Very Much Land Remains
1 Now Joshua was old and well advanced in years. Yahweh said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed. 2 “This is the land that still remains: all the regions of the Philistines, and all the Geshurites; 3 from the Shihor, which is before Egypt, even to the border of Ekron northward, which is counted as Canaanite; the five lords of the Philistines; the Gazites, and the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avvim, 4 on the south; all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that belongs to the Sidonians, to Aphek, to the border of the Amorites; 5 and the land of the Gebalites, and all Lebanon, toward the sunrise, from Baal Gad under Mount Hermon to the entrance of Hamath; 6 all the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth Maim, even all the Sidonians. I will drive them out from before the children of Israel. Just allocate it to Israel for an inheritance, as I have commanded you. 7 Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance to the nine tribes and the half-tribe of Manasseh.” 8 With him the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses gave them, beyond the Jordan eastward, even as Moses the servant of Yahweh gave them: 9 from Aroer, that is on the edge of the valley of the Arnon, and the city that is in the middle of the valley, and all the plain of Medeba to Dibon; 10 and all the cities of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, to the border of the children of Ammon; 11 and Gilead, and the border of the Geshurites and Maacathites, and all Mount Hermon, and all Bashan to Salecah; 12 all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (who was left of the remnant of the Rephaim); for Moses attacked these, and drove them out. 13 Nevertheless the children of Israel didn’t drive out the Geshurites, nor the Maacathites: but Geshur and Maacath live within Israel to this day. 14 Only he gave no inheritance to the tribe of Levi. The offerings of Yahweh, the God of Israel, made by fire are his inheritance, as he spoke to him.
An old commander is told the work is unfinished — and ordered to allocate land not yet taken, because God's I-will-drive-them-out makes unconquered ground inheritable.
Now Joshua was old and well advanced in years. Yahweh said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.
The sentence states Joshua's age twice — God repeating a man's own condition back to him — and then the agenda his lifetime will not finish. The remaining-land survey is specific: the Philistine pentapolis on the coast, the Sidonian north, Lebanon toward Hamath Joshua 13:2–5 — the very territories that will supply Israel's next centuries of trouble. The book that says nothing failed Joshua 21:45 is the same book that maps the unfinished; both are true, and the tension is the Bible's realism about promise and possession living at two tenses Joshua 1:3.
all the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon to Misrephoth Maim, even all the Sidonians. I will drive them out from before the children of Israel. Just allocate it to Israel for an inheritance, as I have commanded you.
Here is the verse's astonishing instruction: divide what is not yet conquered. The lot lines will run through land still held by Sidonians, because I will drive them out — future tense — is treated as sufficient basis for a present deed. Israel's tribes receive title to territory their faith will have to collect, which converts every remaining Canaanite enclave from a fact of life into an unclaimed inheritance. The design failed only where the next book shows the collecting abandoned Judges 1:27–33 Judges 2:2–3; the deed itself never lapsed.
With him the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses gave them, beyond the Jordan eastward, even as Moses the servant of Yahweh gave them:
The east-bank settlement is recorded first — Moses' own allocation, honored to the letter Numbers 32:33 — with its darker footnotes kept in the record: Geshur and Maacath not driven out Joshua 13:13, and among the slain of the old wars, one name pulled forward for special mention: the children of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the soothsayer, with the sword Joshua 13:22. The prophet-for-hire who could not curse Israel Numbers 23:8 and then taught Peor's snare instead Numbers 31:16 Revelation 2:14 gets his epitaph in a land registry — the soothsayer, dead among the ordinary slain.
Only he gave no inheritance to the tribe of Levi. The offerings of Yahweh, the God of Israel, made by fire are his inheritance, as he spoke to him.
And the chapter that opens nine chapters of land grants establishes its great exception before the first lot falls. Levi receives no territory — stated here and again at the chapter's close with the deeper wording: Yahweh, the God of Israel, is their inheritance Joshua 13:33 Numbers 18:20 Deuteronomy 10:9. In a book where inheritance is the whole vocabulary of blessing, one tribe's portion is God himself — a live demonstration, planted in the middle of the real estate, that the land was always the sign and never the substance Psalms 16:5 Psalms 73:26.
settled What this mark means