totally eradicated of Canaanites. And the command that God gave was that they should not leave any that breathe and that all the Canaanites should be wiped out.

But the Israelites didn't complete that task. But they did complete the securing of the borders enough that the Bible could summarize that God gave them all the land. They really were in control of all the land.

But there were pockets of resistance that still needed to be overcome. Many times people have likened that to the Christian life, of course. That, you know, when we cross over into the promised land, when we become Christians, as it were, that God gives us victory.

He gives us promises. He gives us inheritance. But there are still areas of conflict.

There are still areas in our lives that present resistance to godliness and holiness and that need to be fought individually and spherically at their proper time. Anyway, that's how Israel was in the land. They owned the land.

Now they controlled the borders and most of the cities. They burned down a lot of the cities and had conquered most of the rest. But there were areas where Canaanites still live among them.

And we'll see some specific cases in the chapters that lie ahead. But chapter 12, then, really is just a summary of the various kings that were conquered in the course of securing all the territory. And verses one through six reminds us of the territory on the east side of Jordan, the land that was inherited by Gad, Manasseh and Reuben, and which was conquered at an earlier time by Moses.

In the lifetime of Moses, they fought against two kings on the east side of Jordan, Sion and Og, defeated them both and conquered the territory. And that's how the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half of the tribe of Manasseh obtained the land that they asked for and received. So these two kings are mentioned in the first six verses.

We see these are the kings of the land whom the children of Israel defeated and whose land they possessed on the other side of the Jordan toward the rising of the sun. That is, of course, to the east. And when it says the other side, it means it's written from somebody who is now in the land.

It's written from the standpoint of somebody who's now living in Israel. So they're looking at the east side as the other side of the river from their own standpoint. From the river Arnon to Mount Hermon and all the eastern Jordan plains, Sion, king of the Amorites who dwelt in Heshbon and ruled half of Gilead from Aror, which is on the bank of the river Arnon, from the middle of that river, even as far as the river Jabbok, which is the border of the Ammonites and the eastern Jordan plain from the Sea of Chinera, which is actually one of the many names the Bible uses for what we call the Sea of Galilee.

In the Bible, even in the New Testament, it's called by a variety of names, the Sea of Galilee. Sometimes it's called the Lake Gennesaret or the Sea of Tiberias. It's also in Old Testament times called the Sea of Chinera.

This is the same body of water. It's really not much of a sea. It's more like a lake.

But in a desert where a very large lake is rare, they call it a sea in many cases. It's interesting that Matthew, for example, when he talks about this, refers to it as the Sea of Galilee or the Sea of Tiberias. But when Luke talks about it, he calls it the lake.

And of course, Matthew was a Jew. And speaking from a Palestinian point of view, this great body of water is like a sea to them. But Luke is a Gentile from across the ocean, and he sees it as a lake.

He doesn't refer to it as a sea at all. But that's what's referred to there. It's the boundary of Sion's former territory.

And it says, as far as the Sea of the Aravah, the Salt Sea. Now, we call that the Dead Sea. That's called the Salt Sea because like the Salt Sea in Utah, it's got a lot more salt than the average body of water.

So that's one of the two kings. And we've read about that many times before in the Pentateuch and so forth, as we read about their conquest. And they are mentioned again and again.

In retrospect, even before Joshua took the people into Israel, Moses made several references to these in his sermons because it was the token that God gave them that they could, in fact, defeat the Canaanites too. That before they even entered Canaan, God gave them victories over some very formidable enemies in order to sort of build their faith and their confidence that God could do what he was promising to do in Canaan as well. Verse 4 says, Og, this is the other king, king of Bashan and his territory, who was of the remnant of the giants.

Now, apparently there had been a race or more than one race of giants. The Anakim were certainly of that race, but they are not the same, probably, as the race of giants mentioned here. It sounds as from this reference, the remnant of the giants, that the giant races had mostly died off and there were just like a few, a remnant of them left over from a general extinction of a race of giants.

But Og was one of the big giants. He actually, in the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch, it tells us the size of his bed. I forget the size of the bed, 13 feet tall or something like that.

I forget all the things, all the dimensions, but he must have been a very huge man. Actually, the size of his bed, he could have been bigger than Goliath. Goliath was 10 feet tall, but his bed was big enough that he could have been 12 feet tall and slept in it comfortably.

Now, he says he was of the remnant of the giants who dwelt at Ashtaroth and Edreai. He reigned over Mount Hermon, over Stalka, over Bashan, as far as the border of the Gesherites and the Meachothites, which would be, I think, in the south and over half of Gilead, as far as the border of Sion, king of Heshbon. These, Moses, the servant of the Lord and the children of Israel, had conquered and Moses, the servant of the Lord, had given it as a possession to him.

To the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-carved Manasseh, something we are reminded of a great number of times. Now, this, of course, is mentioned out of chronological order, since Moses was dead in chapter one of Joshua and has not been alive through any of the chapters we've read so far. So, it's just before it tells us the full list of kings that Joshua conquered, it decides to add those kings first that were conquered in the time of Moses before Joshua's time.

One observation is that both Sion and Og, their territories are mentioned with reference to what is called Gilead. In verse two, Sion, it says, he dwelt in Heshbon and ruled half of Gilead, and then we also find Gilead mentioned with reference to Og, he ruled over half of Gilead also. Now, Gilead was not a town, but a region, and it wasn't called Gilead when these kings were there.

