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Context No. 841 of 4322 · Joshua

Context · Reflection

Joshua 19:1-9: in context

1The second lot came out for Simeon, even for the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their families. Their inheritance was in the middle of the inheritance of the children of Judah. 2They had for their inheritance Beersheba (or Sheba), Moladah, 3Hazar Shual, Balah, Ezem, 4Eltolad, Bethul, Hormah, 5Ziklag, Beth Marcaboth, Hazar Susah, 6Beth Lebaoth, and Sharuhen; thirteen cities with their villages; 7Ain, Rimmon, Ether, and Ashan; four cities with their villages; 8and all the villages that were around these cities to Baalath Beer, Ramah of the South. This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Simeon according to their families. 9Out of the part of the children of Judah was the inheritance of the children of Simeon; for the portion of the children of Judah was too much for them. Therefore the children of Simeon had inheritance in the middle of their inheritance.

When the land is divided among the tribes, Simeon draws the second lot, and something unusual happens with it. Simeon does not get a territory of its own on the edges of the map. Its inheritance falls right in the middle of Judah's, a cluster of towns, Beersheba, Ziklag, Hormah and the rest, carved out of the land already allotted to the larger tribe. And the passage tells you exactly why. The portion of the children of Judah was too much for them, it says; therefore the children of Simeon had their inheritance in the middle of Judah's inheritance.

It is a quiet act of redistribution, recorded almost in passing. Judah had been given more than it could use, more land than it needed, and rather than let the surplus sit as unused abundance, it became the home of another tribe entirely. Simeon, a tribe that Jacob's old blessing had said would be scattered in Israel, is given a place, and the place comes out of somebody else's excess. There is a principle here that the New Testament would later make explicit, that the one who gathered much was not meant to have too much, and the one who gathered little not to have too little; that abundance in one place is provided precisely to fill a lack in another. Judah's too much was, in God's arrangement of things, Simeon's inheritance.

Judah's surplus, more than it needed, became another tribe's whole inheritance. What do I have more of than I actually need, and is that surplus flowing to someone else's lack, or just sitting as my too much?

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