Tomorrow we finish Joshua.  It went fast!  But if you have fallen behind in the read-through….this recap video will get you to the start of Judges.  The book Judges contains shocking stories involving murder, human sacrifice, gang rape, killing their own brothers, dismemberment, and even some “poop”.  Everything you might see on a Netflix show. So watch this instead….and jump into Judges!

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Maybe you read this word for word, but if you skimmed some of these distributions (I did 🤪),  the summary can be found on 19:51

⁵¹ These are the territories that Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun and the heads of the tribal clans of Israel assigned by lot at Shiloh in the presence of the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And so they finished dividing the land.

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Ch. 19. – If you went all the way back to Genesis 49 (click here if you want to read it, it’s pretty cool now).  But one caught my eye (other than the obvious Judah tribe)

⁵ “Simeon and Levi are brothers—
    their swords are weapons of violence.
⁶ Let me not enter their council,
    let me not join their assembly,
for they have killed men in their anger
    and hamstrung oxen as they pleased.
⁷ Cursed be their anger, so fierce,
    and their fury, so cruel!
I will scatter them in Jacob
    and disperse them in Israel.

In today’s reading, we see that the tribe of Simeon did not technically get their own land, they were given the land Judah’s did not need or occupy.

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• Chapter 20-Cities of Refuge.Then the Lord said to Joshua: ² “Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, ³ so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood.

• Chapter 21- Towns for Levites

We talked about this in Numbers 35 but here is a quick recap.

The yellow dots are Levitical Towns, the red dots are the Cities of Refuge. The cities were divided 3 on each side of the Jordan River so that no Israelite would have to travel far to reach one of them.  These were safe cities so that they had protection from revenge or injustice from accidental death.  (Today, Jesus is the High Priest that protects us from injustice at death.  He is our refuge)

• – Kadesh– in Naphtali
• – Shechem– in West Manasseh
• – Hebron– in Judah
• – Golan– in East Manasseh
• – Ramoth – Gilead in Gad
• – Bezer– in Rueben

The tribes also had to set aside 42 additional cities for the priests and Levites to inhabit.  In all, the Levites received 48 cities with their surrounding pasturelands, including the six cities of refuge. God arranged the distribution of the 48 Levitical towns in such a way that the Levites, whose responsibilities included the teaching and counseling of the other Israelites in the Law, were not far from anyone in Israel.

Today’s read ends with:

So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their ancestors, and they took possession of it and settled there.The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their ancestors. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the Lord gave all their enemies into their hands. Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.

So cool!

If you are curious about the size of the land, click here for a reference.