Joshua 15
The dividing of the land begins in earnest, and the lot falls first to Judah - fittingly, the tribe of the scepter, the line of David and of the King to come. The chapter opens by tracing the whole circuit of Judah's border: south from the Salt Sea past the wilderness of Zin, Kadesh-barnea, and the river of Egypt; east along the Salt Sea to the end of Jordan; north up past En-rogel and the valley of Hinnom, skirting Jerusalem; and west out to the Great Sea (vv. 1-12). Every edge is named with care, as though the land were not a vague promise but a measured gift, surveyed and handed over.3
But the survey opens twice onto living scenes. Caleb - the man of whom it was just said that he wholly followed the LORD - receives Hebron, and drives out the three sons of Anak, the giants whose fame had once made Israel afraid (vv. 13-14). He offers his daughter Achsah to whoever will take the next city, Kirjath-sepher; Othniel takes it and wins her. Then Achsah, brought to her husband, asks her father the most memorable thing in the chapter: Give me a blessing; for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gives her the upper springs and the nether springs (vv. 18-19).
The rest of the chapter is the long roll of Judah's cities and villages, grouped by their regions - the south country toward Edom, the valley toward the sea, the mountain country, the wilderness by the Salt Sea (vv. 20-62). Every town is counted; even Jerusalem is named. And the chapter ends on a single honest line that will shadow the whole rest of Israel's history: As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day (v. 63). The conquest is real, and it is not yet finished.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Joshua 15:1-12The Lot of the Tribe of Judah
1This then was the lot of the tribe of the children of Judah by their families; even to the border of Edom the wilderness of Zin southward was the uttermost part of the south coast. 2And their south border was from the shore of the salt sea, from the bay that looketh southward: 3And it went out to the south side to Maaleh-acrabbim, and passed along to Zin, and ascended up on the south side unto Kadesh-barnea, and passed along to Hezron, and went up to Adar, and fetched a compass to Karkaa: 4From thence it passed toward Azmon, and went out unto the river of Egypt; and the goings out of that coast were at the sea: this shall be your south coast. 5And the east border was the salt sea, even unto the end of Jordan. And their border in the north quarter was from the bay of the sea at the uttermost part of Jordan: 6And the border went up to Beth-hogla, and passed along by the north of Beth-arabah; and the border went up to the stone of Bohan the son of Reuben: 7And the border went up toward Debir from the valley of Achor, and so northward, looking toward Gilgal, that is before the going up to Adummim, which is on the south side of the river: and the border passed toward the waters of En-shemesh, and the goings out thereof were at En-rogel:
The dividing of the land begins, and it is no accident that the lot falls first to Judah. From Jacob's deathbed blessing the word had stood: The sceptre shall not depart from Judah… until Shiloh come (Gen. 49:10). Judah is the royal tribe, the line that will give Israel David and, far down the generations, the King the whole book of Joshua keeps reaching toward. So the survey opens here, with the tribe of the scepter, and it opens with a sweep across the whole frontier. The south border runs from the Salt Sea past the wilderness of Zin and Kadesh-barnea - the very wilderness where the spies' bad report had cost a generation - out to the river of Egypt (vv. 2-4). The land is not handed over as a vague gesture. It is surveyed, traced edge by edge, named place by place. God gives His promises with precision; He knows the borders of what He bestows.
One name on the northern line is worth pausing over: the border runs from the valley of Achor (v. 7). Achor means trouble, and the valley got its name from a grave. It was here that Achan, who had taken of the accursed thing at Jericho, was judged, and Israel learned that sin in the camp brings defeat (Josh. 7:24-26). The place of Israel's deepest shame now sits on the boundary of Judah's good inheritance - trouble folded quietly into the map of the promised land. The prophets would not forget it. Centuries later Hosea would hear God promise to make the valley of Achor for a door of hope (Hos. 2:15). The God who surveys this land turns even its valley of trouble into a marked edge of the inheritance, and one day into a doorway.
