Homilies on Joshua, Homily 18

Let us learn from the law how necessary this account of the division of the land is, which is said to have been made first through Moses and second through Jesus — not that we should keep both, but that, learning the reason for both, we may hold only that which is handed down by Jesus our Lord. Moses, then, distributed the land beyond the Jordan; but this land, which is the holy land and the good land, Jesus distributed together with the princes of the tribes of Israel. You see, then, that when that true inheritance of the holy land began to be distributed by the Savior, the princes of the tribes of the true and spiritual Israel were also brought in. And whom do we think to be the princes of our tribes, or the princes of the church, if not the holy apostles, to whom the Savior says, “You too will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”? Yet the priest too is brought in for the division, the priest who is the secret and mystical word of God. For so it says, that Jesus and Eleazar came together to divide the land.

And let us see who first received an inheritance from Jesus. “Caleb,” it says, “son of Jephunneh.” For he is the first to ask, and he asks with certain reasons and words that are recorded; and these words too can instruct us for salvation. First of all, Caleb is interpreted “as a heart.” Who, then, is “as a heart,” if not one who in all things applies himself to understanding, and who is said to be no other member of the body of the church than that which is more excellent in us, the heart: that is, one who does everything with reason and prudence and so manages all things as if he were nothing but heart? And his father Jephunneh is interpreted “turning.” This Caleb, then, is the son of turning. Why, unless because, having turned to God, he produced such fruit from himself that he fathered a son, the heart? Everyone, then, who gives his time to divine thoughts and does all things prudently and reasonably is a Caleb. He, taught first by Moses and then by Jesus, at whose side he stood, says: “You know the word that the Lord spoke to Moses the man of God.” You know the word that the Lord spoke. For who else can know the word that the Lord spoke to Moses but Jesus alone? No one has understood the law as Jesus taught it. For he taught and opened all things; he revealed to Paul that “the law is spiritual.” “As he spoke,” it says, “concerning me and concerning you.” Moses spoke, he says, concerning me and concerning you. Concerning you: this is what the Lord said, “If you believed Moses, you would surely believe me also; for he wrote of me.” And as for “concerning me,” that is, concerning Caleb, who is the heart, it is certain that Moses wrote concerning the heart, since he wrote everything prudently and wisely. He says, then: “Today I am as strong as I was then.” For the saint is equally strong in present things and in past, in new and in old, in the Gospels and in the law. This, then, is what he says, that he is as strong today under Jesus as he was then under Moses, because the watchful heart is strong in the mysteries of both testaments.

But let us also see the first request that Caleb son of Jephunneh made of Jesus. “I ask of you this mountain,” he says, “as the Lord said on that day.” The saint asks for nothing low or cast down, nothing that lies in sunken valleys, but asks for a lofty mountain, a mountain on which there are great and fortified cities. For it is written that “there are the Anakim, great and fortified cities.” And he asked for these because he knew how to make war, as it is written: “The wise man will take fortified cities and destroy the stronghold in which the ungodly trusted.” Do you think that when Solomon said this he wanted to teach us that the wise man would take cities and destroy strongholds built of stones? Or does it not rather indicate that the cities and walls are the doctrines of the ungodly and the syllogisms of the philosophers, by which they build up all kinds of impious things contrary to the divine law that are observed among pagans or barbarians? Among these too must be counted as fortified cities, set on mountains, the things that heretics set up on assertions drawn from the Scriptures as on high mountains. These cities, then, every wise man who preaches the word has destroyed, and has overthrown the cities of falsehood with the battering ram of truth, as the apostle Paul said: “Destroying arguments and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” So, then, now too this most wise Caleb stands before Jesus and promises that he is strong for war and ready for battle; and therefore he asks to be granted, as it were, the ability to debate, so that he may engage with the dialecticians of this world, with those who uphold falsehoods as truths, in order to refute and overcome them and overthrow everything they have built with false assertions. That is why, seeing his eagerness, “he blessed him,” it says, namely because he asks for and dares such things. And you too, if you are willing to apply yourself to study, to meditate prudently on the law of God, and to become a heart in the law of God, can overthrow these great and fortified cities, that is, the assertions of falsehood, so that you too may be worthy to be blessed by Jesus and to receive Hebron from him. Hebron is interpreted “joining” or “marriage.” By this perhaps it may be shown that in it is the double cave bought by the patriarch Abraham, in which lie the married couples of the fathers and their remains, that is, Abraham with Sarah, Isaac with Rebekah, Jacob with Leah. Caleb, then, was worthy to receive the remains of the fathers as his inheritance, undoubtedly because by the wisdom that was in him, by which he was strong both under Moses and under Jesus, he had understood the reason for that joining itself and had perceived why Sarah alone lay there with Abraham, and neither Hagar nor Keturah was worthy to be joined to him; or why Leah alone was seen to lie with Jacob, and neither Rachel, who had been more loved, nor any of the concubines was joined to him in the tomb. He, then, the prudent and wise Caleb, takes his inheritance among the tombs of the fathers. To him Jesus gives Hebron, the chief city of the race of the Anakim, and it becomes his lot until this day. May the lot of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob be given to me too, and that my God might become my God as he became the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory and dominion for ages of ages. Amen.