"Give Me This Hill Country"

THE SECOND HALF of the Book of Joshua begins with a list of kings defeated by Moses and Joshua. Interestingly, our Bibles list 31 kings while the Septuagint, translated into Greek by Jewish religious scholars about 200 years before the birth of Jesus, only names 29.Then we begin describing the allotment of the land to the tribes of Israel, a process that will take us through the month of February. This week, we list the the territories given to the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh east of the Jordan, and the land in Canaan allotted to the tribe of Judah, which included the region of Hebron, a stronghold of the Anakim, requested by Caleb.Here are links to our previous studies where we talked about the seer Balaam son of Beor: Numbers 22–23, which includes our discussion of the famous Deir Alla inscription, and Numbers 24, which features the famous messianic prophecy of the star that comes from Jacob.