Gilead was actually the name of a Jewish man, and it was some of his family that inherited that region, and the region was called Gilead afterward. At a certain point, much later, Jeremiah quotes God saying, is there no balm in Gilead, and Gilead is the region named after the tribe, or not the tribe, but the clan, Gilead, of Israelites that were there, but you can see that it's called that here proleptically. When Sion ruled over it, it wasn't called Gilead, but it came to be later called Gilead, and sometimes the Bible uses names that way in places.

Places that weren't really called that when the story was told, but they were called that at the time that the writer was writing the story, so his readers, and he knew that region by that name, but when Sion and Og ruled, it wasn't called that because, of course, Gilead had not yet occupied it. Just observing a literary device that the writers of Scripture sometimes use, you'll find it in a number of places. Then we have a list of kings, 31 of them in all, that were conquered through the leadership of Joshua.

Verse 7, to the end of the chapter, these are the kings of the country which Joshua and the children of Israel conquered on this side of Jordan, on the west, from Baal-Gad in the valley of Lebanon, as far as Mount Halak, and the ascent to Seir. Now, Baal-Gad, I believe, is identified with Caesarea Philippi, an area that has had a number of names throughout history. It was also called Panaeus at one time, it was the place where I think the Romans worshipped the god Pan, and then it became named by Philip, one of the Herods.

Herod Philip renamed it after Caesar, and called it Caesarea, and then added his name to it, Philippi, and that was the place where Jesus went with his disciples, and who do men say I am, and who do you say I am, and this was a region where Jesus went to retreat, to be alone with his disciples, because it was pretty much at the remote northern and eastern edge of the country. It's a really interesting place to go. I went there when I was in Israel, and it was really amazing, because the river Jordan begins there, it comes out of the ground.

Actually, the river Jordan is fed by three springs in different locations, but one of them, I think the primary one, is in Caesarea Philippi, and that's really where the river begins. And you just watch the water pour out of the ground, the torrents of water that become the river Jordan at that spot, it's really interesting. There's other interesting things, it's a beautiful place, but that's, I believe, the famous Baal Gab.

And it says, verse 8, in the mountain country, in the lowlands, in the Jordan plain, in the slopes, in the wilderness, in the south, this is the land of the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Those were all the Canaanite tribes that God had mentioned to Abraham, that he was going to give his seed, the land of all those tribes, he'd named them in the 15th chapter of Genesis. And now we list them, apparently in order of them being conquered.

We can't really say for sure, because some of these, we don't have specific stories about when they were conquered, but we certainly see from the ones we do know about, that they're listed in order. We got the king of Jericho, one, that is one king there. The king of Ai, which is beside Bethel, one.

Then the king of Jerusalem, one, that was when Adonai came against Gibeon. So, he went down and his confederates were named here, the king of Hebron, one, the king of Jarmath, one, the king of Lachish, one, the king of Eglon, one. And then these others, the king of Gizir, one, the king of Debir, one, the king of Gader, one, the king of Horma, one, the king of Arad, one, the king of Libna, one, the king of Adolam, one, the king of Makeda, one, the king of Bethel, one, the king of Tapua, one, the king of Hefer, one, the king of Aphex, one, the king of Lesharon, one, the king of Madon, one, the king of Hazar, one, the king of Shimron-Meron, one, the king of Exath, one, the king of Teanac, one, the king of Megiddo, one, the king of Kedesh, one, the king of Jachnium in Carmel, one, the king of Dor in the Heights of Dor, one, the king of the people of Gilgal, one, the king of Tirzah, one, all the kings, 31.

Now, there were still, like I said, cities to be conquered, but the conquest of these 31 cities, these were the major cities for the most part, and they, the fall of these cities to Joshua definitely officially changed the balance of power in the land to the Israelites, and so they now could be said to possess the land. But there were still, as I said, things, regions that had not been totally conquered, and we read about that in chapter 13. Now, Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the Lord said to him, you're old and advanced in years.

He calls it as it is. And there remains very much land yet to be possessed. This is the land that remains, all the territories of the Philistines, all that of the Gesherites, from Syhor, which is east of Egypt, as far as the border of Ekron northward, which is counted as Canaanite.

The five lords of the Philistines, the Gevites, the Ashtidites, the Ashkelonites, the Kittites, and the Ekronites, also the Avites, now, all of those except the Avites are the five cities of the Philistines where the Philistine population in Palestine was concentrated. Each of these was a small city-state ruled by its own lord. The word lords there, in the original text, is not a Hebrew word, but it's translated from a Philistine word.

It's the only place in the Bible that a Philistine word is in the Hebrew text. It is said that the Philistine word that is used here is related to the Greek word for tyrant. That's, apparently there's some affinities between the Philistine language and the Greek language.

But, it's the only time in the Bible that we have a Philistine word in the original Hebrew text. Now, these are famous in Old Testament times as the five cities that remained under the control of the Philistines, at least up until the time of David. And that was a long time.

So, Joshua, in his time, and the judges in their time, did not manage to rid the land of the Philistines. The wars with the Philistines erupted in the time of Samson. And Samson probably could have done more if he'd been more self-controlled.

