The Remaining Tribes Receive Land; Joshua Receives His Last

Jacob had said of Simeon and Levi, “I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel” (Genesis 49:7). Both came true in the allotment: Levi was spread through the other tribes in cities, and Simeon was placed inside Judah. Simeon’s is the second lot of the seven.

The King James “or Sheba” renders “and Sheba” in the Hebrew. To reach the total of thirteen in verse 6, Sheba must be counted with Beer-sheba as one place, or else be the Shema of Judah’s list (15:26) in a variant form.

The Simeon list follows Judah’s southern list (15:26–32) closely, and it appears a third time in 1 Chronicles 4:28–31, which adds a note of its own: “These were their cities unto the reign of David.” Balah here is the Baalah of 15:29.

Bethul stands where Judah’s list has Chesil (15:30), and 1 Chronicles 4:30 has Bethuel. Hormah was one of the towns to which David sent a share of the Amalekite spoil (1 Samuel 30:30).

Beth-marcaboth means “house of chariots” and Hazar-susah “village of horses”. In Judah’s list the same slots hold Madmannah and Sansannah (15:31), so these may be later names from a time when the towns served as chariot and horse depots.

Sharuhen appears in an Egyptian soldier’s tomb inscription: Ahmose son of Ebana records that after the Hyksos were driven out of Egypt, Pharaoh Ahmose besieged Sharuhen for three years. Beth-lebaoth means “house of lionesses”.

Here Ain and Remmon are counted as two to make four cities. Ether and Ashan also appear in Judah’s lowland list (15:42), so Simeon’s holdings reached beyond the Negev into the Shephelah.

“Ramath of the south” is Ramah of the Negev, probably the “south Ramoth” to which David sent gifts from the Amalekite spoil (1 Samuel 30:27). Baalath-beer means “lady of the well”, a name suited to a place in dry country.

Simeon survived as a tribe mostly by being absorbed into Judah. 1 Chronicles 4:39–43 records Simeonite clans in Hezekiah’s day migrating to Gedor and to Mount Seir in search of pasture, and after that the tribe fades from the record.

Jacob had said “Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea” (Genesis 49:13), yet the boundaries given here do not clearly reach the coast. Sarid, where the description starts, is often placed at Tel Shadud in the Jezreel valley.

“The river that is before Jokneam” is the brook Kishon, which runs past Jokneam at the foot of Carmel. It is the river that swept away Sisera’s army (Judges 5:21) and where Elijah killed the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:40).

Chisloth-tabor means “the flanks of Tabor”. Japhia, the modern village of Yafa, lies just southwest of Nazareth. Nazareth itself is never named in the Old Testament; it lay somewhere inside this stretch of Zebulun’s border.

Gittah-hepher is Gath-hepher, the home town of the prophet Jonah son of Amittai (2 Kings 14:25). The prophet sent to Nineveh came from a village in Zebulun, a few miles from Nazareth.

Hannathon appears in the Amarna letters as Hinnatuna, where, the king of Babylon complained to Pharaoh, Babylonian merchants had been robbed and killed. The border reaches its northern point there before turning into the valley of Jiphthah-el.

Nahallal became a Levitical city (21:35), and a modern village in the Jezreel valley has taken its name, Nahalal. Ibzan, one of the minor judges, came from “Bethlehem” (Judges 12:8), and some think this northern Bethlehem was his town.

Isaiah joins this tribe with its neighbour in a famous promise: “the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali... Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1). Matthew 4:13–15 quotes it when Jesus settles in Capernaum.

Jacob’s blessing pictured Issachar as “a strong ass couching down between two burdens”, who “saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant” and bowed to labour (Genesis 49:14–15). Its lot falls on the rich plain of Jezreel.

Shunem is where the Philistines camped before the battle of Gilboa (1 Samuel 28:4), the home of Abishag who nursed the aged David (1 Kings 1:3), and of the woman who built Elisha a room on her roof (2 Kings 4:8–10).

Anaharath appears in an Egyptian inscription of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who records plundering it on a campaign in Canaan, and Hapharaim is often read in Shishak’s list of towns at Karnak. Both were known outside Israel before and after this list.

Kishion was later given to the Levites (21:28). Rabbith and Abez appear nowhere else. The list moves across the plain town by town, many of them otherwise lost to history.

This En-gannim, “spring of gardens”, is Issachar’s, not the town of the same name in Judah (15:34); it is usually identified with modern Jenin at the southern edge of the Jezreel valley.

Mount Tabor rises alone out of the plain; Barak gathered his ten thousand men on it before the battle with Sisera (Judges 4:6, 14). This Beth-shemesh, “house of the sun”, is a northern town, not the Judahite one where the ark returned.

Deborah’s song names the tribe with praise: “the princes of Issachar were with Deborah” (Judges 5:15). Tola, one of the minor judges, was “a man of Issachar” (Judges 10:1). 1 Chronicles 12:32 remembers its men as those “that had understanding of the times”.

Asher’s lot takes in the coastal plain of western Galilee. The tribe’s best known member in the Bible appears at its very end: Anna the prophetess, “of the tribe of Aser”, who spoke of the child Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:36–38).

Helkath, “portion” or “smooth field”, became a Levitical city (21:31). Beten means “belly” or “hollow”. Achshaph was already counted among the kings Joshua defeated (12:20).

Carmel is the ridge where Elijah faced the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:19–40). Shihor-libnath may be a river south of Carmel. Alammelech means “the king’s oak”, and Misheal became the Levitical city Mishal (21:30).

