Read Time: 12 minutesJoshua 19
The dividing of the land continues, and six more lots come up: Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan. The list reads like a surveyor’s ledger — borders, cities, villages, the outgoings of coasts — and it is easy to pass over as mere geography. But even the names of the tribes receiving the land carry their meaning into the inheritance. Simeon is hearing; Zebulun, dwelling or habitation; Issachar, there is a reward or hire; Asher, happy or blessed; Naphtali, my wrestling; and Dan, a judge or judging. Read in a row they sketch the saint’s own story of inheritance: those who hear are given a dwelling; there is a reward for them; they are counted happy and blessed; their portion is won through wrestling; and it is apportioned by the great Judge. The names are not chosen for this purpose, but the Spirit who recorded them left them speaking. And the detail of the boundaries is itself doctrine: the inheritance is not an abstraction; it is this hill, this valley, this named town given to this family for ever. The Kingdom the saints wait for is not a vague heaven but a concrete inheritance on a renewed earth, portioned by name. Yahweh deals in particular places and particular people.
Two of the lots carry a quiet lesson. Simeon’s inheritance falls within the inheritance of the children of Judah, because the part of the children of Judah was too much for them (v. 9). Judah, given more than it needed, makes room within its own portion for a brother tribe — a picture of the greater sharing the inheritance with the lesser, the strong tribe’s surplus becoming the weaker tribe’s home. And there is a sterner note in it too: Simeon and Levi were the brothers of the sword whom Jacob said he would divide in Jacob, and scatter in Israel (Gen 49:7), for their violence at Shechem — shoulder, the place of burden-bearing, where the two brothers turned their strength to slaughter. And the names hold the irony tight. Levi means joined — the word Leah spoke at his birth, “now this time will my husband be joined unto me” (Gen 29:34) — yet joined is the very brother scattered through all the tribes. But the scattering of joined is no contradiction: it is precisely how the tribe of joining becomes the priesthood that joins all Israel to Yahweh, set in every quarter of the land to bind the whole nation to its God. Simeon’s scattering, by contrast, is fulfilled here, absorbed inside Judah, holding no unbroken territory of its own. The dying father’s word, spoken generations earlier, comes quietly true in a property record — a curse on the one, and on the other a curse turned to blessing, the scattered joiner made the bond of the nation.
Dan’s portion went out too little for them (v. 47) — the tribe found its allotted coast too narrow, hemmed by the Philistines and the Amorites who pressed them back into the mountain. Rather than press in on the inheritance Yahweh assigned, the Danites went up to fight against Leshem, took it, and resettled far to the north, renaming it Dan after their own tribal name — writing judge over a place that was not in their lot, stamping their own name on territory Yahweh had not given them. It is the first hint of the restlessness that will mark this tribe through the book of Judges and beyond — Dan is the tribe that does not hold its given place, that goes looking for an easier one, and Dan will be the first to set up idolatry (Judg 18). The seed of a tribe’s later character is already visible in how it receives its inheritance: with contentment, or with grasping after another.
And then, last of all, the leader receives his portion. When they had made an end of dividing the land… the children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua the son of Nun among them. The man who apportioned every other tribe’s inheritance takes his own only when all the rest are satisfied — and he asks for one town, Timnath-serah in mount Ephraim — portion of the sun, or abundant portion — which he builds and dwells in. The captain who led them in, who divided the whole land by lot before Yahweh, serves himself last. It is the pattern of the greater Joshua, who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister (Matt 20:28), who prepares many mansions for his people and takes his own place only when the whole house is gathered. The one who has the most right to the first and best portion waits until every brother has his.
The inheritance is given by name, place by place. Receive your portion with contentment, not grasping after another’s; and follow the Captain who divides to all and serves himself last.
Isaiah 25
After the earth turned upside down in chapter 24, the prophet breaks into a song of praise — O Yahweh, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth (v. 1). The judgments that emptied the earth are not arbitrary wrath; they are counsels of old, purposed long ago, faithful and true. The proud city of the oppressor has been made a heap, a defenced city a ruin, a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built (v. 2) — and the very strength of that overthrow turns the strong peoples to fear and glorify Yahweh. For he has been, through it all, a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat (v. 4). The same hand that levels the city of the terrible ones is the shelter of the poor man caught in the blast. Judgment on the oppressor and refuge for the oppressed are one act.
