Context No. 138 of 4322 · Joshua
Context · Reflection
Joshua 21:34-40: in context
34To the families of the children of Merari, the rest of the Levites, out of the tribe of Zebulun, Jokneam with its pasture lands, Kartah with its pasture lands, 35Dimnah with its pasture lands, and Nahalal with its pasture lands: four cities. 36Out of the tribe of Reuben, Bezer with its pasture lands, Jahaz with its pasture lands, 37Kedemoth with its pasture lands, and Mephaath with its pasture lands: four cities. 38Out of the tribe of Gad, Ramoth in Gilead with its pasture lands, the city of refuge for the man slayer, and Mahanaim with its pasture lands, 39Heshbon with its pasture lands, Jazer with its pasture lands: four cities in all. 40All these were the cities of the children of Merari according to their families, even the rest of the families of the Levites. Their lot was twelve cities.
The tribes have received their allotments, and one tribe has not. Levi, set apart for the sanctuary, gets no territory of its own. Instead the other tribes give up towns from inside their own borders, and this passage is the end of that list: the cities assigned to the Merarites, four each from Zebulun, Reuben, and Gad, twelve in all with their pasture lands.
The Merarites appear twice earlier in this series, carrying the frame of the tabernacle, the boards and bars and sockets. Now they are given addresses. And the arrangement is deliberate. The priestly tribe is scattered in pockets through every other tribe's land rather than concentrated in one region. Nobody has to travel to a religious district, because there is one down the road.
Among the Merari towns is Ramoth in Gilead, which is also a city of refuge. Several Levitical towns doubled as places where someone who had killed accidentally could flee for protection. The tribe with no land holds the towns where a person with nowhere to go can arrive. Jacob's deathbed words had scattered Levi as a punishment, and the scattering became the design. What in my life started as a loss and turned out to be the arrangement that made something else possible?
Sources
- Joshua 21: the forty-eight Levitical towns given out of the other tribes' allotments
- Joshua 21:38 and 20:8: Ramoth in Gilead, a Merari town that was also a city of refuge
- Genesis 49:5-7: Jacob's word that Levi would be scattered in Israel