Joshua 18:1-20.\u00a0 While quite a bit of time was spent in Joshua detailing the division to Judah and Joseph the pace now picks up for the seven remaining tribes.\u00a0 Remember two tribes (Gad and Reuben) and part of Manasseh received their part of the land east of the Jordan River and we have just seen Judah and the rest of Joseph (Manasseh with Ephraim) receiving their land.\u00a0 That makes 4 so far.\u00a0 Levi will not receive a large piece of land but will receive some cities with fields around them.\u00a0 So we have seven of the twelve left.<\/p>\n
In Joshua 14:6 at the beginning of the allotment of the land Caleb went to Gilgal to talk to Joshua about getting his land.\u00a0 Gilgal was the place that the Israelites made camp when the originally crossed the Jordan River (Joshua 4:15-5:10).\u00a0 It appears to have been both their religious (Joshua 5:10) and military center (Joshua 9:6; 10:6-15).\u00a0 The priests with the ark went up there (Joshua 4:15-19) so it would ssem that the Tabernacle (a sort of portable church) was probably set up there. \u00a0Gilgal was in the south about 5 miles north of the northern tip of the Dead Sea and about two mile west of the river.\u00a0 In today\u2019s reading the people gathered together at a place called Shiloh and set up the Tent of Meeting (The Tabernacle).<\/p>\n
Shiloh was about 15 miles north of Gilgal and a little west.\u00a0\u00a0 Remember that in those days there were no cars or buses, people mostly walked.\u00a0 The Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth at about 1400 feet below sea level.\u00a0 The Jordan Rover flows south into the Dead Sea through a deep canyon called the Jordan River Rift.\u00a0 To the west of this deep valley are the three groups of \u201chills\u201d.\u00a0 The Judean hills in the south, the Samarian hills in the central area, and the Galilee Hills in the north.\u00a0 Further west is the costal plain.\u00a0 Shiloh was in this central hill region at an elevation of maybe 2400 feet above sea level.\u00a0 The total elevation difference between Gilgal and Shiloh would have been about 4000 feet.\u00a0 To go from Gilgal to Shiloh would have been a pretty intense one day trip for a small group.\u00a0 It probably would have taken several days to move the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting there.<\/p>\n
We do get some sense of time having passed during the events of the past few chapters though.\u00a0 And in verses three Joshua seems to be a little upset with the other tribes for not having taken their land yet.\u00a0 Now to be fair, the land hadn\u2019t been divided yet, but remember that didn\u2019t stop Caleb who pushed the matter with Joshua to get his land right away.\u00a0 In the beginning of today\u2019s reading Joshua has the tribes choose three men each to go out and survey the land. \u00a0They then returned to Shiloh where Joshua rolled the dice to see who got what (But remember that this was not considered random.\u00a0 See the post on 3\/16\/12<\/a>).\u00a0 The first division was given to Benjamin who got a piece of land tucked between Judah on the south and Manasseh\/Ephraim in the north.\u00a0 Benjamin\u2019s land bordered the Jordan River and ran up and over the central hill country stopping about the bottom of the hills to the west.<\/p>\n What I liked about today\u2019s reading was that Joshua never seems to lose sight of his mission.\u00a0 His job is to divide up the land.\u00a0 Years go by and he keeps getting back to the same message.\u00a0 He seems pretty focused.\u00a0 I also like the fact that the actual division is in God\u2019s hands and so is the conquest.\u00a0 Notice how whenever Joshua is getting on to the people he says something like, \u201cHow long will you delay in taking the land the LORD has given<\/span> you?\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s past tense like it\u2019s a done deal.\u00a0 They are like abunce of kids standing around looking at the most awesome Christmas present and mom and dad have to say, \u201cGo on take that bike for a spin.\u201d\u00a0 A few weeks ago we started a series on Spiritual Gifts called Volleyballs and Waterfalls on Sunday mornings (See \u201cSunday Scripture Exploration\u201d<\/a> for more about this).\u00a0 The series is really about ministry, about living the life God has designed for each of us. We each have a place in the body of Christ, the church, and we need to figure it out and then get in there and do whatever God has for us to do.\u00a0 And we need to keep on doing it.\u00a0 We need to be Joshua\u2019s.\u00a0 Lord help me be focused.\u00a0 Help me be persistent.\u00a0 Give me a clear vision of what you want me to do.\u00a0 Thank you for having a place for me in your forever family.\u00a0 Keep me focused and faithful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joshua 18:1-20.\u00a0 While quite a bit of time was spent in Joshua detailing the division to Judah and Joseph the pace now picks up for the seven remaining tribes.\u00a0 Remember two tribes (Gad and Reuben) and part of Manasseh received their part of the land east of the Jordan River and we have just seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}