A Priesthood in Every Town: The Strategy of a Scattered Inheritance Text: Joshua 21:41-42
Introduction: God's Strategic Placement
We come now to the end of a long and, for many modern readers, a tedious section of Scripture. We have marched through lists of cities, traced boundary lines, and catalogued inheritances. It is the sort of thing that makes our eyes glaze over. We want the thrill of Jericho's tumbling walls or the drama of Achan's sin, not the dry proceedings of a divine land surveyor. But if we think this way, we are thinking like fools. We are missing the entire point. The God who thundered from Sinai is the same God who meticulously measures out pasture lands. The God of the dramatic conquest is the God of the detailed covenant administration. To neglect these chapters is to neglect the very heart of what God was building in Israel. It is to despise the quiet, steady, and inexorable advance of His kingdom in favor of mere spectacle.
The book of Joshua is structured in three great movements: the conquest of the land, the allotment of the land, and the covenant renewal in the land. We are at the culmination of the second movement, the allotment. And here, at the end of the process, we find the peculiar inheritance of the tribe of Levi. They are the exception to the rule. Every other tribe received a contiguous block of territory, a place to call their own. But the Levites, the priestly tribe, received no such thing. Theirs was a scattered inheritance, a city here, a town there, sprinkled throughout all the other tribes.
This was not an accident. It was not a consolation prize. It was a deliberate, strategic, and profoundly theological act. It was the fulfillment of a promise, the reversal of a curse into a blessing, and a picture of how God intends His truth and His worship to function in the world. In these dry-sounding verses about forty-eight cities and their pasture lands, we find a blueprint for cultural influence, a model for a decentralized ministry, and a foreshadowing of the Great Commission itself. God was not just giving the Levites a place to live; He was embedding His Word, His law, and His worship into the very fabric of the nation. He was placing a yeast of holiness in every lump of dough.
The Text
All the cities of the Levites in the midst of the possession of the sons of Israel were forty-eight cities with their pasture lands. These cities each had its surrounding pasture lands; thus it was with all these cities.
(Joshua 21:41-42 LSB)
The Fulfillment of Prophecy (v. 41)
We begin with the summary statement in verse 41:
"All the cities of the Levites in the midst of the possession of the sons of Israel were forty-eight cities with their pasture lands." (Joshua 21:41)
This number, forty-eight, is the final tally of God's faithfulness to a command He had given to Moses back in the wilderness (Numbers 35:1-8). God had commanded the tribes to give, out of their own inheritance, cities for the Levites to dwell in. And here, after the conquest, after the lots have been cast, the accounts are settled and the promise is kept. This is the quiet climax of the whole allotment section. God does what He says He will do, down to the last city.
But this scattering of Levi goes back even further. It is the strange fulfillment of a patriarchal prophecy. In Genesis 49, on his deathbed, Jacob is blessing his sons. But when he comes to Simeon and Levi, he pronounces a curse because of their violent, hot-headed fury in the matter of Shechem. He says, "Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will disperse them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel" (Genesis 49:7). For Simeon, this scattering was an absorption; their tribe was swallowed up by the larger inheritance of Judah and effectively disappeared from history. Their scattering was a judgment that led to dissolution.
But for Levi, God in His marvelous grace turned the curse into a glorious blessing. Levi's zeal was consecrated at the incident of the golden calf, when they rallied to Moses and executed judgment on the idolaters (Exodus 32:26-29). From that moment, their tribe was set apart for the Lord. Their scattering was no longer a punishment that would dissolve them, but a divine commission that would define them. They would be scattered not as fugitives, but as ambassadors. They would be dispersed not to be forgotten, but to be the very memory of Israel, the teachers of the covenant in every corner of the land.
This is a profound principle of God's redemptive work. He does not erase our past, but He can transfigure it. He takes the very thing that was our shame, the consequence of our sin, and He redeems it, sanctifies it, and makes it the instrument of our calling. The scattering that was to be Levi's curse became the very means of their unique and central importance to the life of the nation.
A Distributed Ministry (v. 42)
Verse 42 emphasizes the uniform nature of this provision.
"These cities each had its surrounding pasture lands; thus it was with all these cities." (Joshua 21:42 LSB)
This is not just bureaucratic repetition. It underscores a key point. The Levites were not to be a landless, impoverished caste of priests, dependent on the whims of the people. They were given cities to dwell in and pasture lands for their cattle. They were to be established, productive members of their local communities. They had a stake in the place. This provision gave them stability and a platform from which to conduct their primary work.
