Week 8 Joshua 21
The tribe of Levi comes to Joshua and asks him for their City & Land Allocations. Back then it was an important list if you were a Levite. But it’s a plodder of a chapter for me now.
So it’s a reminder: different passages have different values for different people at different times.
Chapter 21 was written to and about the Levites. It was a document that would give them legal ownership – spelled out city-by-city and region-by-region – of all the municipalities that they’d be getting. Since I’m not a Levite and not living in OT Israel the practical value of chapter 21 tails off pretty quickly for me. It really has almost no practical or concrete or personal claim on my time or interest.
Joshua 21 illustrates a pretty common concern & reality for readers. There are 1189 chapters in the bible and I don’t figure anyone thinks that every one of them is equally important. If I had time to create a Chapter Valuation List of the whole bible – one that listed chapters in order of importance – then Joshua 21 would be far down the list (in the Not Too Important section along with chapters like Exodus 25 or Leviticus 1).
I pretty well accept that some chapters have a greater buoyancy that elevates them above others – flotational oomph. But even so I’m reluctant to dispense with the chapters that lack effervescence.
I figure I have little enough data to work with and so I’d be foolish to jettison what I’ve got.