The Inheritance East of the Jordan
With the other half of the tribe of Manasseh the Reubenites and the Gadites received their inheritance, which Moses gave them, beyond the Jordan eastward, as Moses the servant of the LORD gave them: from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, and the city that is in the middle of the valley, and all the tableland of Medeba as far as Dibon; and all the cities of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon, as far as the boundary of the Ammonites; and Gilead, and the region of the Geshurites and Maacathites, and all Mount Hermon, and all Bashan to Salecah; all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (he alone was left of the remnant of the Rephaim); these Moses had struck and driven out. Yet the people of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maacathites, but Geshur and Maacath dwell in the midst of Israel to this day.
If you have never been to another country, the listing of the names of the cities in that country is not that appealing. If we read a list of the names of any nation but have no context for the nation, we might be lost as to the value of even giving you the cities’ names. That is what this section of Joshua can be like. Joshua and Israel have conquered the main big cities of the Land of Canaan, a land we know little about. The author of the book is now getting into the distribution of the conquered land. We have to remember that the entire reason for the book of Joshua is to show that God’s covenant promise to Abraham and Moses is being fulfilled physically in the land, but will also be fulfilled spiritual through the line of David and the Messianic promise, who will live in the land. The land is the tangible that leads to the promise fulfilled in Christ for the spiritual. Therefore the distribution of the land is important to read, if only to confirm to us that God keeps His promises. However, one of the issues with the distribution of the land is found in the last lines of the above text. It reads as follows:
Yet the people of Israel did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maacathites, but Geshur and Maacath dwell in the midst of Israel to this day.
The people did not drive out the inhabitants of the land. They allowed some of the people to live with them. This will become the major theme of the book of Judges when we finish Joshua. God set them up for success but they refused to drive out all the nations around them that practiced sin. Eventually this will be Israel’s downfall. The take-away is that when we allow sin to hang around, it will eventually hang us. That is what happens. This passage is one of the first mentions of Israel’s failure to conquer the land. We read it again at the end of this section:
Joshua 15:63 (ESV)
But the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the people of Judah could not drive out, so the Jebusites dwell with the people of Judah at Jerusalem to this day.
Make no mistake, when we allow sin to be in our midst it won’t be long until it is in our hearts and lives. This book of Joshua is to be a celebration of God fulfilling His promises to give them the land. But it also has the ugly thread as to why the land would eventually consume them.
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