Yesterday we saw the first two things Joshua tells the eastern tribes before going to their inheritance across the Jordan. There is a third item, as he says in chapter 22, verse 5, “But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave to you to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to obey His commands, to hold fast to Him, and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul.” You know, when we come to that last phrase, “with all your heart and soul,” we are reminded of what the Lord Jesus Christ called "the first and great commandment" because that is certainly the command to which Joshua is referring. It’s found in Deuteronomy 6:5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Joshua is telling the people, "You have obeyed in the past, and God has been faithful in the past, even in the immediate past. Now be sure to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind."
Most commentaries on the book of Joshua tend to get rather skimpy towards the second half, beginning with those long chapters in the middle that have to do with the partition of the land city by city among the 12 tribes. I suppose that’s understandable. It's hard to preach at any great length about the division of the land among the tribes. What then happens is that the momentum of the study of those chapters whisks the commentators on to the end of the book in at best one or two more chapters. That’s unfortunate because these last chapters have great lessons, some of the greatest in the book. And it’s particularly unfortunate if that kind of rapid treatment carries over into chapter 22. In this chapter, Joshua gives specific commands and a challenge to the 2½ eastern tribes who were going to dwell on the far side of the Jordan River. And the chapter contains an emotional parting and also an incident that grows out of that which is one of the most instructive incidents in the entire book.
It’s interesting that this judgment upon Levi and his descendants turned out to be such a great blessing. When we begin to think of some of the great leaders in the Old Testament, we find that a number of them were Levites. Moses, for example, was of the tribe of Levi. He was a man who was raised up by God to lead Israel out of Egypt. He made his mistakes, as all of us do. After killing an Egyptian he was forced to flee, and spent the next 40 years in the far side of the desert in Midian. And it was only at the end of that time that God came to him again, when he was 80 years old, because the time for Israel’s deliverance had come.
At the end of Genesis, in chapter 49, Jacob gives a great prophecy that concerns the future of each of his sons and the people who should come from them. And when he gets to Simeon and Levi, it is this incident from Genesis 34 that he remembers. Here are his words: "Simeon and Levi are brothers—their swords are weapons of violence. Let me not enter their council, let me not join their assembly, for they have killed men in their anger and hamstrung oxen as they pleased. Cursed be their anger, so fierce, and their fury, so cruel" (vv. 5-7a). You see, even all those many years after that event, the horror of it still stuck in Jacob’s mind. And then he pronounced this prophecy: "I will scatter them in Jacob and disperse them in Israel" (v. 7b).
Now in chapter 21, we find out more about these Levitical cities. Six of the 48 cities were for refuge; but there were still the other 42 cities that were scattered all throughout the land. Joshua 21 spells it out in great detail city by city, telling us exactly where these cities of the Levites were. This involves a very interesting story. To understand why the cities of the Levites were so important and why they were such a blessing, not only to the people but to the Levites themselves, you have to go back to Genesis 34. In that chapter there is one of the most unsavory portions of the Old Testament. And although some preachers might say that it is impossible to preach a sermon on a certain text, I don’t think that’s true. All Scripture, including these portions, is given for our instruction in righteousness and for our correction.
