made for its ideal distribution. The two and a half tribes had
already received their inheritance east of the Jordan, and the rest
of the land was allotted on the west to the remaining tribes.
Judah's boundaries and cities are first and most exhaustively given;
then come Manasseh and Ephraim, with meagre records, followed by
Benjamin, which again is exhaustive, then by Simeon, Zebulon,
Issachar, Asher, Naphtali and Dan (xiii.-xix.). Three cities on
either side of Jordan were then set apart as cities of refuge for
innocent homicides, and for the Levites forty-eight cities with
their pasture land, xx. 1-xxi. 42. As Israel was now in possession
of the land in accordance with the divine promise, xxi. 43-45,
Joshua dismissed the two and a half tribes to their eastern home
with commendation and exhortation, xxii. 1-8. Incurring the severe
displeasure of the other tribes by building what was supposed to be
a schismatic altar, they explained that it was intended only as a
memorial and as a witness of their kinship with Israel, xxii. 9-34.

The book concludes with two farewell speeches, the first (xxiii.)
couched in general, the second xxiv. 1-23, in somewhat more
particular terms, in which Joshua reminds the people of the goodness
of their God, warns them against idolatry and intermarriage with the
natives of the land, and urges upon them the peril of compromise and
the duty of rendering Jehovah a whole-hearted service. The people
solemnly pledge themselves to obedience, xxiv. 23-28. Then Joshua's
death and burial are recorded, and past was linked to present in the
burial of Joseph's bones (Gen. 1. 25) at last in the promised land,
xxiv. 29-33.

The documentary sources which lie at the basis of the Pentateuch are
present, though in different proportions, in the book of Joshua, and