8And the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem: and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth before the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the valley of the giants northward: 9And the border was drawn from the top of the hill unto the fountain of the water of Nephtoah, and went out to the cities of mount Ephron; and the border was drawn to Baalah, which is Kirjath-jearim: 10And the border compassed from Baalah westward unto mount Seir, and passed along unto the side of mount Jearim, which is Chesalon, on the north side, and went down to Beth-shemesh, and passed on to Timnah: 11And the border went out unto the side of Ekron northward: and the border was drawn to Shicron, and passed along to mount Baalah, and went out unto Jabneel; and the goings out of the border were at the sea. 12And the west border was to the great sea, and the coast thereof. This is the coast of the children of Judah round about according to their families.
Here, almost in passing, the survey names the city around which the whole later story of Israel will turn: the border runs unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is Jerusalem (v. 8). At this point in the book it is only a Jebusite stronghold on a ridge, one waypoint among many on a property line. The reader who knows the rest of Scripture cannot read the name without a catch of breath - this is the city of David yet to come, the place of the temple, the city wept over and the city to be made new. But the chapter mentions it without fanfare, and then, at its very end, will return to it with a confession: Judah could not yet take it. The greatest city in the inheritance is named first as a boundary marker and last as an unfinished task. Its full possession waits.
The west border is given in a single line: the great sea, and the coast thereof (v. 12). After the painstaking detail of every other edge - the bays, the ascents, the springs, the named stones - the western limit needs no surveying. The Mediterranean itself is the boundary; God set it there when He gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment (Prov. 8:29). The frame of Judah's land is thus drawn partly by careful human survey and partly by the fixed edges of creation. The inheritance sits inside a world already bounded by its Maker. To receive a portion in it is to be given a place within an order God Himself laid down.
Joshua 15:13-19Give Me a Blessing: Springs of Water
13And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a part among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of the LORD to Joshua, even the city of Arba the father of Anak, which city is Hebron. 14And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. 15And he went up thence to the inhabitants of Debir: and the name of Debir before was Kirjath-sepher. 16And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife. 17And Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife.
The narrative pauses the survey to honor one man. Caleb receives Hebron according to the commandment of the LORD - this is no negotiated favor but the keeping of a promise made forty-five years before, when Caleb alone with Joshua had brought back a believing report from this very land (Num. 14:24; Josh. 14:9). And the gift is pointed: the city of Arba the father of Anak, the home of the giants. The reward of his faith is precisely the ground that the unbelieving generation had been too afraid to take. What the ten spies had called impossible, the LORD now hands to the man who had said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it (Num. 13:30). Faith does not get a smaller, safer portion. It gets the mountain.
Then comes the sentence the whole earlier story has been waiting for: Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai (v. 14). These are not nameless terrors; they are named, and they are the same Anakim whose report had made an entire nation's heart melt a generation earlier (Deut. 1:28). The giants that had frozen Israel in unbelief are driven out by one old man - because the old man took God at His word. The point the text presses is not Caleb's strength but the object of his trust: if so be the LORD will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the LORD said (Josh. 14:12). He goes up in the strength of a promise, and the giants go. The measure of the land was never the size of its giants; it was the size of the God who gave it.
Caleb is not done conquering, and he draws another into the work. He sets a challenge over the next stronghold, Kirjath-sepher: He that smiteth Kirjath-sepher, and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah my daughter to wife (v. 16). Othniel the son of Kenaz takes it (v. 17) - and this is no minor figure. After Joshua's generation dies and Israel falls into the cycle of the Judges, it is this same Othniel whom God will raise up as the very first deliverer: the Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel (Judg. 3:9-10). The man who proves himself by faith here, taking a city on Caleb's word, becomes the first to be called when Israel needs saving. Wholehearted households tend to raise wholehearted sons; Caleb's line of faith runs on into the next generation.
18And it came to pass, as she came unto him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field: and she lighted off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What wouldest thou? 19Who answered, Give me a blessing; for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water. And he gave her the upper springs, and the nether springs.
