“Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, ‘Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their ancestors to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.’”-Deuteronomy 31:7-8
Well, it’s official folks.
In verses 7 and 8, Moses passes the torch of his leadership over to Joshua in a public ceremony for all the people to witness.
Joshua will now be considered the supreme human commander over all of Israel.
And this fact is underscored by the Lord telling him, “I will be with you”.
I’d also like to remind you that in Hebrew, Joshua and Yeshua are spelled EXACTLY THE SAME!
This is incredible and inspiring!
However, there is one little piece of information provided in these verses that might cause one to think there is a contradiction in the Torah.
What am I talking about?
Notice how Moses instructs Joshua that he is to divide the land up among the people.
For the more astute Torah students out there, you may be thinking, hold on a second homie, didn’t Moses already do that in Numbers Chapter 34?
In fact, in Numbers Chapter 34 we’re given a full list of all tribes and the regions they are to occupy.
Well, here’s the thing.
What happened in Numbers chapter 34 is that Moses assigned the general regions that each tribe would inhabit via a lot drawing (drawing lots was considered the God-ordained method to decide this) BUT….
…he did NOT determine the specific dimensions or how big each region per tribe was to be.
The larger a tribe’s population, the more land mass they would need.
It would be Joshua who would be overlooking how much land in each region would be given to each tribe.
I’m done.
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