What Will You Leave Behind?

What Will You Leave Behind?

What will you leave behind?

Joshua 11-24 and the inheritance no estate sale can sell

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By Dr. Shawn M. Greener Through the Bible in a Year: Walking the Story of God | Sunday Summation and Deepening, Days 140-144

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved. You're free to share this post in full, unedited, with this notice and a link to TrueWordFaithforLife.com.

You pull up to the curb and the sign is already on the lawn. ESTATE SALE. Cash only.

The front door is propped open with a brick. Strangers walk out carrying lamps you remember from your childhood. Inside, a woman turns your mother's Christmas dishes upside down to read the price on a strip of masking tape. In the garage, a man haggles over the tools that hung on the pegboard for fifty years, every one outlined in marker so it went back in the right place. Somebody buys the recliner. Somebody else buys the family Bible for two dollars, because they like the cover.

By Sunday night, what's left fits in a dumpster at the curb.

And standing in that driveway, a question comes that you don't say out loud. Is this all it comes to? Then a second one, quieter and worse. What will I leave behind?

That's the question the back half of Joshua answers. Most readers skip these chapters. They look like a land survey: city lists, border lines, tribal boundaries. But every list in Joshua 13 through 21 is about one thing. Inheritance. Who receives it, who passes it on, and what lasts.

The Week We Just Walked

• Day 140, Joshua 11-13: Will This Fight Ever End? Hazor's coalition came out with chariots beyond counting. God said burn them (11:6). The war took about seven years (11:18; 14:7-10), and God still told an old man, "There remains yet very much land to possess" (13:1).
• Day 141, Joshua 14-16: Did God Forget His Promise? Caleb, eighty-five, asked for the hill country where the giants lived (14:12) and drove out the same three sons of Anak who had frightened Israel into the desert (15:14). His daughter Achsah asked for springs, and got them (15:19).
• Day 142, Joshua 17-19: Why Do You Keep Putting It Off? Seven tribes sat in camp on land they already owned. "How long will you put off going in?" (18:3). Joseph's tribes asked for room and got handed an axe (17:15-18).
• Day 143, Joshua 20-22: Can You Outrun What You Did? Six cities of refuge for the person who did harm they never meant (20:3). When the high priest died, the manslayer went home (20:6).
• Day 144, Joshua 23-24: Will Your Faith Outlive You? At Shechem, Joshua said, "Choose this day whom you will serve" (24:15), then warned them, "You are not able to serve the LORD, for he is a holy God" (24:19). A stone heard every word (24:27).

Five mornings. Five wounds. Underneath them, one word.

The Map Has a Shape

Read Joshua 13-21 as a whole and the land survey has an architecture.

The allotment west of the Jordan opens with Caleb (14:6-15) and closes with Joshua (19:49-51). The two faithful spies from Numbers 14 are the bookends. Forty-five years earlier, they were the only two men who believed God's gift was worth walking into. Now the first inheritance handed out goes to one of them, and the last goes to the other. Joshua, the commander, took his last.

At the hinge of the distribution, the whole congregation moves to Shiloh and sets up the tent of meeting (18:1). Some scholars read that verse as the structural center of the entire book.[^b1] Whether or not it's the exact center, the point lands: the land isn't divided until God's presence sits in the middle of it.

Scattered through the lists is a quiet refrain. Could not. Did not. Judah could not drive out the Jebusites (15:63). Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites of Gezer (16:10). Manasseh could not take its cities (17:12). The survey tells the truth about unfinished work.

And woven through it all, four separate times before the Levitical cities ever arrive in chapter 21, the text stops to say the same thing about one tribe. Levi gets no tribal territory (13:14; 13:33; 14:3-4; 18:7), only towns among the other tribes. The repetition is deliberate. The survey keeps pointing at the tribe with no land, as if to say, Don't miss this one.

Four Hebrew Words for What Lasts

Joshua's survey runs on a small vocabulary. Four words carry it:

A nachalah was received, not purchased, and it couldn't be sold for good; a family could sell only the use of its land until the Jubilee. "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity," God said, "for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me" (Leviticus 25:23). Every fiftieth year, at the Jubilee, family land returned to the family. That's why Naboth refused King Ahab's offer for his vineyard: "The LORD forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers" (1 Kings 21:3).

Israel never owned the land the way we own a house. They held it in trust from the Owner.

