Dethroning the Powers

[Josh. 13:1] Now Joshua was old and stricken in years; and the LORD said unto him, Thou art old and stricken in years, and there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.
Now Joshua was old and stricken in years - He was probably above a hundred years old; for the conquest and survey of the land occupied about seven years, the partition one; and he died at the age of one hundred ten years (24:29). The distribution, as well as the conquest of the land, was included in the mission of Joshua; and his advanced age supplied a special reason for entering on the immediate discharge of that duty; namely, of allocating Canaan among the tribes of Israel - not only the parts already won, but those also which were still to be conquered.
Dethroning the Powers and the ceremonial meal of the produce of the land on the west bank of the Jordan River. The pharaoh was the ultimate landowner, but the city kings were the effective owners of the land around the city and under its power. Sociological studies indicate that the aristocracy, Temple, and government officials, making up about 2 percent of the population of Canaan, had control of over 50 % of the land as patrimonial holding. These holdings were worked by slaves or sharecropping peasants who paid over half of their produce to the landlords. The rest of the land was tilled by villagers who paid heavy taxes to support the urban elite. This system of land management was organized for the benefit of the 2 % at the top. According to the Israel pattern, G-d grants the whole land not to a king but to all the people, tribe by tribe, family by family. There is no privileged class. Joshua himself receives only a small grant among them. (19:49-50).
Matching the three parts of the Joshua story, we find that the distribution of the land takes place in three phases.
Phase one: The Transjordan tribes (13:8-33), recapitulating Num. 32:33-42.
Phase two: Judah (15:1-63). And Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh (16:1-17:18).
Phase three: Benjamin, differentiated from Judah (18:11-28. Simeon differentiated from Judah (19:1-9). The four northern tribes, and the migratory tribe of Dan (19:10-48). Phase three would have taken place at Shiloh, considerably later (18:1), to bring the northern group into the new pattern of land management.
Land Administration: The land granted to the tribes was subdivided according to the number of kinship associations. These associations parceled the land to the member families, and arranged for redistribution of the parcels periodically, perhaps every seven years, according to changing circumstances.
Protective Functions: The association protected member families from being forced to sell their land outside the association, thus preserving the original titles to the land. The association also made sure that loans to a poor family were interest free, and that the period allowed for debt slavery was limited to seven years. The principle mutual assistance thus made it possible for families in dire straits to survive.
Military Functions: The kinship association was also responsible for providing a muster of soldiers for tribal defensive action. This muster, numbering from ten to twenty men from a given association, was called an aleph. A later meaning of this word during the monarchy was a standardized unit of one thousand fighting men. This double meaning of the same word aleph may explain the large numbers in the census figures in Numbers 1 and 26. It is probable that six hundred three thousand should be translated six hundred and three units supplied by kinship associations. This is made probable by the note that the figures were taken by their kinship associations (Num. 26:12). The resulting figure would be about five or six thousand men, depending on the size of the units. This method of interpreting the meaning of aleph helps make sense of the numbers given for the battle of Ai. The first group to go up was three units (7:4 3000), which could be forty to fifty men. The ambush consisted of five units (8:3 30,000), which might number either sixty or three hundred men.
Religious Functions: 1 Sam. 20:6, 28-29 seems to have religious functions. In the case of David, we read of a yearly sacrifice for the kinship association.
Canaanite and Israelite Cities: In the Canaan pattern of society, walled cities were centers of power, domination, wealth, and privilege. The domination of the cities destroyed the wholeness of village society. Israelite cities in the early period, on the other hand, served only as marketplaces, administrative centers, and places of refuge in time of danger. They shared juridical and religious functions with the villages.
Villages, the New Focus: Surrounding the cities in the hill country were unwalled villages, here the basic production unit was the extended family, which shared land, tools, animals, and threshing floor. The main products were grain, wine, olive oil, fruit, and vegetables. Some bovine cattle, sheep, and goats were also raised. People lived in one-room houses constructed of sun-dried bricks or stone.
Important technological innovations: just at this time made extensive and intensive agriculture in the hill country possible, and thus facilitated the expansion of the Israelites into unoccupied land. Popular access to iron tools permitted land clearing and cultivation. Rock cisterns could be cut, and lime-lined cistern allowed holding of water at a distance from springs or streams. Rock-walled terracing made hillsides possible for cultivation.
New self-supporting villages: sprang up as a result of these technological changes, and expanded across the hill country. The better-fed population multiplied and prospered with no exploiting urban elite to cream off surplus production. Small scale but intensive agriculture was well suited to the extended family as a working unit.
Boundaries: Respect for boundaries is one way of summarizing the meaning of the last five of the Ten Commandments. The tenth commandment wars explicitly against transgressing the boundaries of the neighbor’s house and field and anything within his domain (Deut. 5:21). Such boundaries were frequently violated by the rich and powerful in the days of the monarchy when many aspects of the Canaan pattern of Society return.