King James Version · Entering the land
Joshua 16
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And the lot of the children of fell from Jordan by , unto the water of on the east, to that goeth up from throughout mount Beth–el, And goeth out from Beth–el to , and passeth along unto the borders of Archi to , And goeth down westward to the coast of Japhleti, unto the coast of the nether, and to : and the goings out thereof are at the sea. So the children of , and , took their . And the border of the children of according to their families was thus: even the border of their on the east side was –addar, unto the upper; And the border went out toward the sea to Michmethah on the north side; and the border went about eastward unto Taanath–shiloh, and passed by it on the east to Janohah; And it went down from Janohah to , and to Naarath, and came to , and went out at Jordan. The border went out from Tappuah westward unto the river ; and the goings out thereof were at the sea. This is the of the tribe of the children of by their families. And the separate cities for the children of were among the of the children of , all the cities with their villages. And they drave not out that dwelt in : but among the unto this day, and under tribute.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
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.