Numbers 34

The people of Israel were ready to go into the land. They would really cross the Jordan this time. Forty years in the wilderness was enough. Joshua and Caleb had been right about the promised land all along.

But what exactly was the promised land? The Lord Himself defined its borders. Can anyone but the Lord change this decree?

Numbers 34 specified a land that included all of modern Lebanon, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. The land extended from the mountains of Lebanon in the north to the wilderness in the south, and form the great sea in the west to the Jordan River in the east.

More details were given by God because the land that He gave to His people was a real land. The specifics of an actual border were described. By the Word of God the limits of the conquest were also defined.

This was the inheritance of the nine and a half tribes. The remaining two and a half tribes had already received their inheritance east of the Jordan. It was their insistent request to have an inheritance outside of Canaan which the Lord had already approved. It is here reiterated.

The Lord commanded the leading men of the tribes to divide the inheritance for the people of Israel in the land of Canaan. Eleazar the priest and Joshua had a hand in the selection of the chiefs charged with this task.

The only name to note in this list is that of Caleb. This great man, together with Joshua, would go in to the promised land. The other earlier leaders were now gone.

This land was the gift of the Lord to His people of old, but God was always the owner of every land. In Psalm 24:1-2 we read, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.”

Not only that, but the psalm directs us above to the heavenly mountain of the Lord. Who would take us there? The Lion of the tribe of Judah would come, and give Himself as the Lamb of God. The message of His power and love would be our “weapon” in a very different conquest. The land won by the love of the cross would be far more extensive than the land of Israel.

We do not boast in our own strength or in the advantages of the tribes of old. We boast in Jesus Christ, and in His cross and resurrection.

If we ever sense that the journey of life is coming to an end, we can remind ourselves that Christ has opened up a spacious and beautiful land for us. He is the King of Glory!