Then comes one of the highest summits in all the prophets. In this mountain shall Yahweh of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined (v. 6). On the same mountain where the King was seen reigning at the close of chapter 24 — mount Zion — Yahweh spreads a feast for all people, not Israel alone: rich food and aged wine, the table of the Kingdom thrown open to the nations. The marriage supper of the Lamb is here in seed; the gospel feast to which the highways and hedges are compelled is here; the table at which the patriarchs sit down with believing Gentiles from east and west is here. The day of Yahweh that emptied the earth ends not in famine but in a banquet.
And at that feast a covering is destroyed. He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations (v. 7). There is a veil over the nations — the blindness, the ignorance of Yahweh, the shroud of death that lies over all flesh. In the day of the feast it is torn away. Then the words Paul seized for the resurrection and John for the new creation: He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth (v. 8). Death is swallowed up in victory — Paul takes up these very words at the climax of the resurrection chapter, where death’s defeat draws out the taunt, O death, where is thy sting? (1 Cor 15:54–55). The last enemy is not merely defeated but swallowed up, consumed, taken into victory and gone. And the tender clause that follows is the one John heard again at the end of the Apocalypse: The Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from off all faces — God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death (Rev 21:4). The great King stoops to the individual face and dries it. This is the end of the whole purpose: not only death destroyed, but every tear of every redeemed face wiped by Yahweh’s own hand.
So the redeemed sing the song the chapter has been building toward: Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, and he will save us: this is Yahweh; we have waited for him, we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation (v. 9). The whole posture of the saint is in that one word waited — the long patience of those who held the promise through the dark, vindicated at last when they see him and say, this is the One we waited for. And the chapter closes with the underside of the same day: in this mountain shall the hand of Yahweh rest, and Moab shall be trodden down… even as straw is trodden down for the dunghill (v. 10). Moab — the proud neighbor, the flesh trusting in itself — is trodden into the mire while Zion feasts. The same mountain holds the feast for the humble and the treading-down of the proud.
On the mountain Yahweh spreads the feast for all peoples, tears the veil of death from off the nations, swallows up death in victory, and wipes every tear with his own hand — and the redeemed say, this is the One we waited for.
Hebrews 8–9
The argument of the epistle now turns from the priest to the covenant he mediates and the sanctuary he serves. Christ is a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man (8:2). The earthly priests serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things — the tabernacle Moses built was a scale model, made according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount (8:5). The whole Levitical system was a shadow cast by a heavenly reality; and a shadow, however exact, is not the substance. Christ ministers in the substance. Brother Roberts puts it that the heavenly things the pattern foreshadowed are, in his words, “all comprehended in Christ, who is the nucleus from which all will be developed, the foundation on which all will be built” (The Law of Moses, 92) — the shadow was never an end in itself, but a drawing of the One in whom the whole reality is gathered.
And he is the mediator of a better covenant, established upon better promises (8:6). The writer proves the old covenant was never meant to be final by quoting Jeremiah at length — the longest Old Testament quotation in the New — the promise of a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the old that they broke, but one in which Yahweh says I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts… they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest… their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more (8:8–12). The newness is interior: the law moves from tables of stone to tables of the heart; the knowledge of Yahweh ceases to be secondhand and becomes every saint’s own; and the sins are not merely covered for a year but remembered no more. And the writer draws the conclusion the Hebrews most needed to hear: in that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away (8:13). The very promise of a new covenant, spoken centuries before through Jeremiah, pronounced the old one already aging toward its end. By the time Hebrews was written, that vanishing was at the door.
Chapter 9 walks through the old sanctuary to show what it was always pointing at. The first tabernacle had its furniture — the lampstand, the table, the shewbread in the holy place; behind the second veil, the holiest of all, with the golden censer, the ark, the pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, the tables of the covenant, and the cherubim of glory over the mercy-seat. Into the holy place the priests went daily; but into the holiest went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood (9:7). And the writer reads the arrangement itself as a witness: the Holy Spirit this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing (9:8). The closed veil was a standing testimony that the way to Yahweh’s presence was not yet open — that the whole system, with its daily service and its annual blood, could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience (9:9). It dealt with the flesh, with ceremonial cleanness, until the time of reformation (9:10) — until the setting-right that Christ would bring.
