Joshua 18 Bible study: Seven portions in a book

The chapter opens with a move. The camp had been at Gilgal: "the children of Judah came near to Joshua in Gilgal" (14:6). Now "The whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the Tent of Meeting there" (18:1) (tap set up). It is the first time the Hebrew Bible names the town Shiloh. (The shiloh of Genesis 49:10 is listed by the lexicons as a separate word; Genesis 49 sets out how it is read.) The verse ends, "The land was subdued before them" (18:1) (tap subdued). Moses had used the same Hebrew verb and phrase in his terms for Reuben and Gad: "the land is subdued before the LORD" (Numbers 32:22). From here on the land is shared out at the tent: Joshua casts lots "here before the LORD in Shiloh" (18:8), and the dividing ends "in Shiloh before the LORD, at the door of the Tent of Meeting" (19:51). Deuteronomy had spoken of a place the LORD would choose "to cause his name to dwell there" (Deuteronomy 12:11), and Joshua 9 of "the place which he should choose" (9:27). Joshua 18 doesn't say that Shiloh is that place; Deuteronomy 12 sets out how later books speak of it.

Joshua 18:1→leads toLuke 19:46

At Shiloh Israel "set up the Tent of Meeting there" (18:1). Later the LORD asked through Jeremiah, "Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?" (Jeremiah 7:11), and went on, "But go now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I caused my name to dwell at the first, and see what I did to it" (Jeremiah 7:12). In the temple Jesus said, "It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of robbers’!" (Luke 19:46), the words of Jeremiah 7:11. Jesus doesn't cite Joshua 18 or name Shiloh, so setting them side by side is a reading. Some hear in his use of Jeremiah 7:11 the whole warning of that chapter, whose next words point to Shiloh: the place where the LORD had caused his name to dwell was not spared "for the wickedness of my people Israel" (Jeremiah 7:12), and he warned he would do the same "to the house which is called by my name" (Jeremiah 7:14). Others keep to the words Jesus quoted, spoken about how the temple was being used that day (Luke 19:45), and leave Shiloh to Jeremiah.

כָּבַשׁkavashsay ka-VASH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "subdue, bring into bondage". Strong's: "to tread down". "The land was subdued before them" (18:1). It is the only time Joshua uses the word. Moses had used the same Hebrew verb and phrase in his terms for Reuben and Gad: "the land is subdued before the LORD" (Numbers 32:22), and "the land is subdued before you" (Numbers 32:29). The word's first use in the Hebrew Bible is God's word to the first people: "fill the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). David says it again in his own day: "the land is subdued before the LORD and before his people" (1 Chronicles 22:18).