Week 11 Joshua
There’s not much time for anything but reading.
Still, I slow down in Joshua 13-19, flipping back and forth between the text and a map at the back of my bible. It’s a big help to me.
I work through Joshua 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17. The chapters take their time wading through the land allotments of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh (all of them east of the river), and then Judah, Ephraim and the other half of Manasseh west of the Jordan. Lots of names in the five chapters and 139 verses (~28 verses per tribe). I check the map and it’s saying pretty clearly: those five tribes got the lion’s share of the land.
In chapters 18 and 19 the other seven tribes straggle in, looking a bit sluggish, tardy, like one of them had dropped the baton. Their land hasn’t even been surveyed. Finally when their lottery is done I look at the map again and see the same big winners: Judah and Joseph’s boys – Ephraim and Manasseh. Powerful, land-rich tribes, prime locations.
I think back to the death-bed forecasts Jacob made to his sons (it’s weeks since I read Genesis 49 but I remember). I take the time to go back and reread it. If you asked me which of those twelve blessings I would choose to be blessed with it would be a toss-up: Judah or Joseph (the others aren’t even close). And now here the two of them are showing up as heavy-weights in the promised land.