But Christ being come — and the sentence turns on those words — an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands… neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us (9:11–12). The contrast is total: not the earthly tent but the heavenly; not the blood of beasts but his own; not yearly but once; not a ceremonial cleansing of the flesh but eternal redemption. And the offering reached where no animal blood could reach — the conscience: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? (9:14). The blood of bulls could make the body ceremonially clean; only the offering of a sinless, willing, obedient life — himself, without spot — can cleanse the inner man and free him to serve. And note that he offered himself — not a victim of another kind, but his own life in our own physical nature. The animal was brought to the altar, and yet had no connection to humanity, so it could only ever cover sin, never remove it; but Christ bore in his own body the very nature in which sin works, and in offering up that nature — sinless, yet truly ours — he dealt with sin at its root and not merely at its surface. This is why, when the chapter reaches its height, it can say he appeared to put away sin — not to cover it for another year, but to put it away, to break its dominion, by the offering of the one body in which sin had been condemned and overcome, thus providing an example.
This is why he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death… they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance (9:15). The word testament opens a further depth: where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator; for a testament is of force after men are dead (9:16–17). A will takes effect only when the one who made it dies — and so the inheritance promised in the new covenant is secured by the death of the One who bequeathed it. The blood that ratified the old covenant at Sinai (Moses sprinkling the book and the people) is answered by the better blood that ratifies the new, for without shedding of blood is no remission (9:22). And the close of the chapter sets the whole hope in its frame of once and the second time: now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (9:26); as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation (9:27–28). He came once to bear sin; he comes again, not to deal with sin (that work is finished), but to save those who wait for him. The saint’s whole life is lived between the once and the second time — between the offering already made and the appearing still awaited.
Christ entered the true holiest once, by his own blood, securing eternal redemption and an eternal inheritance — and to them that look for him he shall appear the second time, not to bear sin, but unto salvation.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The three readings converge on a single word: inheritance — and on the One who secures it. In Joshua the land is portioned out by name, every tribe given its place, and the captain takes his own last of all. In Hebrews the new covenant is a testament, and they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance — secured, like any will, by the death of the One who made it, and ministered from the true sanctuary by a priest who entered once with his own blood. And in Isaiah the inheritance is seen in its consummation: the mountain-feast for all peoples, the veil of death torn away, death itself swallowed up, every tear wiped by Yahweh’s hand. The surveyor’s ledger of Joshua 19, the testament of Hebrews 9, and the banquet of Isaiah 25 are three views of one inheritance — promised, secured, and enjoyed.
One image binds Isaiah and Hebrews with particular force: the veil. In Hebrews the veil of the tabernacle hangs closed before the holiest, the Holy Spirit signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest — the barrier between man and the presence of Yahweh. In Isaiah there is the vail that is spread over all nations, the shroud of death and blindness lying over all flesh. And in both, the veil is destroyed by the same Christ: at his death the temple veil was rent from top to bottom, opening the way into the holiest he then entered with his own blood; and at his appearing the veil of death over the nations is destroyed in this mountain and death is swallowed up. The torn veil of the sanctuary and the destroyed veil of the nations are one work — the opening of the way to Yahweh and the abolition of the death that barred it.
And both readings turn on the word once. The old high priest entered once every year, and the repetition itself confessed that nothing was finished — the same blood, the same day, year after year, the way still closed. Christ entered once — once for all, the single offering of himself that needs no repeating, because it actually accomplished what the yearly blood only pictured. Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin. The endless cycle of dying priests and dying beasts is answered by one living Priest and one final offering. There is nothing left to add to it; there is only to look for him and the appearing the second time.
So the exhortation gathers into the saint’s posture between the once and the second time. Receive the inheritance with contentment, and wait for the One who secures it. Do not be like Dan, finding the given portion too narrow and grasping after an easier one of your own making; receive your place from the hand that divides to all, as Simeon was given room within Judah and Joshua took his town last. Hold the new covenant written not on stone but on the heart, your sins remembered no more, your conscience purged by better blood than any beast’s, freed to serve the living God. And wait — as Isaiah’s redeemed waited, who when they saw him said, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him. The veil is torn; the way into the holiest is open; the feast is spread on the mountain; death is to be swallowed up and every tear wiped away. The work is done once; the saint’s part is to look for him, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.
Receive the inheritance with contentment; hold the covenant written on the heart; and live between the once and the second time — looking for him who tore the veil, swallowed up death, and will wipe away every tear.