The fighting is over; now the land has to be handed out. Joshua is old, large tracts are still unconquered, and each tribe is told to finish the job in its own territory. Into that moment steps Caleb — eighty-five, one of only two men alive who believed the spies’ report forty years ago — and he does not ask for an easy plot. He asks for the mountain full of giants that frightened the nation the first time.
A study in Joshua 13-14 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
There Remaineth Yet Very Much Land To Be Possessed
“Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.”
Joshua 13:1
The book is honest about the gap between what was won and what was left. The backbone of Canaan is broken, but the edges — the Philistine coast, the far north — are not cleared, and Joshua is running out of years. So God has the land divided now, conquered parts and unconquered alike, and makes each tribe responsible for driving out the enemy in its own allotment. The inheritance is given by grace and taken by effort, and the second half was never optional.
The LORD God Of Israel Was Their Inheritance
“But unto the tribe of Levi Moses gave not any inheritance: the LORD God of Israel was their inheritance, as he said unto them.”
Joshua 13:33
One tribe gets no territory at all. The Levites, set apart for the sanctuary, are given something else in its place: God Himself. It is stated as a plain fact of the land settlement — and it becomes a line the psalmists reach for: “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance… I have a goodly heritage” (Psalm 16:5-6). For most of Israel the portion was fields; for Levi it was the LORD, and that was counted the better deal.
I Wholly Followed The LORD My God
“Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God. And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance… because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.”
Joshua 14:8-9
The phrase wholly followed the LORD lands three times in this one chapter. Forty-five years earlier, when ten spies talked the nation out of the land, Caleb and Joshua stood alone. Caleb has waited through the entire wilderness sentence — suffering a judgment that was not his — without complaint, and God has kept him alive to collect the promise. Faith that follows all the way, not most of the way, is what is being rewarded.
Give Me This Mountain
“As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me… Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out.”
Joshua 14:11-12
Caleb asks for Hebron — the home of the Anakim, the giants whose “great and fenced” cities had made the ten spies feel like grasshoppers. He wants the hardest ground in the country, at eighty-five, precisely because it is the ground that once broke Israel’s nerve. His “if so be the LORD will be with me” is not doubt; it is the whole basis of the request. He drove the three sons of Anak out (Joshua 15:14). The giants were always the LORD’s problem, not the size of the man facing them.
“He did not ask for himself a land already conquered, but the place which above all others the spies had thought it impossible to subdue. By the help of God he would wrest his stronghold from the very giants whose power had staggered the faith of Israel.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 512