He was more interested in his own pleasure than he was in delivering Israel. But, he nonetheless was given supernatural powers to beat up Philistines. So, he killed a thousand of them once with the jawbone of an ass.

Killed three thousand of them, you know, in his death in the Temple of Dagon when he pulled it down. Killed more in his death than in his lifetime. But, all together, one man killing four thousand or more people of the enemy is a pretty big accomplishment.

But, he never did much to eradicate the Philistine presence in Palestine. Later Saul, King Saul, fought against the Philistines. Actually, they fought against him when he was installed as king.

The Philistines were not happy about the Israelites having a king. And so, they attacked. And so, wars with the Philistines continued through the whole life of Saul.

He was killed by them. And then, David fought and defeated the Philistines. Of course, Goliath was a Philistine.

He was from Gath. These names in verse three, the Gazites are the people from Gaza. And, the Ashkelites are from Ashdod.

The Ashkelonites are from Ashkelon. Now, the Gittites are from Gath. Gath is a Philistine city.

And, the Bible often makes reference to the Gittites. That's just the name of those who lived in Gath. Then, the Ekronites were from Ekron.

Now, the Abites were not the same. But, notice it says in verse three that these were counted as Canaanites. Now, they weren't Canaanites.

The Philistines were of different origins. They had come to Palestine via the island of Crete. They were actually called the people of the sea by the Israelites because the Philistines were seafaring people and the Israelites were not.

The Israelites hardly ever had a navy. Or, they didn't like the sea. They didn't like to go out on the water.

To them, the sea was evil and dangerous and deadly. In fact, the Gentiles were compared to the sea. Whereas, Israel was compared to the land.

They were land lovers. But, the Philistines were mariners. And, they came both to Egypt and to Palestine from the sea and settled in there.

And, their holdings in Palestine were in these five cities for a very long time. Like I say, until David managed to defeat them. But, they were not Canaanites.

See, the Canaanites were descended from a man named Canaan. And, they were indigenous to the land there. But, it says that these Philistines were counted as Canaanites.

What that means is that the Israelites were intended to treat them the way they were supposed to treat the Canaanites. Israel was not authorized to practice a scorched earth genocidal policy with all foreigners. But, they were with the Canaanites.

And, I think by saying that these were counted as Canaanites means that God intended for Israel to do the same thing to the Philistines as to the Canaanites. Which, of course, they did not find easy to do. Now, in verse 4 it says, From the south all the land of the Canaanites and Meorah.

That belongs to the Sidonians as far as Athic and the border of the Amorites. The land of the Gabilites and all Lebanon toward the sunrise from Beogad, which we mentioned earlier as the cestary of Philpi, below Mount Hermon as far as the entrance to Hemat. All the inhabitants of the mountains from Lebanon as far as the brook Misk, Miskrepoth and the Sidonians.

Them I will drive out from before the children of Israel. Only divide it by lot to Israel as an inheritance as I have commanded you. Now, therefore, divide this land as an inheritance to the nine tribes and a half, the tribe of Manasseh.

Now, how are they figuring the nine and a half tribes? Well, in Israel there were really 13 tribes. Usually the count is almost always artificially kept to 12 by the omission of one or another. You see, there were 12 sons of Jacob, but one of them, Joseph, had two sons and Jacob adopted them as his own sons, not grandsons, which means that made the tribe of Joseph begin two tribes.

And therefore, there were 13 tribes total. But 12 is seems to be the, you know, the desirable number to keep it at for whatever reasons. And so when the tribes are listed many times, one or another tribe is just left out of the count.

Often it's the Levites because the Levites had special status. And when it came to inheritance, they were definitely unique in that they did not receive a portion of the land. We'll hear more about that.

Other times, the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, which are the two halves of the tribe of Joseph, are simply referred to as one group as the children of Joseph. Other times, for strange reasons, one or another tribe is just left out randomly just to keep the number 12. As in Revelation chapter 7, when we have the 144,000 given, it's 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes.

Well, it lists the tribes, but it leaves out Dan. Why? Well, there's all kinds of speculations why Dan is left out, but it may be just because someone had to be left out to keep it at 12. You know, because it's always a bit artificial to list the 12 tribes as 12.

But when it came to the inheritance and the division of the land, it was not so artificial because Levi was not given any land, so they weren't in the reckoning. That left 12 tribes, of which two and a half of them already had received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan, so that leaves nine and a half to receive inheritance on the west side. And these different areas are listed, primarily the Philistine areas and some of the other Canaanite areas.

God said, I'm going to deliver them to you. I'm going to drive them out, he says in verse six. But now it's time to divide the land.

They're not driven out yet. Apparently, what this means is that all of Israel worked in concert up to this point. All the tribes fought alongside each other to drive out the Canaanites to establish the borders and to secure the territory.

But now they're going to divide that remaining territory into different tribal areas, and whatever land within those areas remains to be conquered, it's going to be the responsibility of those tribes to do it. So Joshua is no longer going to be leading armies after this point, though there will be more wars. They will be wars that each of the tribes will be fighting against those in their local areas, and sometimes not successfully, as we should see.

