1. What follows is an account of how the land of Canaan west of the Jordan was divided among the people of Israel. Eleazar the priest, Joshua son of Nun, and the leaders of the families of the Israelite tribes divided it among the population.
2. As the Lord had commanded Moses, the territories of the nine and a half tribes west of the Jordan were determined by drawing lots.
3-4. Moses had already assigned the land east of the Jordan to the other two and a half tribes. (The descendants of Joseph were divided into two tribes: Manasseh and Ephraim.) However, Moses gave the Levites no portion of the territory. Instead, they received cities to live in, with fields for their cattle and flocks.
5. The people of Israel divided the land as the Lord had commanded Moses.
6. One day some people from the tribe of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. One of them, Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, said to him, “You know what the Lord said in Kadesh Barnea about you and me to Moses, the man of God.
7. I was forty years old when the Lord's servant Moses sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out this land. I brought an honest report back to him.
8. The men who went with me, however, made our people afraid. But I faithfully obeyed the Lord my God.
9. Because I did, Moses promised me that my children and I would certainly receive as our possession the land which I walked over.
10. But now, look. It has been 45 years since the Lord said that to Moses. That was when Israel was going through the desert, and the Lord, as he promised, has kept me alive ever since. Look at me! I am 85 years old