A Priesthood in Every Town: The Geography of Grace Text: Joshua 21:9-19
Introduction: Centralized Grace, Distributed Holiness
We live in an age that despises geography. Our digital world flattens everything. You can have a "community" with people you've never met, and you can access information from anywhere, which means you are grounded nowhere. This has profoundly affected the way modern Christians think about the faith. For many, Christianity is a disembodied set of ideas, a personal spiritual journey that floats free from the dirt and grit of real places, real neighbors, and real responsibilities.
But the Bible will have none of that. The Bible is an intensely geographical book. God consecrates mountains, establishes borders, and promises land. And in the book of Joshua, after the conquest, we are treated to chapter after chapter of what many modern readers find tedious: lists of names and places, boundary lines, and inheritances. We are tempted to skim through these sections to get to the "exciting" parts. But to do so is to miss a central part of the grammar of God's covenant. God saves people in particular places. He establishes His kingdom with geographical coordinates. He is not the god of the gaps; He is the God of the map.
In our text today, we see the outworking of a peculiar promise. The tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe, was not to receive a single, consolidated chunk of land like their brothers. God Himself was to be their inheritance. This sounds wonderfully pious and spiritual, but what does it look like on the ground? It looks like this: the Levites were to be scattered throughout all the other tribes. They were to be strategically embedded in the life of the entire nation. This was not a punishment, as it was for Simeon, but a blessing. It was a fulfillment of Jacob's prophecy that Levi would be scattered (Gen. 49:7), but God, in His grace, turned this scattering into a strategic placement for maximum gospel influence.
What we are reading is God's plan for national discipleship. The priests, the ministers of the Word and sacrament, were not to be cloistered in a holy city, separate from the people. They were to live where the people lived, to be a constant, tangible reminder of the presence of God and the demands of His covenant in every corner of the Promised Land. This is a theology of holy infiltration. It is the Old Testament equivalent of a church planting strategy. And as we shall see, it is a beautiful picture of how the grace of God in Christ is not meant to be contained, but to permeate every aspect of our lives and culture.
The Text
They also gave from the tribe of the sons of Judah and from the tribe of the sons of Simeon these cities which are here mentioned by name; and they were for the sons of Aaron, one of the families of the Kohathites, of the sons of Levi, for the lot was theirs first. So they gave them Kiriath-arba (Arba being the father of Anak), that is, Hebron, in the hill country of Judah, with its pasture lands all around it. But the fields of the city and its villages they gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh as his possession. Thus to the sons of Aaron the priest they gave Hebron, the city of refuge for the manslayer, with its pasture lands, Libnah also with its pasture lands, Jattir with its pasture lands, Eshtemoa with its pasture lands, Holon with its pasture lands, and Debir with its pasture lands, and Ain with its pasture lands, and Juttah with its pasture lands, and Beth-shemesh with its pasture lands; nine cities from these two tribes. From the tribe of Benjamin, Gibeon with its pasture lands, Geba with its pasture lands, Anathoth with its pasture lands and Almon with its pasture lands; four cities. All the cities of the sons of Aaron, the priests, were thirteen cities with their pasture lands.
(Joshua 21:9-19 LSB)
The Priests' Portion (vv. 9-10)
We begin with the allocation to the most central family of the priesthood.
"They also gave from the tribe of the sons of Judah and from the tribe of the sons of Simeon these cities which are here mentioned by name; and they were for the sons of Aaron, one of the families of the Kohathites, of the sons of Levi, for the lot was theirs first." (Joshua 21:9-10)
The lot determines the allocation, but the Lord directs the lot. There are no coincidences in God's economy. The first lot falls to the sons of Aaron, the high priestly line. This is fitting. They are the ones who minister directly before the Lord in the tabernacle, and later the temple. And where are their cities located? They are drawn from the tribes of Judah, Simeon, and later Benjamin. These are the southern tribes, the very tribes that will surround Jerusalem, the future site of the temple. God is placing His ministers right next to their place of work.
This is a lesson in practical wisdom. God's grand strategy does not neglect the details of logistics. He arranges His people in a way that makes sense. The priests needed to be close to the central sanctuary. But notice, they are not all in one city. They are given thirteen cities scattered throughout the heartland of the future kingdom of Judah. This establishes a pattern: there is a central place of worship, a hub, but the ministers of that worship are distributed among the people. The spiritual life of the nation was to have a strong center, but also a pervasive presence. It was not either/or, but both/and.
Our modern church life often gets this backwards. We either have a radical decentralization with no accountability or connection, just a thousand little popes doing their own thing. Or we have a top-heavy, bureaucratic centralization where all life flows from a distant headquarters. The biblical model here is one of centered distribution. The priests all served the same tabernacle, under the same law, offering the same sacrifices. But they lived in different towns, among different clans, applying that one central truth to the varied circumstances of the people.
Caleb's Inheritance and the Priests' City (vv. 11-13a)
Now the text zooms in on the most significant of these cities: Hebron.
"So they gave them Kiriath-arba (Arba being the father of Anak), that is, Hebron, in the hill country of Judah, with its pasture lands all around it. But the fields of the city and its villages they gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh as his possession. Thus to the sons of Aaron the priest they gave Hebron, the city of refuge for the manslayer, with its pasture lands..." (Joshua 21:11-13a)
This is a fascinating arrangement. Hebron was the city that Caleb, that old warrior of faith, had specifically requested. It was the stronghold of the giants, the Anakim, and at 85 years old, he drove them out, a testimony to God's faithfulness. Hebron was his reward, his possession. And yet, here we see the city itself, with its immediate pasture lands, being given to the priests. Caleb retains the surrounding fields and villages. What is happening here?
