Today we begin Joshua Chapter 13.
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click HERE.
For the King James version, click HERE.
“Now Y’hoshua was old; the years had taken their toll. Adonai said to him, “You are old, and the years have taken their toll; but there is yet a great deal of land to be possessed.”-Joshua 13:1
The opening verse of Joshua Chapter 13 tells us why the Lord wanted Joshua to not waste time in distributing the land Israel had conquered to the 12 tribes.
The reason was because “You are old, and the years have taken their toll”.
Talk about being blunt.
At this time in Israel’s history, Joshua was probably in his early eighties but could even have been in his nineties.
Recall that among the 12 spies that Moses had sent out to reconnoiter the land, Joshua was only one of two who came back with a positive report (the other one was Caleb) and wanted to quickly seize the Lord’s promises by attacking the land.
Now one big difference between Moses and Joshua is that in the Book of Deuteronomy, we’re told Moses was as healthy and filled with vigor in his old age as he was when he was younger.
However, this was NOT the case with Joshua.
Why?
The answer is simple.
Moses was NOT a warrior but Joshua was.
Joshua participated in many dangerous battles and all of that wear and tear, not to mention the mental stress, was starting to get the better of him.
Joshua had surrendered his life to the Lord and the Lord had thoroughly used him up (major spiritual hint here folks).
Another reason why God probably wanted Joshua to begin dividing up the land was simply because THERE WAS still a lot of land left to be conquered.
Since Joshua was now old and tired, it was becoming obvious he wouldn’t be able to finish the job (of conquering ALL of the land).
Thus, the Lord was pretty much saying, start supervising over the division of the land now and I’ll take care of the rest later.
This meant that Joshua would also be assigning the yet unconquered land as well.
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