The Division of the Land among the Tribes
After seven years of conquest and seven of allotment each tribe receives its inheritance; the Tabernacle stands at Shiloh, and the wilderness era ends.
The conquest took seven years and the allotment another seven, so that by 2503 from Creation the Land was divided. Boundaries were fixed in two ways at once, by lot and by prophecy, so that no tribe could claim it had been cheated. Portions were sized by population, and the whole distribution is recorded in the book of Joshua in the manner of a land register—towns, streams, slopes, borders. The tribe of Levi received no territory at all: its portion was service, and instead it was given forty-eight cities inside the others' inheritances, six of them cities of refuge for those who killed unintentionally. Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh took land east of the Jordan but pledged to fight alongside the rest first, and kept the pledge. Joshua took his own portion last, Timnat-Serach in the hills of Ephraim. The Tabernacle was set up at Shiloh, where it stood for three hundred and sixty-nine years. The era of the wilderness was over; the age of the judges begins.
How we know
On the chronology
Academic scholarship disputes here not the date but the model itself: military conquest, peaceful infiltration of herdsmen, or an internal upheaval within Canaanite society. There is one common anchor — the Merneptah stele of 1208 BCE, where Israel is already named as a people in Canaan. The date given means not «the year of the event» but the time by which, on the archaeological evidence, Israel is already in the Land.
Sources
Tanakh
- Yehoshua 13–21 — the tribal allotments, the Levite towns and the cities of refuge — the whole cadastre
- Yehoshua 18:1 — the assembly at Shiloh and the setting up of the Tabernacle
- Bamidbar 26:52–56 — the principle of division: by lot and by numbers
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Bava Batra 122a — the mechanics of the lot: the urns, the Urim veTumim, and the lot that “called out”
- Makkot 2 — the arrangement of the cities of refuge
- Seder Olam Rabbah 11 — seven years and seven years — the count to 2503
Scholarship
- Zevachim 118b — the same count in the list of the Tabernacle’s stations
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Benjamin · Joshua · Caleb · Phinehas · Jericho · Shiloh · Joshua · Shmita and Yovel · The Mishkan · Kohanim and Leviim · The Daughters of Zelophehad · Eleazar the Priest · Othniel son of Kenaz