The Divine Doxology of Real Estate
Introduction: God's Earthy Faithfulness
We live in an age that prizes the abstract, the spiritual, the "personally meaningful" experience. Consequently, when the modern Christian, coasting through his Bible reading plan, arrives at a passage like this one in Joshua 15, his eyes glaze over. His finger gets twitchy for the next chapter, hoping for a battle, a miracle, or at least a pithy proverb. Shamir, Jattir, Socoh, Dannah. What in the world are we supposed to do with a list of ancient, unpronounceable towns? It feels like reading the phone book for a city that no longer exists.
But this is a profound failure of the modern spiritual imagination. We want a disembodied faith, a gnostic faith, a faith of high and lofty thoughts that never has to touch the ground. But the God of the Bible is not a gnostic God. He is the God of creation, the God of the incarnation, the God who took on flesh and blood and walked on dusty roads in a particular place. And the God who became incarnate is the God who parcels out real estate. He cares about survey lines, boundary markers, and city names. This list, which seems so tedious to us, is in fact a glorious, detailed receipt of God's fulfilled promise. It is the legal deed to the inheritance He swore to Abraham centuries before. To skip over this is to skip over the evidence of God's covenant faithfulness.
This is not an irrelevant appendix. This is the nuts and bolts of dominion. This is God teaching His people that their inheritance is not a vague, fuzzy feeling in their hearts. It is a particular plot of ground. It is Goshen and Holon and Giloh. It is eleven cities with their villages. God is not a God of generalities; He is a God of glorious, meticulous, and earthy particulars. And if we learn to read this rightly, we will find that this ancient property map for the tribe of Judah is in fact a map that leads us straight to the character of our God and the nature of the inheritance we have in His Son.
The Text
And in the hill country: Shamir and Jattir and Socoh, and Dannah and Kiriath-sannah (that is, Debir), and Anab and Eshtemoh and Anim, and Goshen and Holon and Giloh; eleven cities with their villages.
Arab and Dumah and Eshan, and Janum and Beth-tappuah and Aphekah, and Humtah and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) and Zior; nine cities with their villages.
Maon, Carmel and Ziph and Juttah, and Jezreel and Jokdeam and Zanoah, Kain, Gibeah and Timnah; ten cities with their villages.
Halhul, Beth-zur and Gedor, and Maarath and Beth-anoth and Eltekon; six cities with their villages.
Kiriath-baal (that is, Kiriath-jearim) and Rabbah; two cities with their villages.
(Joshua 15:48-60 LSB)
The Meticulous God (vv. 48-51)
We begin with the first cluster of cities in the hill country.
"And in the hill country: Shamir and Jattir and Socoh, and Dannah and Kiriath-sannah (that is, Debir), and Anab and Eshtemoh and Anim, and Goshen and Holon and Giloh; eleven cities with their villages." (Joshua 15:48-51)
The first thing to notice is the sheer specificity. God does not just say, "I give Judah the hill country." He names the towns. Why? Because names matter. Naming something is an act of authority and ownership. When God lists these cities, He is declaring His sovereign knowledge of and rule over every square inch of this land. He is the one who sets the boundaries of the nations (Acts 17:26). This is His world, and He is giving a portion of it to a particular people as a particular inheritance.
This detailed accounting stands as a powerful rebuke to all forms of theological sloppiness. Our God is a God of order, precision, and detail. The same God who numbered these cities is the God who numbers the hairs on your head (Matthew 10:30). The same God who knows the location of Anim and Eshtemoh is the God who knows your anxious thoughts. His attention to the fine print in this land grant should give us immense confidence in His attention to the fine print of His promises to us in Christ. He does not forget. He does not misplace the paperwork. He does not deal in vague assurances. His promises are as solid and specific as this list of towns.
Furthermore, this list includes places with a history. Debir, we know from earlier in Joshua, was a stronghold of the Anakim that had to be conquered (Joshua 11:21). This inheritance is not given to be received passively. It must be taken. God gives the land, but the people must walk in, drive out the enemy, and possess it. This is the constant pattern of the Christian life. God has given us every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3), but we must still fight the good fight of faith to lay hold of it.
The Covenant Keeper (vv. 52-54)
The second list continues this theme, and includes a city of monumental importance.
