World English Bible · Entering the land
Joshua 16
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The lot came out for the children of from at , at the waters of on the east, even , going up from through the hill country to . It went out from to , and passed along to the border of the Archites to ; and it went down westward to the border of the Japhletites, to the border of the lower, and on to ; and ended at the sea. The children of , and , took their . This was the border of the children of according to their families. The border of their eastward was , to the upper. The border went out westward at Michmethath on the north. The border turned about eastward to Taanath , and passed along it on the east of . It went down from to , to Naarah, reached to , and went out at . From Tappuah the border went along westward to the brook of ; and ended at the sea. This is the of the tribe of the children of according to their families; together with the cities which were for the children of in the middle of the of the children of , all the cities with their villages. They didn't drive out who lived in ; but in the territory of to this day, and have become servants to do forced labor.
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The world at this moment · Entering the land, 1250 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel crossing into Canaan and contending with fortified city-states, each with its own king, in a land Egypt had recently dominated and was now losing its grip on.
- The collapse
- The whole eastern Mediterranean is coming apart. Within about fifty years the Hittite empire falls, its capital burns, the Mycenaean palaces are destroyed, Ugarit is wiped out mid-correspondence, and Egypt is fighting for its life against seaborne invaders. Nobody fully knows why. Drought, earthquake, migration, and the failure of interlocking trade are all in the explanation.
- Egypt
- Still strong enough to record a victory over a people called Israel on a stone monument around 1207 BC, the earliest mention of the name outside the Bible. But Egyptian control of Canaan is slipping, and within a generation it is gone.
- Canaan
- Not a country but dozens of walled towns, each with its own king, its own god, and its own quarrel with the next valley. This is why the book of Joshua reads as a list of kings rather than a war with a nation.
- Further afield
- Iron is beginning to replace bronze across the region, partly because the tin trade that made bronze possible has broken down. The Olmec are building San Lorenzo. The Zhou are about to overthrow the Shang in China.