A lot of times, I ask God for things and expect them to happen exactly how I envision them. I’ve got my hand open and I think coming to God is like having it my way at Burger King. Not so.
What’s happening here is that Joshua is giving out more lands as inheritances to people. The tribes he is dealing with now are Ephraim and Manasseh who are all descendants of Joseph.
In the verses before this one you can see the Joshua had given them a lot of land already. He even gave land to a bunch of sisters because God had promised it to their family but there were no sons to inherit it so women got it.
Here we see that Joshua has given them a land that they are not satisfied with. They asked for their inheritance and what they got was not exactly what they wanted. Their reason, “since all along the Lord has blessed [us].” They said that there were too many of them for how small the land was. They imply that the land given to them would be good and big enough if only there wasn’t so much forest. They also imply that they would like the land that Canaanites (pagan people not form Israel) had but they appeared to be too strong. If they could just have the land that the forest was taking up and the land that the Canaanites were taking up, things would be great. They would have what they felt they asked for and deserved. And their reason for complaining is because God had always blessed them.
Joshua basically tells them, “Ok, yeah the land might be too small, so what are you going to do about it? I’ll tell you what you’re going to do about it. You’re going to stop being bums asking for handouts and you’re going to take some action of your own. First, you’re going to cut down the huge forest and live there. It’ll be perfect. You’ll have a ton of land wood for a lifetime. Second, you’re going to get up and fight the Canaanites for that land that you want. I don’t care if they seem stronger, God is on your side. The same God that you know can drop their land into your laps, that God wants you to fight for it. Stop being lazy. It’s yours for the taking not just for the receiving. So you’ve been blessed this whole time by God? Well why don’t you finally do something with that blessing and cut down those trees and fight for what God wants to give you. This is how He wants to give you these things. Work for it.”
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