The Inheritance Receives Boundaries and Named Stewards

This chapter gives the only full outline of Canaan’s borders in the Torah. Ezekiel 47:13–20, describing the land restored after exile, draws almost the same line with several of the same names, Zedad, Hazar-enan and Hamath among them.

“Fall unto you” is the verb of the lot falling, though no lot has been cast yet. Scholars have noted that “the land of Canaan” drawn here corresponds closely to the Egyptian province of Canaan in the thirteenth century BC, not to any border Israel ever actually held.

“South quarter” is literally “the Negev side”. The salt sea is the Dead Sea, first named in Genesis 14:3, “the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea”. Its “outmost coast” is the southern tip, where the line begins.

The ascent of Akrabbim, “the scorpions’ pass”, is a steep climb south west of the Dead Sea. The line swings below Kadesh-barnea, putting the oasis where Israel spent so many years just inside the promised land. Joshua 15:3 splits Hazar-addar into two places, Hezron and Adar.

“The river of Egypt” is nachal Mitsrayim, a wadi that runs only after rain, usually identified with the Wadi el-Arish in northern Sinai. It is not the Nile, for which Hebrew uses a different word, ye’or.

The Hebrew runs, “the great sea and the border”, the sea and its shore together. Much of that coast was never Israel’s: Philistines held the south of it, and Judges 3:3 lists “five lords of the Philistines” among the nations left in the land.

“Point out” is a verb meaning to mark or draw a line. This northern Mount Hor is unknown; the Aramaic Targum renders it as the Amanus range, far to the north, while others suggest a peak of Lebanon. Only the name is shared with the southern Hor.

“The entrance of Hamath” may be the town Lebo-hamath, in the Beqaa valley. When Solomon held his feast “from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of Egypt” (1 Kings 8:65), he was using this chapter’s northern and southern points to mean all Israel.

Hazar-enan means “village of springs”. Ezekiel 47:17 names it too, “the border of Damascus”. The northern line runs inland from the coast toward the Syrian desert, much further north than Dan, where Israel’s settled land usually ended.

Shepham appears only in this verse and the next. The eastern border starts in the north east, among places whose sites are among the least certain in the Bible, and runs south.

“Ain” means spring. The sea of Chinnereth is the lake later called Gennesaret and the sea of Galilee, the name perhaps from kinnor, a lyre, for the lake’s shape. Whether this Riblah is the Riblah where Nebuchadnezzar kept his headquarters (2 Kings 25:6) is disputed.

The Jordan becomes the eastern edge of Canaan proper. The worry this caused surfaces in Joshua 22:25, where the eastern tribes fear their children will be told, “the LORD hath made Jordan a border between us and you”.

Joshua 14:2 quotes this verse at the start of the western allotment: “By lot was their inheritance, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses, for the nine tribes, and for the half tribe.” Moses’ instruction became the heading for Joshua’s record.

The eastern tribes “have received” their land without any lot at all. It was granted on their own request and on terms (32:33), while the western tribes will receive theirs by lot. Two methods of receiving land stand side by side.

“Toward the sunrising” is mizrachah, the east, said twice with “eastward”. Moses is speaking in the territory he describes: the camp stands in the land already given to the two and a half tribes, which is why it is “this side Jordan”.

The names come from the LORD. In chapter 13 each tribe sent “every one a ruler among them” as spies, and ten of those twelve discouraged Israel. This new list of tribal princes, one each, is the counterpart: men sent not to assess the land but to share it out.

Eleazar the priest is named before Joshua, and the order holds when the work is done: “Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers” (Joshua 14:1; 19:51). The distribution is led by the priest.

“Prince” is nasi, one lifted up, the title of the tribal leaders of chapters 1, 2 and 7. Their exact role is not spelled out; the natural reading is that each stood for his tribe when its lot was drawn and its bounds were marked.

Caleb is the only man who appears on both lists, as Judah’s spy in 13:6 and as Judah’s prince here. Joshua was Ephraim’s spy in 13:8 and now stands above the princes. Forty years separate the two lists.

Shemuel is the same name as Samuel. His father Ammihud shares a name with the father of Pedahel in verse 28 and of Elishama the Ephraimite prince in 1:10, a name common enough to be carried by three different men.

Elidad means “God has loved”. Some rabbinic readers took him as the Eldad who prophesied in the camp in 11:26; the names are close but not identical, and the identification is a guess.

The princes are listed roughly from south to north, in the order the tribes would settle: Judah and Simeon in the south, then Benjamin and Dan, whose first allotment lay west of Benjamin toward the coast (Joshua 19:40–48), then Joseph and the northern tribes.

Joseph is named, then Manasseh; the elder son comes first, as in 26:28. Hanniel’s father is called Ephod, the word for the high priest’s vest in Exodus 28, here a man’s name.

Ephraim has its own prince even though Joshua belongs to Ephraim (13:8). Joshua sits over the whole division, not as his tribe’s delegate. Kemuel was also the name of a son of Abraham’s brother Nahor (Genesis 22:21).

Elizaphan was also the name of the Kohathite chief in 3:30, one of the two who carried Nadab and Abihu out of the camp (Leviticus 10:4). This Elizaphan of Zebulun is a different man.

Paltiel, “God is my deliverance”, is the name later borne by Michal’s second husband, Phaltiel the son of Laish, who followed her weeping when she was taken back to David (2 Samuel 3:15–16).

Ahihud means “my brother is majesty”, built on hod, the word used for the “honour” Moses put upon Joshua in 27:20. Asher and Naphtali close the list, the tribes of the far north.

Pedahel means “God has ransomed”, from padah, the verb used for redeeming the firstborn in 3:46–51. His father is another Ammihud, the second in this short list.

Apart from Caleb, none of these ten princes is heard of again. Joshua 14:1 refers to them only as “the heads of the fathers”. They are named once, for the one task, and the task is what the list records.