In the middle of extensive lists of the borders and towns of Judah (which we will come back to in a second), we get the rest of Caleb’s story.
Y’all probably realize by now that I love happy endings, 🥰 and this is a fantastic ending that also happens to be the beginning of another story.
Now, if we only read the account here in Joshua 15, you’d think that octogenarian warrior, Caleb and his boys captured Kiriath-Arba all on their own.
SIDE NOTE…
Kiriath (Keer-yath) just means “city.” (There are several “kiriaths” in the OT.) This one was inhabited by giants. It was named after Arba, the father of Anak and the legendary hero of the Anakim. We would think of it as Arbaville. The Septuagint calls it “the capital of the Anakim.” There were 3 “sons of Anak” there – which may mean “descendants” rather than direct children of.
I wonder if Kiriath-Arba was like the village of Bree in Lord of the Rings. For the Hobbits, everything is huge because men live there and everything is man-sized instead of hobbit-sized.
One does simply walk into Mordor 🌋… I mean, the capital of the Anakim. 😏 The text doesn’t give us any details on how long it took or what happened but I’m guessing that the capital city of the Anakim with 3 famous giants didn’t just throw up their hands and start running like a bunch of little girls. But the Lord was with Caleb and the men of Israel and they drove them out.
Then he set his sites on the next city: Debir.
Now, here’s the bit where we have to look at the larger context. Hebron and Debir were conquered back in Joshua chapter 10:
“Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron. And they fought against it and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword, and its king and its towns, and every person in it. He left none remaining, as he had done to Eglon, and devoted it to destruction and every person in it. Then Joshua and all Israel with him turned back to Debir and fought against it and he captured it with its king and all its towns. And they struck them with the edge of the sword and devoted to destruction every person in it; he left none remaining. Just as he had done to Hebron and to Libnah and its king, so he did to Debir and to its king.” Joshua 10:36-39 ESV
So here are our options:
- Joshua 15 is giving additional detail about events that actually occurred during the “southern campaign.”
- After Joshua and the army conquered Hebron and Debir, giants moved back in and they had to be conquered twice.
I lean toward option 1.
In the same way that Genesis 2 repeats the story of creation but with more detail on day 6, I think we may need to look at this account of the details of Caleb taking Hebron as occurring within the context of the southern campaign described in Joshua 10. In fact, the story of the taking of Hebron and Debir gets repeated AGAIN at the opening of the book of Judges (1:10-15) with a fascinating additional detail found only in the Septuagint – which I will share in just a second…
Why wouldn’t Joshua have his trusted friend Caleb to lead the charge on those two cities if they were to be his inheritance promised by the Lord through Moses? It was actually Caleb’s nephew Othniel who captured Debir and was rewarded with the hand of Caleb’s daughter Achsah in marriage. (That is SUCH a wonderful fairytalesque trope. 🥰 I love it.)
The translators of the Septuagint tell us what the former name of Debir meant. Before they renamed it Debir, it was Kiriath-Sepher, which means “City of Letters.” The Strong’s Concordance has it as “City of Books.” Maybe they had a great library. 🤓📚📚📚
Now – allow me to share some thoughts summarized from the notes in my Greek Orthodox Septuagint study Bible:
Othniel (whose name means “Force of God”) became the first Judge of Israel after the death of Joshua. He conquered the City of Letters/Books to win his bride. So Christ, the incarnate Word would come to conquer the mind and heart of mankind with His book – the Gospel – to win His bride. As a wedding gift, Caleb gave Achsah springs of water which is a picture of the divine life of Christ given to the bride and springing up into everlasting life (John 4:14). Through Christ and His life in the Church, one is able to fight against the giants of the flesh and sin and the forces of evil and drive them out so as to live a God-honoring life.
Isn’t that fantastic?! 🤩
I did say at the beginning that I was going to come back to the towns of Judah. The rest of chapter 15 reads like a list of all the places that are going to show up in the life of David. By the time we get to King David, though, there’s a LOT of history in those towns. Some of them change hands between Israel and the Philistines several times. The Valley of Achor where Achan was buried is in this territory. Meaningful things happened here.
Caleb was from the tribe of Judah. He conquered Hebron and drove out the giants. Hebron is going to be King David’s first capital city. That’s not random. David the giant-slayer chooses the place that used to be the capital of the Anakim and makes it his capital. That’s what ya call poetic justice.
To The Reader 