the Fourth Week of Advent
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Contemporary English Version
Joshua 14
When the priest Eleazar, Joshua, and the leaders of the families and tribes of Israel met to divide up the land of Canaan, the Lord showed them how to do it.
Joshua Gives Hebron to Caleb
6 One day while the Israelites were still camped at Gilgal, Caleb the son of Jephunneh went to talk with Joshua. Caleb belonged to the Kenaz clan, and many other people from the Judah tribe went with Caleb. He told Joshua:
You know that back in Kadesh-Barnea the Lord talked to his prophet Moses about you and me. 7 I was forty years old at the time Moses sent me from Kadesh-Barnea into Canaan as a spy. When I came back and told him about the land, everything I said was true. 8 The other spies said things that made our people afraid, but I completely trusted the Lord God. 9 The same day I came back, Moses told me, "Since you were faithful to the Lord God, I promise that the places where you went as a spy will belong to you and your descendants forever."
10 Joshua, it was forty-five years ago that the Lord told Moses to make that promise, and now I am eighty-five. Even though Israel has moved from place to place in the desert, the Lord has kept me alive all this time as he said he would. 11 I'm just as strong today as I was then, and I can still fight as well in battle.
12 So I'm asking you for the hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You were there. You heard the other spies talk about that part of the hill country and the large, walled towns where the Anakim[b] live. But maybe the Lord will help me take their land, just as he promised.
13 Joshua prayed that God would help Caleb, then he gave Hebron to Caleb and his descendants. 14 And Hebron still belongs to Caleb's descendants, because he was faithful to the Lord God of Israel.
15 Hebron used to be called Arba's Town,[c] because Arba had been one of the greatest[d] of the Anakim.
There was peace in the land.