Now read Psalm 16:5-6 with those four words in your hand:

The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Cheleq. Goral. Chavalim. Nachalah. All four are there. Even the verb matches: in Joshua 17:5 the portions fell to Manasseh, and in Psalm 16:6 the lines fell to David. The psalm takes up the language of Joshua's land survey and confesses, My lot is God Himself. My measuring line fell on Him.

Where did that idea come from? From Levi. "I am your portion and your inheritance among the people of Israel," God told Aaron (Numbers 18:20). "The LORD God of Israel is their inheritance" (Joshua 13:33). Every other tribe received hills, valleys, and springs. Levi received God. And David, from the tribe of Judah, reached across the tribal line and claimed the Levite's portion for himself.

What you hold, you hold in trust. The portion you can't lose is the one that was never land.

Stones That Remember

The first hearers of Joshua lived in a world where land and promises were written on stone.

In Kassite Babylon, roughly the fourteenth through twelfth centuries BC, kings granted land to loyal servants and recorded the grant on carved boundary stones called kudurrus. The stones named the land, its borders, the king who gave it, and the gods who witnessed it, and they called down curses on anyone who moved the boundary.[^b2] Israel's law carries the same instinct: "You shall not move your neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold" (Deuteronomy 19:14). The inheritance was real, and the boundary stone guarded it.

The covenant at Shechem in Joshua 24 has its own stone. Scholars have long noticed that the chapter follows the shape of the great-king treaties of the Late Bronze Age, best known from Hittite archives of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries BC: who the king is, what he has done, what he requires, a written record, witnesses, blessings and curses.[^b3] Joshua writes the words "in the Book of the Law of God" and sets up "a large stone" under the terebinth, saying, "this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the LORD" (24:26-27). Not every scholar agrees on how closely Joshua 24 tracks the Hittite form, but the covenant shape is plain.

The ground itself remembers too. At Hazor, the city Joshua 11:10 calls "the head of all those kingdoms," excavators have uncovered a destruction layer from the Late Bronze Age, a ceremonial palace burned so hot that its mudbrick fired and its basalt cracked. Amnon Ben-Tor, who directed the excavations for decades, dates the destruction to the thirteenth century BC and attributes it to Israel. Sharon Zuckerman reads the same evidence as an internal uprising.[^b4] The debate is real. Joshua 11:13 is clear about what the burning meant: Hazor alone was burned, and the head of the kingdoms fell.

Two Kinds of Rest

Joshua uses two different verbs for rest, and English hides the difference.

In 11:23, after the long war, "the land had rest from war." The verb is shaqat (שָׁקַט), quiet. The shooting stopped.

In 21:44 and again in 23:1, "the LORD gave them rest on every side." That verb is nuach (נוּחַ), the verb Exodus 20:11 uses when God rested on the seventh day and Deuteronomy 12:10 uses for the promised rest. Don't load the two verbs with more than they carry; both can mean quiet. The weight comes from the story: real rest in the land, and a promise that still pointed ahead.

So Joshua ends with real rest. And yet the same book says, "There remains yet very much land" (13:1), and Judges 1 lists the cities never taken. Hebrews 4:8 puts its finger on it: "For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on."

Some of the unfinished land was Israel's failure. Some of it was God's design. "I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and possess the land" (Exodus 23:29-30). God paced the inheritance to the size of His people.

If your life feels like half-possessed land, that's not a sign God failed. The rest was real, and the rest was not finished. It still isn't. "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9).

The Heir, and the Family That Holds the Deed

Every nachalah in Joshua finally belongs to someone. Hebrews 1:2 names Him: God "has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things."

Yeshua told a story about the Heir. A man planted a vineyard, leased it to tenants, and sent servant after servant for the fruit. Finally he sent his beloved son. "This is the heir," the tenants said. "Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours" (Mark 12:7). Mark tells us the religious leaders knew He had told the parable against them (12:12). It's aimed at the tenants who rejected the Son, not at the vineyard or the people God planted.

There's one more word under the surface. When an Israelite family lost its land, the law sent the nearest kinsman to buy it back: "his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold" (Leviticus 25:25). The redeemer is the go'el (גֹּאֵל), the same word Joshua 20 uses for the avenger of blood. One kinsman, two duties: answer for the blood and restore the inheritance. Boaz did it for Naomi when he bought back Elimelech's field (Ruth 4:3-10).

