Joshua 17

The chapter opens in the settled language of a great house dividing its land: There was also a lot for the tribe of Manasseh; for he was the firstborn of Joseph (v. 1). Manasseh was Joseph's elder son, and Joseph had received the double portion of the firstborn (Gen. 48), so his line now takes its place among the tribes. First named is Machir the firstborn of Manasseh, the father of Gilead, a man of war, who had already won and held Gilead and Bashan on the east side of the Jordan under Moses.

Then the rest of the families are listed by name - Abiezer, Helek, Asriel, Shechem, Hepher, Shemida - the male children of Manasseh (v. 2). Every name in these two verses is a son. The whole grant runs along the expected line of inheritance from father to sons. And that is exactly what makes the next verse land with such force: the orderly column of sons is about to be interrupted by a man who had none.

The interruption comes with a single word - But. But Zelophehad… had no sons, but daughters (v. 3). In the world of the chapter, that was not a footnote; it was a crisis. Inheritance passed through sons, and a man with no son ordinarily saw his name and his portion absorbed into others' lines. Yet the text does the opposite of erasing this family: it writes all five daughters into the permanent record by name - Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. The very page that lists the sons of Manasseh in a single breath slows down to name each daughter of Zelophehad.

Their case had already been heard once, in the wilderness, when they first came to Moses and the LORD ruled in their favour (Num. 27); now, a generation later and across the Jordan, they come to claim what was promised. The chapter is quietly insisting that these five are not a loophole or an exception to be tolerated. They are heirs, and the record means to remember them.

Notice how the daughters make their case: And they came near before Eleazar the priest, and before Joshua the son of Nun, and before the princes, saying, The LORD commanded Moses to give us an inheritance among our brethren (v. 4). They stake everything on one thing - the word of the LORD. The LORD commanded. That is the whole of their appeal, and it is enough. The response is just as carefully worded: Therefore according to the commandment of the LORD he gave them an inheritance among the brethren of their father. Twice in a single verse the ground of the grant is named - what the LORD commanded, what He commanded. The leaders obey a standing word.

And so there fell ten portions to Manasseh west of the Jordan instead of nine (v. 5), because the daughters of Manasseh had an inheritance among his sons (v. 6). A promise spoken in one generation is kept in the next, and five women who had no claim of their own receive a real and lasting place - not beside their father's brethren as dependents, but among them as heirs.

The middle of the chapter reads like a surveyor's record, tracing Manasseh's border from Asher down past Shechem to the brook Kanah and out to the sea (vv. 7-10). The detail is the careful work of a people writing down exactly what God had given them, town by town and ridge by ridge. The borders even interlock with Ephraim's - these cities of Ephraim are among the cities of Manasseh (v. 9) - so that the two sons of Joseph share the country between them.

Then the record names the great fortified cities that fell within Manasseh's reach: Bethshean… Ibleam… Dor… Endor… Taanach… Megiddo, each with her surrounding towns (v. 11). These were strongholds in the rich valleys, prizes of the land. On paper they belonged to Manasseh. The map was complete, the deed was clear. The question the next verses raise is whether the people on the ground would match the lines on the map.

Twice the text repeats the same hard word: Yet. Yet the children of Manasseh could not drive out the inhabitants of those cities; but the Canaanites would dwell in that land (v. 12). Yet it came to pass, when the children of Israel were waxen strong, that they put the Canaanites to tribute, but did not utterly drive them out (v. 13). The chapter does not hide the gap between what was given and what was taken.

The cities were Manasseh's by allotment and yet still held by others in fact. And the second yet is the more searching of the two, for it removes the easy excuse. When Israel was weak, one might say the task was simply beyond them. But the text says that even when… waxen strong - when they finally had the power to finish the work - they settled for putting the Canaanites to tribute, leaving the work unfinished.

Strength came, and with it the chance to obey fully; and they chose the easier arrangement instead. The phrase did not utterly drive them out is an honest record of a calling left unfinished - a portion received, mapped, and then only half-possessed.

The chapter closes with a complaint that sounds almost reasonable: Why hast thou given me but one lot and one portion to inherit, seeing I am a great people, forasmuch as the LORD hath blessed me hitherto? (v. 14). The children of Joseph do not charge injustice; they argue from their own size and from the LORD's past blessing. We are great, they say, and God has blessed us - so why so small a share?

It is the kind of grievance that wraps itself in praise. But look at what Joshua does with it. He does not dispute their greatness, and he does not enlarge their portion. He turns their own claim into a charge: If thou be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself (v. 15). In effect: you say you are great - then act it. The forested hills are there; go clear them.

Make room by labour, in the land of the Perizzites and of the giants, if the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow. Joshua exposes the quiet contradiction in the complaint - a people loudly sure of their own greatness, yet unwilling to do the work greatness would require.

Pressed to go up and take more, the children of Joseph name what really holds them back: The hill is not enough for us: and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron (v. 16). There it is - the iron chariots. In the warfare of the age these were the most fearsome thing a foot-soldier could face: massed, fast, armoured, the technology that flattened infantry and decided battles.

To Joseph they were the final word, the fact that ended the conversation. We cannot - not because the land is not ours, but because the enemy is too strong. And this is the heart of the chapter's honest portrait of faith. The complaint has a deeper root than acreage: the hill is not enough covers the fear that the valley is too frightening. The size of the obstacle has become, in their eyes, larger than the promise of the One who gave the land.

The iron chariots are real. The question the chapter forces is whether they are larger than God.