"Arab and Dumah and Eshan, and Janum and Beth-tappuah and Aphekah, and Humtah and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) and Zior; nine cities with their villages." (Joshua 15:52-54)
In this list we find Kiriath-arba, which is Hebron. This is not just another name on the map. Hebron is saturated with covenant history. This is where Abraham dwelt and built an altar to the Lord (Genesis 13:18). This is where Sarah died, and where Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah as a burial plot, his first and only legal land holding in the promised land (Genesis 23). This is where the patriarchs were buried. Hebron is ground zero for the promise.
And now, centuries later, God is giving the entire region surrounding that first small purchase to Abraham's descendants. This is the long-delayed fulfillment of a promise made to a man long dead. God's covenant memory is long. Our God keeps His word across the generations. We live in a culture of broken contracts, broken promises, and broken marriages. We are accustomed to words being cheap. But God's Word is His bond. The inclusion of Hebron in this list is a massive, granite testimony to the absolute, unshakeable faithfulness of God.
This was also the city that Caleb, the faithful spy, requested for his own inheritance because it was infested with giants (Joshua 14:12). Caleb, at 85 years old, did not ask for a quiet retirement village. He asked for the hardest fight. This is what faith does. It sees the giants, remembers God's promise, and asks for the mountain. The inheritance is not for the timid. It is for those who, like Caleb, wholly follow the Lord.
The Geography of Redemption (vv. 55-60)
The remaining lists fill out the territory, naming towns that will become significant in the unfolding story of redemption.
"Maon, Carmel and Ziph and Juttah, and Jezreel and Jokdeam and Zanoah, Kain, Gibeah and Timnah; ten cities with their villages... Halhul, Beth-zur and Gedor, and Maarath and Beth-anoth and Eltekon; six cities with their villages... Kiriath-baal (that is, Kiriath-jearim) and Rabbah; two cities with their villages." (Joshua 15:55-60)
Within this list are places that will echo through the history of Israel. Carmel is where the foolish Nabal lived and where David showed restraint (1 Samuel 25). Ziph is where David hid from Saul (1 Samuel 23). Gibeah would be associated with profound wickedness (Judges 19) and also as the hometown of King Saul. Kiriath-jearim is where the Ark of the Covenant would rest for twenty years after being returned by the Philistines (1 Samuel 7:2).
What does this teach us? It teaches us that God's plan is woven into the fabric of real places. Redemption is not a myth that happened "once upon a time." It happened in Ziph. It happened near Carmel. It happened in the hill country of Judah. The Bible is not a book of abstract principles; it is a story, a history, that is relentlessly geographical. This grounds our faith in reality. You could, and people have, conducted archaeological digs at these very sites. God's story has left footprints in the dirt.
The fact that God lists these places before they have much of a story is also telling. He is setting the stage. He is platting the land where future acts of rebellion, judgment, faithfulness, and deliverance will take place. He is the author of history, and He knows the end from the beginning. He is not just giving them land; He is giving them the stage upon which the great drama of redemption will continue to unfold, a drama that will ultimately lead to another Son of Judah, born in Bethlehem, just a few miles from many of these very towns.
Our Unshakeable Inheritance
So what are we to do with this divine real estate doxology? We are to see it as a type, a foreshadowing, of a greater and more permanent inheritance. The writer to the Hebrews makes it clear that the rest Joshua gave Israel in the land was incomplete (Hebrews 4:8). That earthly inheritance was conditional on their obedience, and as the subsequent history of Israel shows, they were spectacularly unfaithful and were eventually exiled from this very land.
That inheritance was corruptible, defiled, and it faded away. But because of the work of the true and better Joshua, Jesus Christ, we have been begotten again to a living hope. We have been granted "an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4).
Our inheritance is not a list of cities in the Middle East. Our inheritance is Christ Himself and all the fullness of the New Heavens and the New Earth in Him. And the meticulous, exhaustive, promise-keeping nature of God that we see displayed in this list from Joshua 15 is our absolute guarantee of the certainty of that future inheritance. The God who made sure Judah got Zior and Humtah is the same God who has secured for us a place in the New Jerusalem.
Therefore, we do not skip these passages. We linger over them. We see in them the character of our God. He is a God who makes promises and a God who keeps promises, down to the last village. He is the great King who knows His territory, who has mapped it out, and who will surely bring His people home. This list is not just about the hill country of Judah. It is a declaration that our God is faithful, He is precise, and His Word is more solid than the ground beneath your feet.