Although I lightly touched upon it yesterday, I want to talk a little bit more about how Israel’s kingdom was different than any other pagan kingdom in the world at the time.
In the gentile world, when a king took over new territory, this freshly conquered land was never given to the common people.
In fact, that was the last thing on the king’s mind.
The king kept the conquered land for himself to satisfy his own greedy ambitions and desire for more power.
Don’t get me wrong though.
It’s not like the citizens in a gentile kingdom didn’t own land to farm or their own businesses and shops.
It’s just that the king owned the whole nation.
This was different than Israel’s situation.
In the case of Israel, no one ruler or king would ever possess sole ownership of the land or control of the entire nation.
What was to happen is that the land would be divided up per the number of tribes (12 in this case) and then further divided up per the number of clans that made up a given tribe.
Keep in mind that the head of a tribe (called NASI in Hebrew) was NOT royalty.
He was just the head or the patriarch over a huge family.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all patriarchs.
And a patriarch’s primary job was to look after the wellbeing of everyone who lived under his roof.
So in many ways, yes, he was like a father to a very big family and was to set the example for the future leaders to come after him.
To that point, we can see how Moses served as an example for Joshua’s future leadership.
And in turn, we’ll see how Joshua was to be an example for the future leaders of Israel.
Again, when I say “future leaders”, I want to stress they were NOT to be kings or considered royalty in any way.
They were to be an alliance of equals, a coalition of tribes bonded by common Hebrew blood who were all born from the same Godly line of Jacob.
Ultimately, their allegiance was NOT to be to any earthly king.
It was to be to Hashem and to Him alone!
And just as an uncircumcised (meaning “uncovenanted”) gentile king was the owner of all the land he conquered, in the same way, it was Hashem, the Holy One of Israel, who was the Owner or the One who possessed the title deed to the land of Canaan.
As the sole owner, He was just leasing out the land to His Chosen People.
But this was to be an eternal lease.
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