Joshua 14King James Version
Caleb, at eighty five, comes to Joshua and asks for the hill country he was promised forty five years earlier, when Moses sent the spies. 'I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me.' Joshua blesses him and gives him Hebron for an inheritance.
Caleb, the other faithful spy from forty-five years earlier, approaches Joshua at Gilgal and requests the hill country of Hebron where the Anakims live. He is eighty-five years old and claims to be as strong as he was at forty. Joshua blesses him and grants Hebron as Caleb's inheritance. Hebron had been part of Moses's earlier promise to him.
Caleb waited forty-five years for a promise that required him to fight giants to claim it, and he arrived still asking for the hardest assignment.
verse 12: "Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said." An eighty-five-year-old man asking for the hardest territory in Canaan.
Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, still the tribal headquarters, around 1400 BC. The military phase is winding down and the distribution has begun. Caleb walks in from the Judah assembly, approaches the two men who are the last living links to the Sinai covenant generation, and makes his case with a soldier's directness. No preamble, no flattery: I was forty then, I am eighty-five now, give me Hebron.
Caleb son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite who was one of the two faithful spies at Kadesh-barnea; Joshua, his old partner and co-survivor of the wilderness generation; Eleazar the priest, who oversees the distribution process; the Anakims, the giant clan at Hebron who once made the spies feel like grasshoppers.
Caleb is the counter-narrative to Achan: where Achan's greed corrupted a victory, Caleb's faithfulness across four decades earns the most dangerous prize. He and Joshua are the only two adults who left Egypt alive to enter Canaan, their longevity the biological evidence of what obedience to God produces. Hebron will later become David's first capital.
Caleb's speech is one of the most affecting in the book. He does not ask for a quiet valley or a coastal plain. He asks for the mountain with the giants, the one that frightened the other ten spies into despair a generation before. The reader feels the forty-five years behind those words.
1And these are the countries which the children of Israel inherited in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel, distributed for inheritance to them.
2By lot was their inheritance, as the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses, for the nine tribes, and for the half tribe.
3For Moses had given the inheritance of two tribes and an half tribe on the other side Jordan: but unto the Levites he gave none inheritance among them.
4For the children of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim: therefore they gave no part unto the Levites in the land, save cities to dwell in, with their suburbs for their cattle and for their substance.
5As the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did, and they divided the land.
6Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadeshbarnea.
7Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.
8Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God.
9And Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's for ever, because thou hast wholly followed the LORD my God.
10And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the LORD spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old.
11As yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in.
12Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the LORD spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said.
13And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance.
14Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed the LORD God of Israel.
15And the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba; which Arba was a great man among the Anakims. And the land had rest from war.