Joshua 13:7

Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance,.... Having the command and authority of God for it, he was to set about it at once, with all diligence and application: unto the nine tribes: of

Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance unto the nine tribes, and the half tribe of Manasseh, No JFB commentary on this verse.

Joshua 13:7 Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance unto the nine tribes, and the half tribe of Manasseh,Ver. 7. Now therefore divide this land.] Even those parts thereof also that are yet unsubdued; for it is theirs, but so as they must win it before they wear it. Sic petitur caelum. The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence.

XIII. OF THE TO BE DIVIDED (Joshua 13:1-14). (b) According to its boundaries. (1) Joshua was old and stricken in years.—Rather, he had aged, and was advanced in days. Old is too absolute a word. He did not live beyond a hundred and ten years (Joshua 24:29), and this was not a great age for the time. But in several instances the Hebrew word here employed is used not so much in respect of the number of years men lived, but rather in regard to the weakening of the vital powers. So it is said in Genesis 27, “Isaac was old,” i.e., he had aged, for he lived forty-three years after that. So in regard to David, “the king was very old,” i.e., much aged, in 1 Kings 1:15, for he could not have been more than seventy when he died. The hardships and anxieties of his life had aged him. So it was perhaps with Joshua. Moses was a signal exception; he had not aged at one hundred and twenty. But Jehovah constantly talked with Moses, and knew him face to face; and may we not say that that heavenly intercourse even sustained the vital powers? The work of the Lord, though it be successfully carried on, as it was by Joshua, may wear men out by its very excitement. But personal intercourse with Him is like eating of the tree of life, and “in His presence is the fulness of joy.” In this personal intercourse Moses was more highly favoured than his successor, Joshua. (1, 7) There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed . . . Now therefore divide this land.—The land had still to be inherited—i.e., not overrun, or conquered, as far as it could be said to be conquered by defeating the armies that took the field; all this was done already, but the land had not passed out of the hands of its actual possessors into the hands of Israel. It is remarkable that we have here a distinct order given to Joshua to divide to Israel land which was not yet conquered. In these verses several nations are named—viz., the Philistines, the Geshurites, the Avites, the Giblites, the Sidonians, besides anything more which may be included in the sometimes generic, and sometimes more specific, name of the Canaanites. Of these tribes, the Philistines and “all the Sidonians” (or Phœnicians) were certainly not yet conquered. Can we say that they were ever conquered at any period in the history of the kingdom of all Israel, except in so far as they were reduced to the condition of tributaries?

Verse 7. The nine tribes, and the half tribe of Manasseh] The other half tribe of Manasseh, and the two tribes of Reuben and Gad, had got their inheritance on the other side of Jordan, in the land formerly belonging to Og king of Bashan, and Sihon king of the Amorites.

7. Now therefore divide] Here we have a more definite statement of the tribes amongst whom western Palestine was to be divided.

THE TRANS- , Joshua 13:7-14. 8. With whom — That is, with the half tribe of Manasseh — not the same half which received its portion of territory west of the Jordan, opposite their Eastern brethren, but the other half.