Verse eight, with the other half tribe of the Rubenites. I'm sorry, the other half tribe, meaning of Manasseh, the Rubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance. Now, let me just say this about the half tribe, half the tribe of Manasseh.

I do not know why it is, but one of Manasseh's sons, Maker, Maker, was the branch of the Manasseh family that received the territory on the east of Jordan. The other part of the tribe of Manasseh didn't want to settle there, and therefore they decided to take their portion where God assigned it, inside the land. So we keep hearing about half the tribe of Manasseh, probably not exactly 50%, but a portion of the tribe on this side and a portion of the tribe on the other side of the Jordan.

The tribe was divided up by the choice of apparently one group of Manasseh who wanted to stay with the Rubenites and the Gadites on the east side. So with these ones, it says, with the other half tribe, the Rubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses had given them beyond the river eastward, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had given them. Then it gives the dimensions again, as it has not too long ago, so we won't read all those dimensions that they conquered from Sion and Og.

They seem to be fond of repeating all of that, which is probably because it was so great a victory, they like to repeat it. It says in verse 13, Nevertheless, the children of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Meachathites, but the Geshurites and the Meachathites dwell among the Israelites until this day. So again, all these references to until this day, remind us that the author is living at a time when many of these conditions still prevail.

Many of them, which of course ceased to prevail within some years or centuries, but it's an early writing from the author's point of view. A lot of these things that were true in Joshua, they had not changed yet. Only the tribe of Levi he had given no inheritance.

Verse 14 says, The sacrifices of the Lord God of Israel made by fire are their inheritance, as he said to them. Now, sometimes it says it that way, and sometimes it says it differently. The Levite did receive an inheritance, but it was not a real estate inheritance.

It was not land. It was not farming land. It was not land on which you could make a living, because they had a living to make as full-time ministers at the tabernacle, and they were to be supported by the tithes of the other people who did have farmland.

So the Levites, of course, had to live somewhere. And so there were a number of cities, 35 cities were given to them with some common land outside the cities where they could actually keep some livestock. The Levites were able to have some livestock, but they really didn't have acreage to grow crops and profit from agricultural pursuits.

But they had cities designated to them in all the different tribal boundaries, so that the Levites would not be far from anyone in Israel. And the Levites' task, of course, besides working at the tabernacle, was to teach the law to the people. So God had Levites positioned in these cities throughout the boundaries, through all the tribal areas, and instead of giving one area to the Levites.

And it says here that their inheritance is the sacrifices of the Lord. What that means, of course, is that all the people of the nation, in addition to giving their tithes to the Levites, which would normally be in the form of grain, would also bring their sacrifices to the tabernacle. And the meat that was not burnt in the whole burnt offerings, and that meat that was offered in other offerings, trespass offerings, sin offerings, and so forth, a major portion of that meat went to the Levites for their families to eat.

And so he's saying what they get to live on is not land that they can farm, but basically the rewards of being God's servants, which is that they get to eat of the sacrifices of the altar. They're in a special position that way. But on other occasions, the inheritance of the Levites was spoken of differently.

For example, down in verse 33 of this same chapter. In Joshua 13, 33, it says, But to the Levites, the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance. The Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as he had said to them.

So sometimes we're told their inheritance is the sacrifices that were offered to the Lord. But perhaps more importantly, their inheritance was the privilege of serving the Lord, the Lord himself being in his presence. Uh, remember that psalmist who said, you know, it's better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.

The pleasure of being so near God. David said, one thing have I desired of the Lord, that I might dwell in the house of the Lord, to meditate in his temple. They're coming before God to be where God was manifesting himself was a great privilege in the Levites.

That's where they worked. They got to be in full time ministry. And they got to enjoy the privilege of nearness to God.

At least geographical, approximate nearness to God in a way that other tribes were not able to do. And so that's their inheritance, their privilege. And that's ours too.

I mean, the Levites in some respects are a type of the church in the world. Not in every sense, but in one sense, they're a type of full time ministers in the church, like the other tribes support the Levites. So the church supports its full time ministers.

And Paul makes that point in first Corinthians nine. He's talking about how he is a minister, in a sense, is entitled to the support from the rest of the church. Because he ministers in spiritual things and it's no big thing for him to receive material things back.

But he in illustrating that says, don't you know that those who serve at the altar eat of the altar? He's indicated that the Levites and the priests who are the full time servants of God at the tabernacle in Israel sort of correspond to, in some ways, the full time ministers in the church in terms of their support. But also the Levites or the priesthood, not all the Levites were priests, but the priesthood were selected from one of the families of the Levites, which is the Aaron's descendants. They are like mediators to the rest of the tribes as the church is to the world.

So there's different ways to see this. But the church certainly has the privilege of inheriting God, but no inheritance in this world. Now, we do have an inheritance in the next world.

The meek shall inherit the earth. But it won't be this one. It'll be when Jesus comes back and there's a new earth.

That'll be ours. But this earth is not currently our home. We're strangers and pilgrims here.

We're ambassadors here. We're visitors here traveling through. And so we don't have an inheritance in the earth or in the land.

So to speak at this time. But we do have God as our inheritance. So the Levites, in some respects, are a picture of our own special privileges as the people of God.