This is a beautiful picture of the relationship between faith-filled works and the ministry of grace. Caleb, the layman, the man of war and faith, conquers the territory. He does the hard work of taking dominion. But the heart of his inheritance, the city itself, he gives over to the priests. The greatest warrior in Israel understood that the goal of his warfare was to establish a place for the worship and ministry of God. He fought, not for his own glory, but to make a space for the priests to do their work. His personal inheritance is intertwined with, and serves, the purposes of God's public worship.
This is a direct rebuke to our modern sacred/secular divide. We tend to think that men like Caleb are out in the "secular" world, doing the fighting and farming, while the priests are in the "sacred" realm, doing the praying. But here, the two are integrated. Caleb's fields feed the priests. The priests' ministry sanctifies the city that protects Caleb. The warrior makes a place for the priest, and the priest ministers to the warrior. This is how a Christian society is built. The men who build the businesses and plow the fields and argue the court cases do so in order to carve out a place for the church to flourish. And the church, in turn, ministers the grace of God that sanctifies and gives meaning to all that work.
Furthermore, Hebron is designated a city of refuge. This is profoundly significant. The city conquered by the great man of faith becomes a city of grace for the man who has failed, the one who has accidentally taken a life. The priests, the ministers of atonement, are to live in the very place where refuge is offered. Their presence turns a military stronghold into a sanctuary. This is a type of Christ. Jesus is our Hebron. He is the mighty conqueror who defeated the giants of sin and death. And in His victory, He has become our city of refuge, the place where we flee for our lives and find grace and mercy.
A Catalogue of Grace-Stations (vv. 13b-19)
The passage concludes with a list of the other cities given to the sons of Aaron.
"...Libnah also with its pasture lands, Jattir with its pasture lands, Eshtemoa with its pasture lands, Holon with its pasture lands, and Debir with its pasture lands, and Ain with its pasture lands, and Juttah with its pasture lands, and Beth-shemesh with its pasture lands; nine cities from these two tribes. From the tribe of Benjamin, Gibeon with its pasture lands, Geba with its pasture lands, Anathoth with its pasture lands and Almon with its pasture lands; four cities. All the cities of the sons of Aaron, the priests, were thirteen cities with their pasture lands." (Joshua 21:13b-19)
This is not just a dry list for the census bureau. Each of these names represented a real town, with real people. And into each of these towns, God planted a family of priests. Imagine you are an ordinary Israelite farmer living near Jattir or Beth-shemesh. You now have priests for neighbors. Your children play with their children. When you have a question about the law, you don't have to make a three-day journey to Shiloh; you can walk down the road. When there is a dispute, there are men nearby steeped in the law of God who can adjudicate. When there is a birth, a death, or a festival, the ministers of God's covenant are right there.
This is God's plan for embedding holiness into the fabric of the nation. The priests were to be a constant, leavening influence. They were living, breathing Torah scrolls scattered throughout the land. One of these cities, Anathoth, would later become the hometown of the prophet Jeremiah. The seeds planted here in Joshua would bear fruit for centuries.
The total is thirteen cities for the priests. This was their inheritance. Not a block of land to be farmed for profit, but a series of strategic ministry outposts. Their provision came from the tithes of the people, and their work was to minister God's grace back to the people. It was a beautiful, symbiotic relationship. The people supported the priests, and the priests served the people. This is the biblical pattern for the support of the ministry. It is not a welfare program; it is an investment in the spiritual infrastructure of the nation.
The Priesthood of All Believers
So what does this ancient land distribution have to do with us? Everything. As with all the Old Testament, this is a picture, a type, that finds its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ and His church.
First, Jesus is our great High Priest, from the tribe of Judah, after the order of Melchizedek. He is the ultimate Caleb, the warrior who conquered our Hebron on the cross. He is the ultimate city of refuge, the one to whom we flee from the avenger of blood. The entire priestly system pointed to Him, and in Him it is fulfilled.
But the story does not end there. Because we are united to Christ, we have been made a kingdom of priests (1 Peter 2:9). The New Testament takes this principle of a scattered, embedded ministry and applies it to the entire church. We are the Levites of the new covenant. We do not have a geographical inheritance in this world, because our inheritance is Christ Himself. And like the Levites, we have been scattered. We are scattered throughout every nation, every city, every neighborhood, every profession.
Your home, your workplace, your school, your town, this is your Levitical city. You have been placed there by God as a minister of His grace. You are there to be a tangible reminder of God's covenant. You are there to teach the law of God by your words and by your life. You are there to be a leavening influence, to bring the holiness and wisdom of God to bear on the patch of ground where He has planted you.
The strategy has not changed. It is still a strategy of holy infiltration. God is still building His kingdom not by pulling His people out of the world into a holy ghetto, but by embedding them within the world as salt and light. The conquest of Joshua is a picture of the Great Commission. The land has been won by our Joshua, Jesus Christ. He has conquered it all. Now, the task is to settle it, to fill it with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And that happens one Levitical family at a time, one Christian at a time, living faithfully in the city God has given them, turning their inheritance into a platform for the ministry of the gospel.