Now the camera draws very close, to a daughter and her father. Achsah, given in marriage as the prize of a conquered city, does not stay silent about what her new life will lack. The land she has been given is a south land - the dry country, where everything depends on water. So she acts. She lighted off her ass - she gets down, comes near, makes the request face to face - and her father, far from rebuffing her, opens the door wide: What wouldest thou? There is something tender in the whole exchange. The fierce old warrior who drove out giants turns to his daughter and simply asks what she wants. The chapter that has been all borders and battles narrows to a single human moment: a child coming to a father with a need, and a father glad to hear it.
Caleb's answer is quietly lavish. Achsah asked for springs of water; he gave her the upper springs, and the nether springs (v. 19) - the basins above and the basins below, the whole supply rather than a single source. She named her need once and received it doubled. The Old Testament keeps coming back to water as the image of life from God: the LORD is the fountain of living waters (Jer. 2:13); the redeemed draw water out of the wells of salvation (Isa. 12:3); the thirsty are called, Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters (Isa. 55:1). Achsah's springs belong to that family of images. A father who could have answered the bare request answers the whole need, and then some. The scene is small - one field, one family - but it carries a picture of how giving is meant to work: not grudging, not exact to the penny, but pressing down and running over.
Joshua 15:20-63The Cities of Judah, and the City Not Taken
20This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Judah according to their families. 21And the uttermost cities of the tribe of the children of Judah toward the coast of Edom southward were Kabzeel, and Eder, and Jagur, 32And Lebaoth, and Shilhim, and Ain, and Rimmon: all the cities are twenty and nine, with their villages:
After the two living scenes the survey resumes, and what follows is a long, patient roll of Judah's towns, grouped by their regions. It begins in the far south, toward the coast of Edom - the Negeb, the dry frontier - and counts off twenty-nine cities with their villages (vv. 21-32). To modern readers a list of names like Kabzeel and Lebaoth and Rimmon is the part to skip. But that instinct misreads what the list is doing. Every name is a place where families would settle, raise children, keep flocks, bury their dead, and worship the God who gave them the ground. The God who surveyed the borders edge by edge now numbers the towns one by one. Nothing is too small, too dusty, too obscure to be written into the record of the inheritance. The long catalog is itself a kind of testimony: this whole land, down to its least village, is the gift of a God who counts.
33And in the valley, Eshtaol, and Zoreah, and Ashnah, 47Ashdod with her towns and her villages, Gaza with her towns and her villages, unto the river of Egypt, and the great sea, and the border thereof: 48And in the mountains, Shamir, and Jattir, and Socoh,
The roll moves region by region, following the land itself as it rises from the coast to the hills. There is the valley - the Shephelah, the low country between the coastal plain and the highlands, with its own cluster of towns (vv. 33-47). There is the great sea and the river of Egypt marking the western and southern edges again (v. 47). And there is the mountain country, the mountains, with its many cities (vv. 48-60) - the hill region where Hebron sits, and where, among the names, lies a small town called Bethlehem, not yet famous, waiting for the king and the King who will be born there. The geography is ordered, deliberate, complete: south country, valley, mountain, and (still to come) wilderness. Judah's portion is not a vague territory but a fully mapped homeland, surveyed top to bottom, each zone of it named and given.
60Kirjath-baal, which is Kirjath-jearim, and Rabbah; two cities with their villages: 61In the wilderness, Beth-arabah, Middin, and Secacah, 62And Nibshan, and the city of Salt, and En-gedi; six cities with their villages.
Two place-names near the end of the list quietly hold stories the reader of the whole Bible will know. Kirjath-jearim (v. 60) is the town where the ark of God would later rest for twenty years after its return from the Philistines, until David came to bring it up to Jerusalem with rejoicing (1 Sam. 7:1-2; 2 Sam. 6). And in the wilderness district stands En-gedi (v. 62), the spring by the Salt Sea where David, fleeing Saul, would hide in the caves and spare the life of the king who hunted him (1 Sam. 24). At this moment they are only entries in a property list. But the inheritance Judah receives here is the very stage on which its later history - the ark, the outlaw years, the rise of David - will be played out. The map drawn in Joshua 15 is the ground the story will walk for centuries to come.
63As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out: but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah at Jerusalem unto this day.
