Yehoshua 16: One for All and All for One

Judah was the first tribe in the lottery and Joseph is the second. This continues the trend of setting up these two tribes as conflicting leaders of the nation. In this very brief chapter there are two interesting points. The first is that Menashe is not referred to as half the tribe of Menashe here, even though this is referring to the half in Canaan and Moshe constantly referred to the half in the Transjordan as “half the tribe of Menashe”. The second is that Ephraim had some cities designated within the territory of Menashe. Both of these may be linked. Reuven and Gad approached Moshe to live on the other side of the Jordan, and Moshe also allocated some of that land to half the tribe of Manasseh in order to link the outer tribes with those in the land itself. That only works if the tribe of Menashe is still considered one tribe. This is probably why Joshua keeps Menashe whole here. The idea is that inside the land, Menashe is part of the larger Menashe tribe and should not be considered separate. Ephraim’s cities also serve the same function. Just like Moshe linked the outer tribes to the inner ones with Menashe, the lottery connects Ephraim to his brother Menashe with overlapping cities. In this way the tribe of Yosef- although split into three, is linked together as one unifying the tribes of Yosef as a counter weight to the tribe of Judah.