Cabul is the district of twenty towns Solomon gave Hiram king of Tyre, who disliked them and called them “the land of Cabul”, perhaps meaning “good for nothing” (1 Kings 9:13). “On the left hand” means northward, as the right hand meant south.

The name here is Ebron, spelled with a different first letter from Hebron in Judah; it is probably the Abdon given to the Levites (21:30). This Kanah is a northern town near Tyre, not the brook Kanah of 16:8.

This is the first mention of Tyre in the Bible, already “the strong city”. Its king Hiram would supply cedar and craftsmen for David’s palace and Solomon’s temple (2 Samuel 5:11; 1 Kings 5:1–10). This Achzib is a coastal town, different from the Achzib of Judah (15:44).

Judges 1:31–32 lists Aphik and Rehob among the cities Asher did not drive out, “but the Asherites dwelt among the Canaanites”. In Asher the pattern is reversed from elsewhere: Israel lives among the Canaanites rather than the Canaanites among Israel.

Asher did not come to Deborah’s battle: “Asher continued on the sea shore, and abode in his breaches” (Judges 5:17). The tribe on the coast stayed with its harbours while others fought.

Jacob’s blessing gave Naphtali a single line: “Naphtali is a hind let loose: he giveth goodly words” (Genesis 49:21). Its lot is the hill country of eastern and upper Galilee, west of the lake and the Jordan.

“Allon to Zaanannim” is “the oak in Zaanannim”, the place where Heber the Kenite had pitched his tent (Judges 4:11). Sisera would flee to that tent and die at the hand of Jael. This Jabneel is a northern town, not the Jabneel of Judah’s coast.

Aznoth-tabor means “the ears of Tabor”, perhaps the hills beside the mountain. The border is given mostly by its neighbours: Zebulun to the south, Asher to the west, and on the east the puzzling “Judah upon Jordan”.

Hammath, “hot springs”, lay on the lake shore south of Tiberias, where hot springs still flow. The Talmud (Megillah 6a) identified Rakkath with Tiberias itself. Chinnereth is the town that gave the lake its old name.

Hazor, the city Israel burned (11:13), reappears as a town of Naphtali: the great mound was rebuilt and lived in again. Ramah, “height”, is one of several towns of that name, this one in the hills of upper Galilee.

Kedesh will be named a city of refuge in the next chapter (20:7). This Edrei is a Galilean town, not Og’s Edrei in Bashan (12:4). En-hazor means “spring of Hazor”.

Beth-anath means “house of Anath”, the Canaanite goddess of war, and Judges 1:33 says Naphtali did not drive out its people. The judge Shamgar is called “the son of Anath” (Judges 3:31), bearing the goddess’s name. Migdal-el means “tower of God”.

Deborah praised Naphtali alongside Zebulun as a people “that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field” (Judges 5:18). Barak son of Abinoam came from Kedesh in Naphtali (Judges 4:6).

Dan receives the seventh and last lot, though in the census on the plains of Moab it was the second largest tribe, 64,400 men (Numbers 26:43). The largest remaining tribe is given the last and smallest portion.

Zorah and Eshtaol also appear in Judah’s list (15:33), and Ir-shemesh, “city of the sun”, is Beth-shemesh. Dan’s allotment was cut from the Shephelah on Judah’s western edge. Samson’s father Manoah was “of Zorah, of the family of the Danites” (Judges 13:2).

Judges 1:35 names Aijalon and Shaalbim among places where “the Amorites would dwell”, until the house of Joseph put them to forced labour. Shaalabbin means “place of foxes”; Aijalon is the valley over which the moon stood still (10:12).

Thimnathah is Timnah, the town where Samson took a Philistine wife (Judges 14:1). Ekron, one of the five Philistine cities, is named in Dan’s portion, though Dan never held it. Elon means “terebinth”.

Sennacherib’s annals record his defeat of an Egyptian army at Eltekeh in 701 BC. Gibbethon, “of the Philistines”, is where King Nadab of Israel was killed during a siege and where the army later proclaimed Omri king (1 Kings 15:27; 16:15–16).

Bene-berak, “sons of lightning”, survives as Bnei Brak near Tel Aviv. The Passover Haggadah tells of five rabbis, Akiva among them, who sat all night in Bene-berak recounting the exodus until their students came to say it was time for the morning Shema.

Me-jarkon, “waters of the Yarkon”, is the river that reaches the sea at Tel Aviv. Japho is Joppa, modern Jaffa, the port where Hiram floated cedar from Lebanon on rafts for Solomon’s temple (2 Chronicles 2:16).

“Went out too little” is literally “went out from them”: the territory slipped from their grasp. Judges 1:34 says the Amorites forced Dan into the hills and would not let them come down to the valley. At Tel Dan, excavators found in 1993 an Aramaic inscription naming the “house of David”.

The closing formula treats the original allotment as Dan’s inheritance, despite the move north. Deborah’s song asks, “why did Dan remain in ships?” (Judges 5:17), which suggests some Danites worked the coast before the migration.

Joshua and Caleb were the only two men of the Sinai generation promised entry (Numbers 14:30), and they are the only two individuals given towns by name in the allotment. Joshua’s is given last, after every tribe, and by “the children of Israel”, not by himself.

Judges 2:9 calls the town Timnath-heres, “portion of the sun”, with two letters reversed from Timnath-serah, “portion that remains”. Some think the spelling was altered to avoid a name honouring the sun. Joshua was buried there (24:30).

The verse names the same three authorities as 14:1, Eleazar, Joshua and the heads of the fathers, so the allotment section begins and ends with the same trio. The last words, “So they made an end”, close the division of the land.