The Survey Comes Back to Shiloh

“Subdued” is kabash, the verb of Genesis 1:28, “replenish the earth, and subdue it.” Shiloh, some twenty miles north of Jerusalem, kept the tabernacle until the days of Eli (1 Samuel 1:3; 4:3), and Jeremiah later pointed to its ruins: “go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh” (Jeremiah 7:12).

The seven are Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali and Dan. The Hebrew says they had not yet “divided” their inheritance. The land was held, but most of the tribes still had no address in it.

“Slack” is mitrappim, letting the hands drop, from rapha, the verb Gibeon used when it begged Joshua, “Slack not thy hand” (10:6). “How long” is the complaint God made against Israel in the wilderness: “How long will this people provoke me?” (Numbers 14:11).

Three men from each of seven tribes makes twenty one surveyors. “Describe” is katav, to write: they are to walk the land and put it on paper. “Go through” is the verb of God’s word to Abraham, “walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it” (Genesis 13:17).

Judah in the south and Joseph in the north are already settled, and the other tribes will be fitted around them. The two great houses already bracket the land as the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel, whose leading tribe was Ephraim, would divide it.

Josephus says Joshua sent men “skilful in geometry” to measure the land, and that they reported on its quality as well as its size (Antiquities 5.1.21). The verse itself asks only for a written description brought back “hither”, to Shiloh, for the lot.

Levi’s share is named a third way. In 13:14 it was the sacrifices, in 13:33 the LORD himself, and here “the priesthood of the LORD”. Office, offering and God are three descriptions of one portion.

Joshua’s instruction is given three times in five verses (4, 6, 8), and “come again to me” recurs each time. The survey is not to become a settling party; the surveyors are to return so that the lot is cast in one place for all.

“In a book” means on a scroll, a written survey of the land city by city. Shiloh is still called “the host”, the camp, a military word used even though the war is over.

Micah 2:5 later threatens the land grabbers of his day that they will have “none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the LORD”: no share in the next division. The lot at Shiloh set the pattern Micah’s threat assumes.

The lot “came up”, as if drawn out of a vessel. Benjamin, Rachel’s second son and Joseph’s only full brother, is placed between Judah and Joseph. When the kingdom split, Benjamin went with Judah (1 Kings 12:21).

“The side of Jericho” is katef, the shoulder, the word for a hillside that recurs through these boundary lists. The northern line climbs from the Jordan past Jericho into the hills and ends at the wilderness of Beth-aven, near Bethel.

Here Luz is identified with Bethel, which is listed among Benjamin’s towns (verse 22). Elsewhere Bethel is counted to Ephraim (1 Chronicles 7:28), and the house of Joseph took it (Judges 1:22). A town on a border could be claimed from both sides.

“The west quarter” is literally “the sea side”, since the sea lay to the west. The line ends at Kirjath-jearim, noted as “a city of the children of Judah”: Benjamin’s western edge stops at a Judahite town.

The southern border of Benjamin is Judah’s northern border traced in reverse, west to east, where chapter 15 traced it east to west. The same springs and valleys mark both tribes, told from each side of the line.

“The side of Jebusi” is again katef, the shoulder of the Jebusite ridge. The line runs just south of it, putting the city in Benjamin’s portion. The Talmud (Yoma 12a) held that the later temple itself straddled this border, partly in Judah and partly in Benjamin.

Geliloth, “circles”, stands where Judah’s list has Gilgal (15:7), and the two names share a root, a sign that the same place is meant. En-shemesh, “spring of the sun”, is often placed at a spring on the road down to Jericho.

“Arabah” here is probably Beth-arabah, as the Greek reads; the town appears in both Judah’s list (15:61) and Benjamin’s (verse 22). The line drops from the hills into the Jordan valley.

The border ends at the mouth of the Jordan, the same spot where Judah’s northern border began (15:5). The two descriptions meet end to end, so that Benjamin’s south and Judah’s north are one line walked twice.

Benjamin’s territory was among the smallest, yet from it came Ehud (Judges 3:15), Saul (1 Samuel 9:1–2), Mordecai (Esther 2:5) and Paul, who named his tribe with evident pride (Philippians 3:5).

Jericho, the first city taken, becomes a Benjamite town. It was later refounded by Hiel of Bethel in Ahab’s day, at the cost Joshua had pronounced (1 Kings 16:34). The valley of Keziz, “cut off”, appears nowhere else.

Mount Zemaraim is where King Abijah of Judah stood and addressed Jeroboam’s army before battle, charging them with forsaking the LORD (2 Chronicles 13:4). Bethel, Jeroboam’s royal shrine, is listed here as a Benjamite town.

This Ophrah is Benjamin’s, on the road a Philistine raiding party later took (1 Samuel 13:17), different from Gideon’s Ophrah of the Abiezrites (Judges 6:11). Parah means “heifer”; Avim may recall the Avites of 13:3.

Chephar-haammonai means “village of the Ammonites”, perhaps an Ammonite settlement within Benjamin. Gaba, or Geba, became the northern limit of Judah, so that Josiah’s reform ran “from Geba to Beer-sheba” (2 Kings 23:8).

Jeremiah 31:15 sets Rachel weeping for her children in Ramah, and it was at Ramah that Jeremiah was released from his chains among the captives bound for Babylon (Jeremiah 40:1). Gibeon and Beeroth are two of the four Gibeonite cities of chapter 9.

Mizpeh of Benjamin is where Samuel gathered Israel to pray (1 Samuel 7:5), where Saul was chosen by lot (10:17–21), and where Gedaliah governed Judah after Jerusalem fell (Jeremiah 40:6). Mozah survives as Motza, just west of Jerusalem.

Irpeel means “God heals”. Rekem is also the name of one of the Midianite kings killed with Balaam (13:21). None of these three towns is mentioned anywhere else in the Old Testament.

Saul and Jonathan were finally buried “in Zelah, in the sepulchre of Kish his father” (2 Samuel 21:14). Gibeath is Gibeah of Saul, his home and capital (1 Samuel 11:4). Benjamin’s city list closes with the tomb and the seat of Israel’s first king.