Crossing the Jordan, Dividing the Land

Joshua opens where the Torah leaves off, with Moses dead and Joshua son of Nun commanded to lead Israel across the Jordan into the land promised to Abraham's descendants. The book divides cleanly into two halves: chapters 1 through 12 narrate the conquest, opening with the fall of Jericho, its walls said to collapse after seven days of the ark being carried in silent procession around the city, and continuing through a rapid campaign against a coalition of Canaanite kings. Chapters 13 through 24 slow dramatically into administration, allotting the conquered territory among the twelve tribes in long lists of borders and towns that read more like a land registry than a narrative, before closing with Joshua's farewell address and a covenant renewal ceremony at Shechem, where Israel declares, "we will serve the Lord."

The conquest narrative's scale and completeness sit in real tension with the book of Judges immediately following it, which describes many of the same territories as still unconquered and Canaanite populations still present, a contradiction ancient and modern readers alike have had to reckon with. Archaeological investigation of sites named in the conquest narrative, particularly Jericho and Ai, has found the material evidence difficult to reconcile with a single unified military campaign in the traditional timeframe, a genuinely contested question among archaeologists and historians rather than a settled one.