Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 18-20.

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So, at the beginning of today’s passage five tribes have been allotted their territory, and have claimed it, at least partially.  This reads as if Judah, Ephraim, and Manasseh had chosen their territory by conquering it.  Now, having read the chapters before today’s it is clear that to some degree Ephraim and Manasseh had limits on the territory they could make their own.  Since in yesterday’s passage they had asked for additional territory because they were having trouble conquering  all of the territory they had been given.  I will be perfectly honest, I do not understand exactly what the writer is trying to tell us happened.

There are a few things I do understand which I want to highlight out of today’s passage, because they shed light on how we should understand what happens later in the Old Testament.  First, the territory claimed by the tribe of Benjamin is between the territories of Judah and of Ephraim.  It also includes Jerusalem, which is later claimed by King David as his capital. Next, the territory given to Simeon to claim was carved out from within the territory which the tribe of Judah had already claimed.  Which means that later when the United Kingdom of Israel was divided, most, if not all, of the land of the tribe of Simeon would have been in the Southern Kingdom.  Finally, the tribe of Dan initially claimed territory given to them by Joshua, but they later lost that land and claimed other territory for themselves.  It is not clear to me if Dan lost its territory to foreigners, or if they lost it to members of other tribes of Israel.

I find this all somewhat interesting, but if I was not committed to writing a blog on this passage, I doubt I would read today’s passage close enough to have noticed these things.

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