Joshua18chapter 18

Joshua 18:1-2

The tabernacle moves from Gilgal on the edge of the country to Shiloh in the middle of it, and it stays there until the ark is carried out and lost at 1 Samuel 4. Scripture uses the ruin of that place as an argument twice afterward, at Jeremiah 7:12 where the hearers are sent to look at what became of it, and at Psalm 78:60 where God forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh. The same verse says the land was subdued before them, while 13:1 in this book says there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed, and seven of the twelve tribes are still without a portion.

Joshua 18:3-7

Joshua rebukes his own people for slowness rather than for rebellion, and it is the one place in the book where he does. Barnes reads the delay as reluctance to give up the camp life these men were born into and to face the fighting that settling the land would still cost. The method Joshua sets is a written description first and a lot afterward, three men out of each of the seven tribes, so the division runs by survey and by lot together. Verse 7 repeats what Numbers 18:20 gave the Levites, that the priesthood of the Lord is their inheritance, so no eighth portion is cut.

Joshua 18:8-10

Twenty one men walk the country and write it down by cities into seven parts in a book, which Clarke calls the first act of surveying on record. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown cite Josephus for the claim that the work was done by men expert in geometry, and the learning behind it would have come out of Egypt. The lot is then cast at Shiloh before the ark, the method Numbers 26:55 laid down, and Proverbs 16:33 states why a lot settled a question in Israel. The survey takes out the guesswork and the lot takes out the favour, so nothing in the division rests on Joshua's own preference.

Joshua 18:11-20

Benjamin draws the first of the seven lots and gets a strip between Judah on the south and Joseph on the north, which sets Rachel's two sons beside each other and answers Deuteronomy 33:12, where the beloved of the Lord dwells between his shoulders. The southern line here is the northern line of Judah from 15:5-9 traced in the opposite direction, with the same landmarks in reverse order: the stone of Bohan, the going up to Adummim, En-rogel and the valley of the son of Hinnom. Barnes holds that the text of this chapter and the next is in disorder and that many of the places named can no longer be located, which is worth stating rather than passing over. The portion is the smallest of the seven, and it holds the Jordan fords, Jericho, and the ground Jerusalem stands on.

Joshua 18:21-28

Jericho heads Benjamin's city list, the town Joshua cursed at 6:26, and 1 Kings 16:34 records that curse falling on Hiel of Bethel generations later. Gibeon, Chephirah and Beeroth are three of the four Gibeonite towns of chapter 9, so the men Joshua swore to spare end up living inside this tribe's inheritance. Gaba at verse 24 and Gibeath at verse 28 are Gibeah, the town of Judges 19 and 20 that nearly cost Benjamin its existence and later the home of Saul at 1 Samuel 11:4; Mizpeh at verse 26 is where Israel gathers to judge that crime at Judges 20:1. Verse 28 places Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, in Benjamin's list, while 15:63 records Judah failing to drive the Jebusites out and Judges 1:21 records Benjamin failing, and both accounts stand as written.