Joshua 18: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Israel gathers at Shiloh and sets up the tent of meeting, but seven tribes still have no land of their own. Joshua sends out three men from each tribe to survey the remaining land, write down a description of it by cities, and divide it into seven portions; he then casts lots at Shiloh to assign them. The first lot falls to Benjamin, and the chapter lists Benjamin's borders and its twenty-six named cities.

Claim by Claim

1. 18:1
   • The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh.
   • They set up the tent of meeting there.
   • The land was subdued before them.
2. 18:2
   • Seven tribes remained among the children of Israel who had not yet apportioned their inheritance.
3. 18:3
   • Joshua spoke to the children of Israel.
   • Joshua asked them how long they would be slack about going in to possess the land.
   • Joshua said the LORD, the God of their fathers, had given them the land.
4. 18:4
   • Joshua told them to appoint three men for each tribe.
   • Joshua said he would send those men out.
   • Joshua said the men would rise and go through the land.
   • Joshua said the men would write a description of the land according to the inheritance of each.
   • Joshua said the men would come back to him.
5. 18:5
   • Joshua said they would divide the land into seven parts.
   • Joshua said Judah would stay in its territory in the south.
   • Joshua said the house of Joseph would stay in its territory in the north.
6. 18:6
   • Joshua told them to write a description of the land in seven parts.
   • Joshua told them to bring the description to him there.
   • Joshua said he would cast the lot for them there before the LORD their God.
7. 18:7
   • The Levites have no portion among the other tribes.
   • The priesthood of the LORD is the inheritance of the Levites.
   • Gad, Reuben, and half the tribe of Manasseh had received their inheritance beyond the Jordan on the east.
   • Moses the servant of the LORD gave them that inheritance.
8. 18:8
   • The men arose and went.
   • Joshua commanded the men who went to write a description of the land.
   • Joshua told them to go and walk through the land.
   • Joshua told them to write a description of it.
   • Joshua told them to return to him.
   • Joshua said he would cast the lot for them there before the LORD in Shiloh.
9. 18:9
   • The men went and passed through the land.
   • The men wrote a description of the land by cities in seven parts in a book.
   • The men came to Joshua at the camp at Shiloh.
10. 18:10
    • Joshua cast the lot for them in Shiloh before the LORD.
    • Joshua divided the land there to the children of Israel according to their divisions.
11. 18:11
    • The lot of the tribe of the children of Benjamin came up according to their families.
    • The territory of their lot came out between the children of Judah and the children of Joseph.
12. 18:12
    • Their border on the north side began at the Jordan.
    • The border went up to the slope of Jericho on the north.
    • The border went up through the hill country westward.
    • The border ended at the wilderness of Beth-aven.
13. 18:13
    • From there the border passed over toward Luz, to the southern slope of Luz.
    • Luz is Bethel.
    • The border went down to Ataroth-addar.
    • Ataroth-addar is on the hill south of Lower Beth-horon.
14. 18:14
    • The border was drawn around on the west side southward from the hill that faces Beth-horon on the south.
    • The border ended at Kiriath-baal.
    • Kiriath-baal is Kiriath-jearim.
    • Kiriath-jearim is a city of the children of Judah.
    • This was the west side.
15. 18:15
    • The south side began at the outskirts of Kiriath-jearim.
    • The border went out westward.
    • The border went out to the spring of the waters of Nephtoah.
16. 18:16
    • The border came down to the end of the hill that faces the Valley of the son of Hinnom.
    • That hill is in the Valley of Rephaim on the north.
    • The border went down the Valley of Hinnom to the slope of the Jebusite on the south.
    • The border went down to En-rogel.
17. 18:17
    • The border was drawn from the north.
    • The border went out to En-shemesh.
    • The border went out toward Geliloth, which is opposite the ascent of Adummim.
    • The border went down to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben.
18. 18:18
    • The border passed along to the slope opposite the Arabah on the north.
    • The border went down to the Arabah.
19. 18:19
    • The border passed along to the slope of Beth-hoglah on the north.
    • The border ended at the north bay of the Salt Sea, at the south end of the Jordan.
    • This was the south border.
20. 18:20
    • The Jordan was its border on the east side.
    • This was the inheritance of the children of Benjamin by its surrounding borders, according to their families.
21. 18:21
    • The cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin according to their families included Jericho.
    • The cities included Beth-hoglah.
    • The cities included Emek-keziz.
22. 18:22
    • The cities included Beth-arabah.
    • The cities included Zemaraim.
    • The cities included Bethel.
23. 18:23
    • The cities included Avvim.
    • The cities included Parah.
    • The cities included Ophrah.
24. 18:24
    • The cities included Chephar-ammoni.
    • The cities included Ophni.
    • The cities included Geba.
    • These were twelve cities with their villages.
25. 18:25
    • The cities included Gibeon.
    • The cities included Ramah.
    • The cities included Beeroth.
26. 18:26
    • The cities included Mizpeh.
    • The cities included Chephirah.
    • The cities included Mozah.
27. 18:27
    • The cities included Rekem.
    • The cities included Irpeel.
    • The cities included Taralah.
28. 18:28
    • The cities included Zelah.
    • The cities included Eleph.
    • The cities included the Jebusite city.
    • The Jebusite city is Jerusalem.
    • The cities included Gibeath.
    • The cities included Kirjath.
    • These were fourteen cities with their villages.
    • This was the inheritance of the children of Benjamin according to their families.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

