Day 66. Joshua 15-18

Good news! The elderly Caleb takes possession of the city of Hebron he was granted by Joshua in yesterday's reading. He had promised his daughter Achsah to the city's conqueror, and she is given to Othniel, one of her kinsmen, who will figure largely in the Book of Judges. But Achsah herself seems to be a person of character and independence—she asks her father for land of her own—with water rights (Joshua 15:19). And she gets both!
We are made aware throughout our reading for today that although Israel is in control of the hill country of Canaan, much of the land is still unconquered. The Jebusites still hold Jerusalem (15:63). Its conquest will have to wait until the time of David. The Canaanites are not driven out of Gezer; they remain there, though reduced to forced labor (16:10). This is acknowledged to be the case elsewhere as well (17:13)--pagan Canaanite influence will continue to trouble Israel for centuries afterwards. The conquest under Joshua was at best a partial one.
This is further demonstrated when the tribe of Joseph protests that its allotment of land is too small (17:14-18). They tell Joshua that "the hill country is not enough for us; yet all the Canaanites who live in the plain have chariots of iron..." (17:16). This probably represents the real situation. Israel controls the hill country, where chariots are less effective, but on the plain these ironclad war machines, which were the latest military technology of the time, make the Canaanites a much more formidable foe.
Israel has symbolically taken possession of the land by dividing it among the tribes using the sacred lots (18:8), but it will be generations before the tribes will be able to take complete control of it. And even then pockets of Canaanite culture will remain, and from those enclaves all kinds of mischief will come—as we shall see as we read together.