Joshua 14 · a question people ask
Caleb was forty at Kadesh and is eighty-five now (14:7, 14:10). Does that tell us how long the wars in the land took?
The book itself doesn't give a number. Of the battles it says only, "Joshua made war a long time with all those kings" (11:18). Caleb's own words give a way to reckon it. He counts "these forty-five years, from the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness" (14:10). Deuteronomy counts the wilderness years after Kadesh: "The days in which we came from Kadesh Barnea until we had come over the brook Zered were thirty-eight years" (Deuteronomy 2:14). Set side by side, the two numbers leave roughly seven years from the brook Zered to this day, and the crossing of the Jordan and the wars fall within them. It is a reckoning from two verses, not a number the text states.
The verses
“Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.”
“I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to spy out the land. I brought him word again as it was in my heart.”
““Now, behold, the LORD has kept me alive, as he spoke, these forty-five years, from the time that the LORD spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. Now, behold, I am eighty-five years old, today.”
“The days in which we came from Kadesh Barnea until we had come over the brook Zered were thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war were consumed from the middle of the camp, as the LORD swore to them.”