18:1

Shiloh was a settlement in the hill country about twenty miles north of Jerusalem; it served as Israel's central sanctuary site for generations before Jerusalem. The "tent of meeting" (the King James "tabernacle of the congregation") was the portable shrine carried since the wilderness years, a curtained tent that was taken down, moved, and pitched again, here set up in one place for the first time since the crossing of the Jordan.

18:2

"Share of the land" translates a word the King James renders "inheritance": a permanent family holding passed down to descendants, not a gift that could simply be sold off. The seven tribes still waiting were Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan.

18:3

In 1611 "slack" meant slow or unwilling to act, so Joshua is accusing the tribes of dragging their feet, not of being relaxed. The land is described as already given even though it is not yet occupied: the grant has been made, but the tribes have to go and live on it.

18:4

The KJV's "describe" means survey and record in writing, closer to mapping than to describing in words. The three men from each tribe are a survey team, sent out so that the division can be made from real information about what land is actually there.

18:5

"The people descended from Joseph" means the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, named after Joseph's two sons; Joseph himself had no tribe bearing his own name, his portion being split between them.

18:6

Casting lots meant drawing or shaking out marked stones or sticks to get an answer no one present controlled. It was the standard ancient way of settling a division that had to be seen as impartial, no tribe could claim Joshua had favored another.

18:7

The tribe of Levi received no block of territory. Its members lived scattered in towns among the other tribes and were supported by a portion of the offerings brought to the sanctuary; that role, rather than a stretch of land, is what "their share" means here. Gad, Reuben, and half of Manasseh had already been given land east of the Jordan, in what is now Jordan, before the river was crossed.

18:9

The "scroll" (King James "book") was a rolled sheet of leather or papyrus, the normal form of a written document; bound books with pages did not yet exist.

18:11

"The lot came up" reflects how lots worked: objects were shaken in a container until one came out. Benjamin's was the first drawn. "Family groups" (King James "families") are clans, extended kinship groups larger than a household and smaller than a tribe.

18:12

Boundaries in this chapter are described the way a person would walk them, naming hills, springs, slopes, and towns in order rather than giving directions on a map. Many of the places named can no longer be located with certainty.

18:13

Luz was the older name of Bethel; the text pauses to say so because readers would know the town under only one of the two names. Beth-horon came in two settlements, an upper and a lower, on a ridge road climbing from the coastal plain into the hills.

18:14

Two names again for one place: Kirjath-baal, "town of Baal," was also called Kirjath-jearim, "town of woods." The first name preserves the town's older association with the Canaanite god Baal.

18:15

The KJV's "well of waters" is a natural spring, water coming up out of the ground, not a shaft dug down to it. In dry country a spring was a permanent, unmistakable landmark that everyone in the region could identify, which is why boundaries were pinned to them.

18:16

The Valley of the Son of Hinnom (in Hebrew Ge-Hinnom) was the ravine running along the southern and western edge of Jerusalem. The "Valley of the Giants" is the Valley of Rephaim, a broad plain southwest of the city; the Rephaim were remembered as an unusually tall people who had lived in the land earlier. The Jebusites were the Canaanite people who still held Jerusalem itself at this point.

18:17

The "pass at Adummim" was the steep ascent on the road from Jericho up to Jerusalem. The Stone of Bohan was a standing stone used as a boundary marker; such stones served as fixed legal landmarks between territories.

18:18

The KJV keeps the Hebrew word "Arabah" untranslated. It means the deep rift valley that the Jordan River runs down, a hot trench lying well below sea level.

18:19

The Salt Sea is the Dead Sea, so salty that nothing lives in it, and the lowest body of water on earth. The Jordan River empties into its northern end.

18:21

The "villages around them" translates a Hebrew phrase literally meaning a city's "daughters": the smaller unwalled settlements in the surrounding countryside that depended on a walled town for protection and trade.

18:24

The KJV's "villages" translates a word that literally means "daughters": the small unwalled settlements clustered around a larger walled town and dependent on it for defense and trade. The total of twelve counts the towns named since verse 21.

18:25

Gibeon, Beeroth, Chephirah and Kiriath-jearim were the four towns of the Gibeonites, the local people who tricked Israel into a peace treaty in chapter 9. Their towns now fall inside Benjamin's allotted territory, so Benjamin's land contains a population Israel is bound by oath not to destroy.

18:28

Jebusi (also called Jebus) is Jerusalem, named for the Jebusites who still occupied it; it is listed in Benjamin's allotment even though Israel had not yet taken it. "Kirjath" here is generally understood as Kirjath-jearim, the town named earlier in verse 14.