Now, in verse 15, chapter 13, 15 says, And Moses had given to the tribe of the children of Reuben an inheritance according to their families. Their territory was from Aror, which was on the bank of the River Arnon and the city that is in the midst of the ravine. All the plain of the Mediva, or by Mediva, has been in all its cities that are in the plain.

Divan, Bama, Baal, Beth, Baal, Neon, Jehazah, Kedemoth, Mephaoth, Tirgetheim, Sibna, Zareth, Shahar, and the mountain of the valley. Beth Peor, the slopes of Tizgah and Beth Jeshima. All these cities, or all the cities of the plain, excuse me, and all the kingdom of Sion, king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, whom Moses had struck with the princes of the Midianites, Evi, Rechem, Zur, Her, and Reba, who were princes of Sion dwelling in the country.

The children of Israel also killed with the sword Balaam, the son of Beor, the soothsayer, among those that were killed by them. And the border of the children of Reuben was the bank of the Jordan. This was the inheritance of the children of Reuben according to their families, the cities and the villages.

So before we read about the apportionment of the land on the west side of the Jordan, in the promised land, we're reviewing Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe Manasseh on the east side, and being told more specifics about how that land was divided between those two and a half tribes. Permission of Balaam perhaps is the most interesting thing that stands out in that section, because Balaam is an interesting character. In some ways, he seems almost like a good guy, and other times he seems almost like a bad guy.

In general, though, when you read his story in the book of Numbers, you read more good about him than bad, in a sense. I mean, you read that he blesses Israel and the king Balak is angry with them, and yet he says, I'm sorry, I can't speak any more. Yahweh gives me to speak.

And he seems to be very pious and a very good man, but actually the scriptures always remember him as a very evil man. In the New Testament, Balaam is said to be the one who loved the wages of unrighteousness. And he actually was killed deliberately by the Israelites in a war that followed between them and the Midianites, because Balaam, he was a soothsayer, and apparently he'd go into a trance when he would prophesy or speak.

He was not a Jew, and he was not a Jewish prophet, and he was not a prophet of Yahweh, at least not exclusively. Apparently, he was kind of a freelance soothsayer who could invoke any gods that people paid him to invoke. And Balak, the king, asked Balaam to come and curse Israel.

And Balaam said, well, let me ask God about that. Let me inquire of Yahweh. That's Israel's God.

Let me see what he has paid. And God actually spoke to him and says, you can't curse these people. They're blessed.

Leave them alone. And Balaam went out and said, I can't do it. Yahweh won't let me.

But then they came back offering more money than before, and he said, well, let me double check on this. He went back in and asked again, and God said, sure, do what you want. Go ahead.

Go do it. But don't say any more than I give you to say. And so he went, and that's the occasion when a donkey spoke, because Balaam was on his way riding his donkey to fulfill this paid commission.

And an angel with a sword stood on the road and blocked him. The donkey saw the angel. Balaam did not.

There's a sphere for you. You can't see as much as a donkey can see. But anyway, the donkey hurt Balaam by trying to avoid the angel and moving up against the wall, hurt his foot, eventually just collapsed and laid down on him.

Balaam was beating the donkey, and the donkey, the Lord opened the donkey's mouth and said, why are you beating me? And he was so angry, he didn't realize that he was talking to a donkey. And he said, because you have done these, you're behaving like a bad donkey, you know. And then he saw the angel.

And he went ahead, and he only spoke what the word of the Lord said. But apparently that was despite himself. He wanted the money.

The Bible says he loved the wages of the righteous. He wanted to curse them, but every time he went into a trance, God brought something else out of him, and he couldn't be paid. So it is implied by a number of passages of scripture that Balaam found another way to get his wage and to do a workaround.

He couldn't verbally curse Israel, but he could bring a curse on Israel, he told Balak, if he would seduce them into idol worship, then God would curse them. And so he apparently counseled the king to send beautiful women down among the men of Israel's camp and to seduce them into sexual behavior and into worshipping their god, Baal-peor, which was, you know, these canine guys were worshipped with sexual rights. And so if the women are attractive enough, then that kind of worship would be attractive to a certain kind of man.

And so they were able to draw men away into this worship of Baal-peor, which brought a judgment of God on Israel. Well, later on, Moses and the children of Israel went to war against these people, and Balaam was killed in that battle, as we just read. His crime is mentioned, though, in Numbers chapter 31, when initially the Israelites in their warfare against the Midianites brought back some of the women alive.

And apparently we're going to spare them. But Moses rebuked them for that. In Numbers chapter 31, verses 15 and 16, Moses said to them, Have you kept the women alive, all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel through the counsel of Balaam.

To trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor. And there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. So he's saying these women are as guilty as the men.

They're even perhaps more guilty. They're the ones who went down and seduced our men and brought this plague upon us. Why did you leave them alive? But it mentions they did it through the counsel of Balaam.

This is the first time we actually read that Balaam had done anything like this, like given this counsel. But it is affirmed also in the New Testament. Not only that he loved the wages of unrighteousness, but the New Testament also tells us specifically what he did in Revelation chapter two and verse 14.

In the in the letter to the Church of Pergamos, Jesus said. In Revelation 2, 14, but I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit sexual immorality. So Balaam taught Balak to do this.

He counseled Balak to get Israel to sin through sexual immorality and through idolatry. So that's why we read in Joshua 13, verse 22, that children of Israel also killed Balaam. He was a worse man than he appears in the narratives and numbers.