The whole long survey ends not on a note of triumph but on a confession, and its honesty is part of its truthfulness: As for the Jebusites the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out (v. 63). The greatest city in the portion - named back in verse 8 as a mere boundary marker - stays in foreign hands. The conquest is real; much of the land is taken and counted; and yet right at the center sits a stronghold Judah cannot dislodge. The text does not paper over it or pretend otherwise. It even adds the time-stamp unto this day, the narrator's note that long after, when these words were written, the memory of that unfinished business still stood. There is something deeply realistic here about how God's purposes move. The inheritance is given in full and possessed in part; the gift is certain and the taking of it is not yet complete. Faith lives in exactly that gap - holding a sure promise over ground not yet fully won.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Joshua 15 with Rashi and other classical commentators side by side - useful for gulloth mayim (v. 19, the “springs of water” Achsah asks and receives), for the verb yarash behind “drive out” (vv. 14, 63), and for the regional names that organize the long city list (vv. 20-62).
- Joshua 15 ↔ Numbers 13 · Judges 1 · 2 Samuel 5 · John 4 & 7Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Joshua 15 to the rest of Scripture - Caleb against the Anakim (vv. 13-14) read back to the spies of Numbers 13; Achsah's request (vv. 18-19) retold in Judges 1; the unconquered Jebusites (v. 63) read forward to David's taking of the stronghold in 2 Samuel 5; and the springs of water read beside the living water of John 4 and 7.
- Joshua 15 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Joshua 15 - the boundary geography of verses 1-12, the meaning of Kirjath-sepher (v. 15), the exchange between Achsah and Caleb over the springs (vv. 18-19), and the closing note on the Jebusites who remained in Jerusalem (v. 63).
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Lot of the Tribe of Judah
- Genesis 49:10The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.Why the lot falls first to Judah (v. 1) - the royal tribe, the line of the King to come.
- Proverbs 16:33The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.The lot of verse 1 - what looked like chance was God’s own appointment of the portion.
- Joshua 7:24-26all Israel stoned him with stones... Wherefore the name of that place was called, The valley of Achor, unto this day.The valley of Achor on Judah’s border (v. 7) - the grave of Israel’s sin set into the map of the inheritance.
- Hosea 2:15I will give her... the valley of Achor for a door of hope.The valley of trouble (v. 7) turned, by promise, into a doorway - God redeeming the place of failure.
- Psalm 16:6The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.The portion measured by lot (v. 1) named as a gift - the boundary lines drawn by God’s own hand.
Give Me a Blessing: Springs of Water
- Numbers 13:30Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.Caleb’s faith forty-five years before he takes Hebron (vv. 13-14) - the believing report that won him this land.
- Judges 1:14-15she said unto him, Give me a blessing: for thou hast given me a south land; give me also springs of water.The same scene retold (vv. 18-19) - Achsah’s bold request preserved twice in Scripture.
- Matthew 7:7-11how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?The pattern of verses 18-19 - the child who asks and the father who gives more than was asked.
- John 4:14the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.The springs Achsah receives (v. 19) opening onto the living water Christ gives.
- Romans 8:37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.Caleb driving out the giants (v. 14) - the victory of faith held out to all who trust the One who loved them.
The Cities of Judah, and the City Not Taken
- 1 Samuel 7:1-2the men of Kirjath-jearim came, and fetched up the ark of the LORD... and the ark abode in Kirjath-jearim twenty years.Kirjath-jearim in the city list (v. 60) - the town where the ark would rest until David brought it to Jerusalem.
- 1 Samuel 24:1David was in the wilderness of En-gedi.En-gedi among the wilderness cities (v. 62) - the spring where David would later hide from Saul and spare his life.
- 2 Samuel 5:6-9David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.The Jebusite stronghold of verse 63 finally taken - by the king of the tribe Judah could not dislodge it.
- 1 Corinthians 15:25For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.The unfinished conquest of verse 63 opening onto its end - the Son of David subduing every enemy.
- Revelation 11:15The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.Where the not-yet of verse 63 finally arrives - the King taking the city and reigning over all.