Joshua 21:11

11. Hebron See on Joshua 10:3, and Joshua 14:12. We here meet the difficulty of a double proprietorship. We have seen in Joshua 14:13, that Joshua gave Hebron to Caleb as a reward for his fidelity, but now we find that the same city is bestowed upon the priests. Our solution of this difficulty is, that the Levites did not have exclusive ownership of these cities. From Numbers 3:39, we learn that the census of the Levites was about twenty-two thousand males of a month old and upward.

This would give less than five hundred males, adult and children, to each of the forty-eight cities. As Hebron and Shechem and several others were large and important, the inference is, that the Levites had ample inheritance in these cities sufficient to give a sacred character to them. We have an intimation of this in Joshua 21:12. For the Hebrews who tilled the fields of Caleb’s sons must have resided in Hebron for protection. Again, in the law requiring the alienated house and pasture land of the Levite to revert to him in the year of jubilee, there is implied that others than Levites lived with them. Leviticus 25:32-34.