The book of Joshua is a book about taking the Promised Land.

We’ve seen recently:

Shiloh is located in the territory of Ephraim, and is just about exactly in the center of the Promised Land.

Shiloh will now become kind of a spiritual and governmental headquarters for Israel.

The idea is that the land was kept in line, there were no further outbreaks of war from the people in the land.

It doesn’t mean that they had finished conquering everything.

There have now been five tribes that have received their inheritance.

Five down, seven to go.

Joshua 18:3-NIV So Joshua said to the Israelites: "How long will you wait before you begin to take possession of the land

Joshua has had five tribes step up to the plate and take a swing.

They are going to send out guys to divide the land up into small portions, then divide it up among the seven tribes.

The ancient historian Josephus reports that these men were, among other things, experts in geometry (geometry actually means "earth" + "measure")

Or, a scroll.

Some critics would try to make us think that much of the Bible was handed down by "oral tradition", that things weren’t written down in those ancient days. Wrong!

Kind of like rolling dice.

Something interesting is going to take place.

Benjamin’s portion is going to fall right between a small crack between Israel’s two tribal leaders: Judah and Ephraim.

Benjamin is going to get a rather small portion of land.

It’s interesting to see that even though there’s this whole process of the surveyors, and then the casting of lots, Benjamin seems to get just what he’s supposed to get.

Jerusalem would be one of many cities that were shared by more than one tribe.

Simeon’s portion is going to be a chunk in the middle of the tribe of Judah.

Simeon will be given a cluster of 17 towns and villages.

But it won’t be too long until the identity of Simeon will kind of fade away.

This all is pretty amazing, considering something that the patriarch Jacob had once prophesied (probably some 400 years earlier) concerning Simeon and Levi:

We saw last week that Ziklag was given to Judah. It’s now shared with Simeon.

Judah had more than enough land, so part of it was given to Simeon.

How could they have "too much land"?

Every once in a while someone like a Judah comes along and bites off more than they can chew.

When you trace out the locations of all the cities, it looks as if Zebulun is kind of land-locked.

But we know that from history, eventually Zebulun’s borders did go to the sea.

This isn’t the Bethlehem where Jesus was born, that was another one far to the south in the tribe of Judah. Sometimes there are more than one city with the same name.

Issachar’s portion is to the east of Zebulun’s, kind of in the south west corner of the Sea of Galilee.

Asher would get the beach front property in the north.

Of importance were the cities of Tyre and Sidon.

Though Asher seems to have lost much of it’s tribal identity by the time of David’s kingdom (400 years later), the tribe is not totally lost.

Naphtali got the north eastern portion of Israel, along the Jordan river, coming down to the Sea of Galilee.

There was not much significance in this area, until 1400 years later, to fulfill a prophecy by Isaiah:

Dan’s portion was squeezed in between Ephraim to the north, Benjamin to the east, Judah to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.

The Danites had gotten the last lot and seemed to have gotten the least favorable land.

Sometime later (pretty soon), they got forced by the Amorites to go flee up into the mountains.

The Danites weren’t happy with all this, so they formed a raiding party and headed north and take the city of Leshem, later renamed "Dan".

I think this is kind of neat.

Joshua got the portion that he asked for.

But it actually wasn’t the choicest part of Canaan.

Observations about dividing the land:

It doesn’t seem that the Israelites had any prisons to speak of.

There were basically two ways that crime was dealt with.

But there were some things that were kind of vague.

Jewish tradition tells us that the roads to these cities were kept in excellent condition, and the crossroads along the way were well marked with signposts reading, "Refuge! Refuge!" Runners were also stationed along the way to guide any fugitives.

The Hebrew word used here is go-ël. It means to redeem, or act as kinsman-redeemer, to avenge, revenge, ransom, or do the part of a kinsman.

But the role of a near relative (kinsman) might also include revenge in the case of the death of a relative.

There’s a proper role of responsibility toward relatives, and then you can carry it too far!

Don’t put into your mind something like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, where she and her friends were kept out of the city by a huge wall and gate, and they couldn’t come in unless they had the secret password, or killed the wicked witch. The phrase "gate of the city" refers to the place you entered into the city, but it carried more than that.

So here, the manslaughterer would present his petition to the leaders of the city, asking for asylum.

There would still be some kind of trial to determine whether or not the death happened accidentally, or whether it was murder.

Apparently, the slayer would have to stay in the city of refuge not only until a trial was held, but even after that, he would have to wait until the man who served as high priest at the time died. (Num. 35:24-28)

If the slayer left the city of refuge before the death of the high priest, he could still be killed by the avenger of blood, and the avenger would not be considered guilty of murder.

Why the death of the high priest?

This setting up of the cities of refuge is something that’s already been started.

Three cities are chosen from the west side of the Jordan:

Three cities were already chosen on the eastern side of the Jordan:

The cities were spaced pretty evenly throughout the land.

Any person needing to flee might get to one of them in less than a days’ journey.

Is there more here than just the stopping of family blood feuds?