Paragraph 11:23
11:23a
So Joshua took the entire land: The clause Joshua took the entire land indicates that Joshua and the Israelite army conquered the whole land of Canaan. This verse is the conclusion to the first section of the book of Joshua. Chapter 12 contains a list of conquered kings and territories and forms a kind of appendix to chapter 11.
11:23b
in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses: The phrase in keeping with all that the LORD had spoken to Moses indicates that Joshua followed every command that Yahweh gave to Moses. Yahweh told Moses to drive out all the other nations from the land of Canaan.
11:23c
And Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel: The clause Joshua gave it as an inheritance to Israel indicates that Joshua divided up the land for each tribe of Israel to live in. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel got a certain part of the land.
inheritance: The Hebrew word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as inheritance is more literally “property.” Yahweh gave land to each tribe for that tribe to own. Each family could pass this land on to their children and grandchildren.
Here are some other ways to translate this term:
a possession (God’s Word)
-or-
a gift (NLV)
In some languages it may be more natural to translate this term as a clause. For example:
The Lord gave that land to Israel as he promised (English Easy-to-Read Version)
-or-
Joshua gave it to the Israelites as their own (Good News Translation)
according to the allotments to their tribes: The phrase according to the allotments to their tribes indicates that Joshua divided the land into sections and each tribe received one section of the land for their people to live in.
11:23d
Then the land had rest from war: The clause the land had rest from war indicates that the Israelite army no longer fought. The soldiers could rest. The countryside was peaceful and no longer destroyed by battles.
Here are some other ways to translate this clause:
Then there was peace in the land
-or-
Then there was no war in the land
© 2001, 2011, 2020, 2022, 2023 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.