They killed the Heir. And God turned the death of the Heir into the way the inheritance comes to us. Hebrews 9:15 says it outright: Yeshua "is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them." "If children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17). Yeshua is the Kinsman-Redeemer of the whole family: God "sent forth his Son... to redeem those who were under the law," and "if a son, then an heir through God" (Galatians 4:4-7).

Paul's words echo the vocabulary of the allotment. In Colossians 1:12 the Father "has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light." The Greek behind "share in the inheritance" pairs meris and kleros, portion and lot, the same pair the Greek Old Testament uses when it says the Levites have no portion or lot among their brothers (Deuteronomy 10:9).[^b5] Read across the whole canon, the connection is striking: in Yeshua, the Levite's portion is open to everyone He brings near.

Ephesians 1:14 calls the Holy Spirit "the guarantee of our inheritance." The Greek word, arrabon, isn't Greek at heart. It's borrowed from Hebrew, eravon (עֵרָבוֹן), the pledge Judah left with Tamar in Genesis 38:18: his seal, his cord, and his staff, held until full payment arrived.[^b6] The Spirit is God's seal and cord and staff in your hand. Little by little, the rest is coming.

Now guard something, because the history of the church hasn't always guarded it. When Paul says the nations become heirs, he never says Israel loses its inheritance. Ephesians 3:6 calls Gentile believers fellow heirs, heirs alongside. God gave Abraham's children the land "for an everlasting possession" (Genesis 17:8), and Paul insists that "the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29). He warns the grafted-in branches not to be arrogant toward the natural ones (Romans 11:18). The nations aren't seizing Israel's nachalah. They're being welcomed into the family that holds the deed.

And the inheritance itself? Peter describes it in words built for estate-sale people: "an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you" (1 Peter 1:4). Nobody will flip it over looking for a price. Nobody will carry it to the curb.

Seven Mornings: A Practice for What You'll Leave Behind

1. Sunday night. Read Psalm 16 aloud. Circle portion, lot, lines, and inheritance. Say verse 5 as a sentence about yourself.
2. Monday. Write down three things God has given you that no estate sale could sell: a rescue, a healing, a promise kept. Read Psalm 16:6 over the list.
3. Tuesday. Read Joshua 18:3. Name the one thing you've put off for the people who come after you: the will, the medical directive, the closet, the conversation. Do step one before dark.
4. Wednesday. Read Joshua 14:6-12. Ask God for one "mountain" you stopped asking for because you felt too old. Write it down and date it.
5. Thursday. Read Joshua 20:1-6 and Hebrews 6:18-19. If there's harm you never meant and can't put down, tell God the whole case out loud, at the gate.
6. Friday. Write your Joshua 24: one page to a child or grandchild. "Long ago..." Tell them where you came from, what God did, and when you chose Him. End with Joshua 24:15.
7. Saturday. Read 1 Peter 1:3-5. Pray by name for the people you hope will inherit your faith, and thank God for Israel, whose calling He has never revoked.

Back at the Curb

Go back to the driveway. The dumpster is full. The sign is coming down off the lawn. The house is empty.

But you aren't. The lines have fallen for you in pleasant places, and they didn't fall on a house. They fell on God. What you're receiving was held in trust for you before you were born, sealed with a pledge you can already feel, and kept where no one can flip it over for a price.

So hand it on. Not the dishes. Not the tools. The witness. Write the page. Say the names. Choose, out loud, in front of them.

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

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[^b1]: Richard S. Hess, Joshua: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 6 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), introduction, discussing H. J. Koorevaar's structural proposal that places Joshua 18:1 at the book's center.

[^b2]: Kathryn E. Slanski, The Babylonian Entitlement narûs (kudurrus): A Study in Their Form and Function, ASOR Books 9 (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2003).

[^b3]: George E. Mendenhall, "Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition," Biblical Archaeologist 17, no. 3 (1954): 50-76; Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

[^b4]: Amnon Ben-Tor, Hazor: Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2016); Sharon Zuckerman, "Anatomy of a Destruction: Crisis Architecture, Termination Rituals and the Fall of Canaanite Hazor," Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 20, no. 1 (2007): 3-32.

[^b5]: Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), on Col. 1:12.

[^b6]: Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. "ἀρραβών."

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved. Free to share in full, unedited, for non-commercial use with this notice and a link to TrueWordFaithforLife.com.

Watch every episode of this study, and subscribe with the bell: https://www.youtube.com/@DrShawnMichaelGreener

Full archive and resources: https://www.truewordfaithforlife.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved. Free to copy and share in full, unedited, for non-commercial teaching, with this notice intact.