Now, Joshua 13, 24, Moses also had given an inheritance to the tribe of Gad, to the children of Gad, according to their families. Their territory was Jaser and all the cities Gilead and half the land of the Ammonites as far as Aror, which is before Rabbah and from Heshmon to Ramah, Hezbollah, and Betonim, and from Mahaniim, the border of Deber, and the valley of Beth-Haram, Beth-Nimra, Sukkoth, and Zathon, the rest of the kingdom of Sion, king of Heshbon, with the Jordan as its border as far as the edge of the Sea of Galilee on the other side of the Jordan eastward. This is the inheritance of the children of Gad, according to their families.

And then, of course, the rest of this chapter, we have of the half tribe of Manasseh on the east of the Jordan. Moses also gave an inheritance to the half tribe of Manasseh. It was for half the tribe of the children of Manasseh, according to their families.

Their territory was from Mahaniim, all Bashan, all the kingdom of Og, king of Bashan, and all the towns of Jair, which are in Bashan, 60 cities, half of Gilead and Ashtaroth and Edreai, cities of the kingdom of Og and Bashan were for the children of Mekir, the son of Manasseh. For half of the children of Mekir, according to their families. These are the areas which Moses had distributed as an inheritance in the plains of Moab on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward.

But we're told, as we already read, to the tribe of Levi, Moses had given no inheritance because the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance, as he had said to them. So, this chapter is occupied by essentially saying there's a lot of land to be conquered on the west side of the Jordan, but these eastern tribes have already received their inheritance, according to the detailed descriptions that are there. Now, chapter 14, now to the west side of the Jordan.

We deal, first of all, with the tribe of Judah, and most particularly with one Judahite, Caleb. It says, these are the areas which the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan, which Eliezer the priest, Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel distributed as an inheritance to them. Their inheritance was by lot, meaning they cast lots to decide who got what portions, as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine tribes and the half tribe.

For Moses had given the inheritance of the two tribes and the half tribe on the other side of the Jordan. I think we know that by now. But the Levites, he had given no inheritance among them.

You can see that's important. Now, it gets mentioned all the time. Apparently, very important details.

For the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim, and they gave no part to the Levites in the land except cities to dwell in with their common lands for their livestock and their property. As the Lord had commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did. They divided the land.

Then the children of Judah, this is just one of the tribes on the west side that's going to receive its portion, the first, and to our minds, perhaps the most important of the tribes. Even in the Old Testament, it was arguably the most important of the tribes because David the king came from Judah and all the kings of the southern kingdom came from Judah, even after the other ten tribes broke off. Judah was the tribe or the nation eventually that survived the Assyrian period when the northern kingdom fell.

Judah went into captivity in Babylon, came back from Babylon and was still around in the time of Jesus. He's of the tribe of Judah. So, Judah is a very important tribe from the standpoint of the rest of scripture.

Though at this point in time, Judah had not had any particular contribution. They made more than others, but that when the 12 spies were sending the land and two came back, giving a good report, one of them was Joshua of the tribe of Ephraim. The other was Caleb, who was of the tribe of Judah.

Although here he's called the Kenizzite, which is an interesting designation for him. He's referred to that by in other places, too. He says the children of Judah came to Joshua in Gilgal and Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite said to him, you know, the word which the Lord said to Moses, the man of God concerning you and me in Kadesh Barnea.

These guys had gone out and scouted out the land together when they were young men. They're old men now and they're the oldest men in the whole country because everyone else is at least 20 years younger than they are. Because Caleb says he was 40 years old.

And everyone who is over 20 died in the wilderness except him and Joshua. So everyone's at least 20 years younger than he is. But he's still strong and vigorous.

And he says, you remember, Joshua, when we went on that errand and we came back and Moses the Lord through Moses gave us certain promises. Well, I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. And I brought back word to him as it was in my heart.

Nevertheless, my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt. But I wholly followed the Lord my God. This is the one thing that's said most frequently about Caleb.

This this particular thing, it's even said several times, even in this context. But I wholly followed the Lord my God. So Moses swore on that day saying, surely the land where your foot is trodden shall be your inheritance and your children's forever because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.

Now, those are not the exact words of Moses. It's a paraphrase. The actual words that Moses said on this occasion in Chapter 14 of Numbers.

And it's not not very specific. About the land that he will inherit. But in Numbers 14, 24, the Lord says, my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land where he went and his descendants shall inherit it.

That's about as specific as it gets that he will have an inheritance in the land. He is now going to suggest that there's a certain mountain that the Lord spoke of in verse 12 of Joshua 14, a certain mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day. Maybe there was more specific information given to Moses about this that we're not we don't read about previously.

Verse 10. And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, as he said, these 45 years. Now, here we have an important chronological note.

The land has been conquered and now is being divided. And Caleb is 85 years old. He was 40 at Kadesh Barnea.

And after Kadesh Barnea, the children of Israel wandered for 38 years. Now it's been 45 years. Because he was 40 then, he's 85 now.

So it's been 45 years now since the spies went into the land and brought back the report. Of those 45 years, 38 were occupied with the children of Israel wandering through the wilderness. So that means that now it's been seven years since they entered the promised land.