And what was that work? They were not given a large territory to farm because their inheritance was not agricultural. Their inheritance was the Lord Himself (Joshua 13:33). Their work was spiritual. They were to teach the law of God (Deuteronomy 33:10). They were to administer justice. The six cities of refuge, where a man who had accidentally killed someone could flee, were all Levitical cities. They were centers of jurisprudence. And they were to facilitate the worship of Israel, assisting at the Tabernacle and later the Temple.
By scattering them, God ensured that no part of Israel would be far from a teacher of the law, far from a center of justice, far from a representative of the worship of Yahweh. This was God's strategy for national discipleship. It was not centralized. It was not a top-down bureaucracy headquartered in Shiloh. It was a grassroots network, a decentralized web of influence. Every tribe, every clan, had the priests living in their midst. You could not get away from them. They were a constant, local, tangible reminder of the covenant.
This is a direct rebuke to all forms of pietism that seek to withdraw from the world into a "spiritual" enclave. The Levites were not monks in a monastery. They were priests in the public square. They were embedded in the culture, living alongside the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, and it was from that position that they were to teach and apply the law of God to every aspect of life. Their pasture lands were right next to the pasture lands of the men of Judah, or Naphtali, or Dan. They were in the world, precisely so they could sanctify the world.
The New Covenant Levites
Now, how does this apply to us? We are not under the Mosaic administration. The Levitical priesthood has been fulfilled and gloriously consummated in the High Priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The sacrificial system is obsolete. So, is this just an interesting history lesson?
Not at all. The apostle Peter tells us that the church is now what Levi and the priests were then. He says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9). Every believer is now a priest. The priesthood of all believers does not mean that we no longer need pastors and elders; it means that the entire body of Christ has a priestly function in the world.
And what is God's strategy for this new, royal priesthood? It is exactly the same as His strategy for the old one: He scatters us. He disperses us. He does not gather all the Christians into one holy city or one Christian state. He plants us in forty-eight cities, and then some. He embeds us in every tribe, every nation, every profession, every neighborhood. You are a Levite in your accounting firm. You are a Levite in your software company. You are a Levite in your cul-de-sac. You have been given your city and your pasture lands, your place of work and your home, as a platform for your priestly ministry.
Your inheritance is not ultimately your 401k or the deed to your house. Your inheritance is the Lord Himself. And from that secure inheritance, you are called to do what the Levites did. You are to teach the truth of God's Word. You are to be a minister of justice and mercy. You are to proclaim the excellencies of Christ. You are to be a living, breathing center of worship, right where you are.
Leaven, Not a Fortress
The pattern of the Levitical cities teaches us that the church's influence is meant to be like leaven, not like a fortress. The goal is not to create a holy huddle, sealed off from the corrupting influence of the world. The goal is to be scattered throughout the lump of dough in order to make the whole loaf rise. Our strategy must be one of infiltration and transformation, not one of isolation and retreat.
This is why the establishment of faithful Christian households, businesses, and schools in every town is so crucial. Each one is a Levitical city. Each one is a repository of God's law and a center for true worship. Each one is a pasture land from which we are to provide for ourselves and minister to others. We are not waiting for a centralized program from some denominational headquarters. We have our marching orders. We are to be Levites where God has planted us.
The world may see our scattering as a weakness. They see us as a dispersed and divided minority. But they are reading Jacob's curse, not God's blessing. Our scattering is our strength. It is God's chosen strategy for the discipleship of the nations. As we are faithful in our scattered cities, teaching the law of the King and living out His worship, we are participating in the great work that God began when He first allotted these forty-eight cities to the sons of Levi. He is building His nation, not with surveyors' lines on a map, but with the lives of His faithful priests, sprinkled like salt throughout the whole earth, until every last corner of it is savory and preserved for His glory.
The promise of God to Abraham was that his seed would inherit the land. In Christ, that promise has exploded to encompass the entire world. As Paul says, Abraham was promised that he would be the heir of the world (Romans 4:13). The Levitical cities were the down payment, the strategic first phase. The Great Commission is the full campaign. We, the church, are the new Levites, and we have been given not just forty-eight cities, but the whole earth for our possession. Let us, therefore, go and take up our inheritance.