Week 12 Joshua 20-21
In chapter 20 Joshua named a) the six urban locations that got the City of Refuge designation (CoR) and b) the tribal districts where those cities were located:
Kedesh (Naphtali)
Shechem (Ephraim)
Hebron (Judah)
Bezer (Reuben)
Ramoth-Gilead (Gad)
Golan in Bashan (Manasseh)
So then I got to the next chapter and was idling my way through the long list of all the cities that were given to the Levite tribe (there were 48 of them – mostly unfamiliar & unrecognizable names).
After a dozen verses I saw that Hebron in Judah was identified as a CoR. Hang on! I had just read that. I glanced back at chapter 20. Sure enough – Hebron in Judah was a CoR.
A bit farther down it said that Shechem in Ephraim was a CoR.
Then that Golan in Manasseh was.
So was Kedesh in Naphtali.
And Ramoth-Gilead in Gad.
I was cross-checking chapter 21 with the list in 20 and so when I only found five cities in 21 I doubled-back to see what I missed. I found this: from the tribe of Reuben they received Bezer. That’s it. It didn’t say anything about Bezer being a CoR – which it definitely did with the other five cities.
So I wondered: what’s going on? Was it an intentional omission by the writer? If it was…then why? If not…then what was it? A glitch? A copying error?
It’s a small thing and not really so important I guess. But it made me wonder.
Note: see Joshua 20:7-8 & 21:9-13 20-21 27 32 38 36 (NLT)