And so that's how we know pretty much how long it took to reach this point. The conquests of the land essentially occupied seven years. And this is how we know, actually, because of his reference to his age on these two places.

He says, I was 45. I was 40 then because these 45 years ever since the Lord spoke his word to Moses while Israel wandered in the wilderness. And now here I am this day, 85 years old.

Verse 11, as yet I'm as strong this day as I was on the day that Moses sent me. At 85, he's as strong as he was when he was 40. And yet these people didn't live hundreds and hundreds of years like they did in pre-flood times.

These men died at 100 and something, usually. Joshua died at 110. And so 85 was still pretty old.

Now, he might be, in a sense, boasting a little. It may be that he's not really quite as strong as he was when he was 40. It's very unusual if he was.

He could be, but it's also possible he's using hyperbole, saying, I'm as ready to fight now as I was then. I'm still feeling my oats. I still feel I've got a lot of vigor still, just like I did then.

I still have a lot of vigor. That doesn't necessarily mean he hasn't gotten some creaky joints or something by this time. As yet, I'm as strong this day as I was the day that Moses sent me.

Just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. Now, therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day. For you heard in that day how that the Anakim were there and that the cities were great and fortified.

It may be that the Lord will help me. And I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said. This mountain is the mountain of Hebron, and it is apparently the stronghold of the giants of whom the ten faithless spies had said, no, we can't defeat these giants.

And Joshua had that earlier. He said, yeah, we can. The Lord can help us.

The Lord can help us defeat them. But it was these giants, the Anakim in Hebron, in that mountain, that were the particular intimidation and obstacle to the children of Israel 45 years earlier than this. And Caleb says, you know, I think God's going to give me any land I want.

I'll take the giants. I'll take them on. You know, I mean, he could have asked for any of the land that had already been conquered.

That was what he should do. But he's just a spunky old guy. He's saying, you know, these are the giants that everyone is afraid of.

I'm feeling like I want to go take them on and I want to take their land from them. And so Joshua blessed him and gave Hebron to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, as an inheritance. Hebron, therefore, became the inheritance of Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, to this day because he wholly followed the Lord God of Israel.

And the name of Hebron formerly was Tirjeth Arba. Now, Tirjeth means city of, and Arba is a man's name. And there's other Tirjeth somethings in the scripture, and it always means the city of something.

In this case, it's the city of Arba. For Arba was the greatest man among the Anakin. Then the land had rest from war.

Now, it says that Arba, who was probably dead by this time, the city had been named after him, so he was probably from some generations earlier, but he was the greatest man among the Anakin. We're told in chapter 15, in verse 13, he was actually the father of Anak. Now, the Anakin were named after their ancestor Anak, and his dad was Arba.

And we see that in chapter 15, verse 13, at the very end, it says in parentheses, Arba was the father of Anak. So the family of Anak were a family of giants. Arba was probably a giant.

He's in fact said to be the greatest man among the Anakin. That probably means the biggest man among them, and he's the father of that clan. And so it used to be named after him, but it's going to have its name changed.

He's going to be, all the Anakin are going to be driven out, and it's going to be known as Hebron from now on instead of Tirgath Arba. Now, I mentioned this reference to Joshua, the Kenizzite, as a strange thing, because the Kenizzites were not Israelites. And yet we are told elsewhere, and even here it's implied, that Caleb was of the tribe of Judah.

I mean, we read in verse 6, then the children of Judah came to Joshua and Caleb, implying that he came as one of the children of Judah to make this request. In Genesis, or first of all, in Numbers 13, when Moses is collecting the spies to go into the land and spy it out, and Caleb is one of them, Moses picks one spy from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. And we read in verse 6, Numbers 13, 6, from the tribe of Judah, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.

So, it's clear that Caleb was of the tribe of Judah, and yet he's twice here and sometimes elsewhere called the Kenizzite. Now, the Kenizzites were the descendants of someone named Kenaz, and he's mentioned as one of the descendants of Esau, an Edomite, one of the branches of the Edomite race. In Genesis 36, in verse 11, it's giving a catalog of the family of Esau and those who descended from him, and it says, the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatham, and Kenaz, from whom, of course, the Kenizzites come.

So, we see that the Kenizzites, as a race, were Edomites, descendants of Esau, not Jews. But, since Caleb is called a Kenizzite on many occasions, and also called of the tribe of Judah, we have to just assume there's an intermarriage there, that somewhere in his family, perhaps his parents, probably, maybe his father was a Jew and his mother was a Kenizzite, or maybe it was in the grandparents' generation, but somehow those two families, those two races had come together, and he was the product of a marriage that was interracial. So, we have him going after the giants and defeating them.

We're not given any details of the battle here. However, in chapter 15, in verse 13 and following, it retells this in more detail, and we'll get to that in a moment. And there's also a parallel to it in the book of Judges, chapter 1. So, this conquest of this region by Caleb and his family, we'll hear more about in a moment, but we're about to, in chapter 15, be told about the tribal boundaries that were given to Judah, and since he was of the tribe of Judah, and he's the most remarkable man of Judah in that time, we've gotten some special attention to him and his inheritance.

