Not interested? It happens to be the most important real estate anywhere on planet Earth!
Not surprisingly, Joshua 15 first describes the royal tribe’s land, the tribe of Judah. The chapter is intersected with a story about Caleb, his daughter, and his son-in-law (vv 13-19). It’s an eye-opener, but we’ll leave it until the book of Judges since it’s repeated there, and his son-in-law is the first recognized judge in Israel. Now to Judah’s inheritance. For their northern border, imagine a line twisting and turning over the mountains from the north end of the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean. Initially the line ran south of the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem, but later included the Holy City when David and his men took what became his new capital. Everything south of this line belonged to Judah. The region included four north-south strips of land. Farthest west is the Mediterranean coastal plain, which widens as it moves south. Then known as the Plains of Philistia, now the Gaza Strip, it was never conquered and has been a constant thorn in Israel’s side, then and now. Moving inland, we come to the foothills, or Shephelah, the buffer between Philistia and Israel. It was controlled by whichever nation was stronger at the time. In the Shephelah were towns like Lachish, Libnah, and Kirjath-Jearim. Third, the Hill Country, the central spine, was the home of the tribe. Between the hills and the Dead Sea to the east is the Judean Wilderness, largely uninhabitable. South of the Hill Country is the Negev, a desert region in the vicinity of Beersheba. From this frontier town on the edge of the Sinai ran the Patriarch’s Highway, or Ridge Road, heading north between Hebron and Debir, then up past Bethlehem, and finally arriving at Jerusalem, the place where our Savior gave His life for us. Precious real estate indeed!