Joshua 18:7

18:2-10 After a year or more, Joshua blamed their slackness, and told them how to proceed. God, by his grace, has given us a title to a good land, the heavenly Canaan, but we are slack to take possession of it; we enter not into that rest, as we might by faith, and hope, and holy joy. How long shall it be thus with us? How long shall we thus stand in our own light, and forsake our own mercies for lying vanities? Joshua stirs the Israelites up to take possession of their lots. He is ready to do his part, if they will do theirs.

But the Levites have no part among you,.... And so needed not to send any men out of their tribe to measure the land on their account, and is a reason why the remaining part of the land was to be divided into seven parts only: for the priesthood of the Lord is his inheritance; not only the office, but what appertained to it, all the perquisites of it, the tithes, firstfruits, parts of the sacrifices, &c. see Joshua 13:14, and Gad, and Reuben, and half the tribe of Manasseh, have received their inheritance beyond Jordan on the east, which Moses the servant of the Lord gave them; and so had no share in the division of the land of Canaan, being sufficiently provided for.

7 . But the Levites ] See above, ch. Joshua 13:33 ; Numbers 18:20 . the priesthood of the Lord ] Notice the change here as compared with ch. Joshua 13:14 . There “the sacrifices of Jehovah” are said to be the portion of Levi, and in Joshua 13:33 , “Jehovah, God of Israel” is said to be their portion. Here we have “the priesthood of Jehovah,” as in Numbers 3:10 ; Numbers 16:10 ; Numbers 18:1-7 .

But the Levites have no part among you; for the {f} priesthood of the LORD is their inheritance: and Gad, and Reuben, and half the tribe of Manasseh, have received their inheritance beyond Jordan on the east, which Moses the servant of the LORD gave them. (f) That is, the sacrifices and offerings, Jos 13:14.

4-9. Give out from among you three men for each tribe—Though the lot determined the part of the country where each tribe was to be located, it could not determine the extent of territory which might be required; and the dissatisfaction of the children of Joseph with the alleged smallness of their possession gave reason to fear that complaints might arise from other quarters, unless precautions were taken to make a proper distribution of the land. For this purpose a commission was given to twenty-one persons—three chosen from each of the seven tribes which had not yet received their inheritance, to make an accurate survey of the country.

Verse 7. - But the Levites (see Joshua 13:14, 33 ). The priesthood of the Lord. An equivalent expression to that in ch. 13. Here the office of the priesthood, there, more accurately, the sacrifices which it was the privilege of that tribe to offer up, are said to be the possession of the tribe of Levi. By cities. It was evidently not a land survey, entering into such particulars as the physical conditions of the ground, its fitness for agriculture, for pasture and the like. The division was made by cities. These cities had been taken and destroyed by Joshua, and now it was the intention of the Israelites to be guided by the ancient political system of the country, to occupy those cities, and to cultivate the adjacent land, as the Phoenicians had done before them. Thus, not so much the area of the land, as the size and importance of its cities, was to be the leading principle of the division. And not unwisely. The Israelites were about to relinquish their nomad life, and if they settled in Palestine, how, without walled cities, could they hold their own against the powerful nations round about them? And came again to Joshua. "The result of this examination, which was unquestionably a more careful one than that made by the spies of Moses, was that the unsubdued territory was found to be too small for the wants of seven tribes, while that apportioned to Judah was seen to be disproportionately large.

and ye shall describe the land into seven portions, and bring [the description] hither to me, and I will cast lots for you here before Jehovah our God. But the Levites have no portion among you, for the priesthood of Jehovah is their inheritance. And Gad, and Reuben, and half the tribe of Manasseh have received their inheritance beyond the Jordan on the east, which Moses the servant of Jehovah gave them. And the men arose and went away. And Joshua charged them that went to describe the land, saying, Go and walk through the land, and describe it, and come again to me, and I will cast lots for you here before Jehovah in Shiloh. And the men went and passed through the land, and described it by cities into seven portions, in a book, and they came to Joshua, to the camp at Shiloh. And Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before Jehovah. And there Joshua divided the land to the children of Israel according to their divisions. And the lot of the tribe of the children of Benjamin came up according to their families. And the territory of their lot came forth between the children of Judah and the children of Joseph. And their border on the north side was from the Jordan; and the border went up to the side of Jericho on the north, and went up to the mountain westward; and ended at the wilderness of Beth-Aven;

And Joshua spoke to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and to Manasseh, saying, Thou art a great people, and hast great power: thou shalt not have one lot only, but the hill-country shall be thine, as it is a wood, thou shalt cut it down, and its outgoings shall be thine; for thou shalt dispossess the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots; for they are powerful. Chapter 18 And the whole assembly of the children of Israel gathered together at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there; and the land was subdued before them. And there remained among the children of Israel seven tribes whose inheritance had not been distributed to them. And Joshua said to the children of Israel, How long will ye shew yourselves slack to go to take possession of the land which Jehovah the God of your fathers hath given you? Provide you three men for a tribe; that I may send them, and they shall rise and go through the land, and describe it according to the proportion of their inheritance, and they shall come to me. And they shall divide it into seven portions. Judah shall remain in their border on the south, and the house of Joseph shall remain in their border on the north; and ye shall describe the land into seven portions, and bring [the description] hither to me, and I will cast lots for you here before Jehovah our God.