Study Desk

Manasseh was not able to defeat those cities, so the Canaanites continued to live there.

So Joshua said to the Israelites: "Why do you wait so long to take your land? The Lord , the God of your ancestors, has given this land to you.

So the men who were chosen to map the land started out. Joshua told them, "Go and study the land and describe it in writing. Then come back to me, and I will throw lots in the presence of the Lord here in Shiloh."

So the men left and went into the land. They described in a scroll each town in the seven parts of the land. Then they came back to Joshua, who was still at the camp at Shiloh.

The Jordan River was the border on the eastern side. So this was the land given to the family groups of Benjamin with the borders on all sides.

They also received all the very small areas with people living in them as far as Baalath Beer (this is the same as Ramah in southern Canaan). So these were the lands given to the family groups in the tribe of Simeon.

So these are the towns and the villages that were given to the family groups of Zebulun.

(But the Danites had trouble taking their land. They went and fought against Leshem, defeated it, and killed the people who lived there. So the Danites moved into the town of Leshem and changed its name to Dan, because he was the father of their tribe.)

So these lands were given to the different tribes of Israel. Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the leaders of each tribe divided up the land by lots at Shiloh. They met in the presence of the Lord at the entrance to the Meeting Tent. Now they were finished dividing the land.

So the Israelites chose these cities to be cities of safety: Kedesh in Galilee in the mountains of Naphtali; Shechem in the mountains of Ephraim; Kiriath Arba (also called Hebron) in the mountains of Judah;

So the Israelites obeyed this command of the Lord and gave the Levite people these towns and pastures for their own land:

So the Israelites gave the Levites these towns and the pastures around them, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

So they gave the city of Hebron to the descendants of Aaron (Hebron was a city of safety). They also gave them the towns of Libnah,

So these thirteen towns with their pastures were given to the priests, who were from the family of Aaron.

So these ten towns and the pastures around them were given to the rest of the Kohathite family groups.

So the Gershonite family groups received thirteen towns and the pastures around them.

So the total number of towns given to the Merarite family groups was twelve.

So the Lord gave the people all the land he had promised their ancestors. The people took the land and lived there.

So the people from the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and East Manasseh left the other Israelites at Shiloh in Canaan and went back to Gilead. It was their own land, given to them by Moses as the Lord had commanded.

All the Israelites became very angry at these three tribes, so they met together and decided to fight them.