But, chapter 15 says, This then was the lot of the tribe of the children of Judah, according to their families. The border of Edom at the wilderness of Zin, southward, was the extreme southern boundary, and their southern border began at the shore of the Salt Sea, that's the Dead Sea, from the bay that faces southward. Then it went out to the southern side of the ascent of Akrabim.

I'm pretty sure the word Akrabim in Hebrew means scorpions, so there's a place apparently named after the large number of scorpions in that region. Passed along to Zin, and ascended on the south side of Kedesh Barnea, passed along to Hezron, went up to Adar, and went around to Karkea. From there it passed toward Asman, and we have some other designations.

We could read all of this if we had infinite time on our hands, and if we had any way of any of these places mean something to us. In many cases we don't even know where their locations are. The writer knew, and they were current markers in his day.

But in many cases not around anymore, and even the ones that are, it's not all that important for us today to know exactly what the boundaries of Judah were, except to know that it was the southern region of the country. Judah got a very large inheritance, all the way from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea in the southernmost region of the land of Canaan, and that's pretty much what we need to know. There is mentioned there in verse 8 that the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom to the southern slope of the Jebusite city, which is Jerusalem.

Notice how ancient this book is. It was written before David conquered Jerusalem, and the author refers to Jerusalem as the Jebusite city, which it was, of course, until David conquered it, and he mentions it as it's also called Jerusalem. Now, anyone living after David's time would not speak in that offhand way about that city, which was their capital and where their sacred ark was and so forth.

They wouldn't say, that Jebusite city called Jerusalem, you know. It's obvious that this is a very early record, before the author himself even knew that Jerusalem would ever be a capital of the people of Israel. It's just another Canaanite city at this point.

And then it talks about the border turning westward at verse 10 and so forth, but like I said, we don't need to really be that familiar with the details of these borders. Then we have the story of Caleb told in a little more detail in verse 13 and following. Now, to Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, he gave a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of the Lord to Joshua, namely, Kirjeth Arba, which is Hebron.

Arba was the father of Anak. Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak from there, Shishai, Ahimon, and Talmai, the children of Anak, and no doubt they were all giants. Then he went up from there to the inhabitants of Debir.

Formerly, the name of Debir was Kirjeth Sefer. Now, actually in chapter 10, verses 38 and 39, Debir is one of the cities that Joshua had conquered earlier. But apparently when the Israelites would conquer a city, if they didn't burn it down, they moved along to the next city.

And sometimes these people who had fled just came back and repopulated, probably with much less spirit to resist than before, and greatly chastened and more submissive. But still, they came back. In this case, they might not have been submissive.

They might have wanted to restore their independence from Israel. And Caleb came and had to defeat them again. But here's how he did it.

Caleb said, He who attacks Kirjeth Sefer and takes it, to him I will give Aksar, my daughter, as wife. That's sort of like what Saul said, that anyone who will bring him a thousand Philistine foreskins will be able to marry his daughter, Michael. I guess that's one way to make sure your daughter be taken care of.

The man who wants to marry my daughter, he's got to be able to kill a thousand of the enemy himself. You know, he's got to conquer a city himself. Then I'll know my daughter will be well taken care of by a guy like that.

And so Ophniel, the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, he took it and gave it to Aksar. He gave him Aksar, the daughter, as a wife. Now, Ophniel eventually became the first of the judges in the book of Judges also.

Same guy, son-in-law, or not son-in-law, but nephew of Caleb and became his son-in-law. Now, it was so when she, that is Caleb's daughter, came to her husband that she persuaded him to ask her father for a field. Apparently, she persuaded her husband to let her ask because she's the one who did so.

So she dismounted from her donkey and Caleb said to her, what do you wish? She said, give me a blessing. Since you have given me a land in the south, give me also springs of water. Apparently, it was nice land, but there weren't any springs and you need that.

So he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. Then we have a list of the cities of Judah, over a hundred of them. We won't go into them.

We won't read them all. It's not necessary. It gives them in several different regions.

In verses 20 through 32, it lists 29 cities that are in the southern region of the territory. Then verses 33 through 47 talks about a bunch of cities that are in the lowland areas, followed by a list of mountain cities in verses 48 through 60. And finally, in verses 61 and 62, a couple of cities in the wilderness, more than a couple, a few cities in the wilderness area near the Dead Sea.

And finally, in verse 63, 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 to this day. So again, this is before Jerusalem became a Jewish city.

At the time of writing, the writer says the Jebusites still controlled Jerusalem. Now, in the first chapter of Judges, it makes this very same statement about the tribe of Benjamin, that they were not able to drive out the Jerusalemites. In Judges 1.21, it says that the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who inhabited Jerusalem.

So the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. It's almost verbatim the same, except in Joshua, it's the Judahites who couldn't do it. And in Judges, it's the Benjamites who couldn't.

Why? Because Jerusalem was right on the boundary of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin. And it didn't belong distinctly for most of the time to either tribe. Eventually, it was pretty much a solidly Jewish city.

But originally, it was on the border of Benjamin and Judah. Apparently, Judah had the task of conquering it, at least part of it. And Benjaminites did too.

And initially, neither could drive out the Jebusites. In the days of David, however, David drove out the Jebusites, at least out of the Jewish portion. But the Benjamites never were able to drive them out.

Okay, so we're going to stop there. It's time to take a break. And we'll keep going through when we come back.