Now Joshua was old and well stricken in years; and Yahweh said to him, You are old and well stricken in years, and there remains yet very much land to be possessed.
These detailed boundaries and scores of particular places mentioned here, "Were vital for the tribes themselves, for these were the title-deeds of their inheritance."[3] We shall not be concerned with a discussion of each one of the places mentioned here, because, as John Calvin said, "Great labor (on that project) would produce little fruit to the reader."[4] About one-fourth of all the place-names given here are absolutely "unknown."[5] Several of them are the grounds of contention among archeologists, with some claiming one site, and others another site, as the location of a given city.  Besides that, in a number of other cases, there are as many as four towns with the same name!  The important thing is that the people concerned did know and did understand the boundaries which are here outlined.  Before moving to a study of the Sacred Text itself, we take time to notice the following: