It is altogether wonderful how — [the thing] which, God commanding, Joshua obeying, [and] the people applauding, had been begun at Gilgal seven years before — the casting-of-lots of the Canaanite land (above, ch. 13 & following) advanced no further than three tribes, but was intermitted, and was interrupted for so great a time. Whether was Joshua the leader, or Eleazar the Pontiff, unwilling to proceed in casting lots? Or was the lot unwilling to come forth further, and the Lord impeded it? Or did the Israelite people itself, and its Princes, ask that it cease and rest for a while? This [last] I, for my part, think — not any of the former [options]. For how would those men — such, and so great — of themselves, without any cause, so suddenly, so beyond all the expectation of all, desert and omit that which, with God as author, they had proclaimed and were already carrying out? How would God — who was the author of the casting-of-lots, who had roused the aging leader Joshua, who had directed the first lots so well, and so congruently to the vow and prophecy of the Patriarch Jacob (Gen. 49) — so suddenly, in the very crisis of the matter, abandon and dissipate so public, so solemn and religious an action, [being] offended by no one’s fault of which [anything] is established? [It is] rather to be believed [that there] was something in the people itself which loosed [broke off] the begun course of the lot. But what that was — as far as I have observed — has not been committed to the Canonical letters [Scriptures]. Yet [it] may perhaps be permitted to conjecture something. For, first, it seems [that] a suspicion occurred to some, as if the surveyors who were once sent had measured the whole land either with less good faith, or at least with less skill. For therefore, in this place, many more surveyors [Geometers] from each tribe seem to be prescribed by Joshua, so expressly, to go [and] measure the land. So indeed [it is] that, whereas for measuring the whole land ten had once seemed enough — as [was] reported from Josephus (ch. 13, q. 10) — now, for the part of the same land which [was] remaining, twice as many are sent, as another question will explain not long after. Moreover, to certain more sharp-eyed [persons] — as, in a great multitude, some are always found — the portion of the tribe of Juda now seemed excessive (which the outcome also confirmed afterward, ch. 19). From these suspicions or judgments of certain [persons], therefore, [there] began in the people some murmurings, and then open talk about the casting-of-lots being intermitted for a while, until everything should be more diligently explored and described. Secondly: it could also have happened that, when [they] had gone to the inheritance
(col. 1183)
[…continued from col. 1182.] had gone to the inheritance when three tribes [had already done so], the remaining [tribes] might wish their own lots to be deferred for a while, until they should see how [it] turned out for those others. Thirdly: [they] had [it] well, and almost softly [comfortably], in the Gilgal camp, as I also touched [upon] above. To other places, therefore — less known, and less charming and pleasant — the remaining tribes did not wish to withdraw. For here the love of certain conveniences, to which we have grown accustomed, [is] so fixed in most men that, as [if by] a prudent and cautious [person], [it] is commended by a jocular distich:
“If in some seat you sit, and the seat be comfortable for you, in that seat sit, and from that seat do not recede.”
By the gravest labors in Egypt, and by the hardest servitude, the Israelites had been worn down; yet from it [they] could [only] with difficulty be led away and torn away. But after the departure, how often did they look back? and turn back [their] eyes, and almost [their] very feet? How querulously and vehemently did they demand its fish, the pots of flesh-meat, the cucumbers, the onions, and the other [things]? Utterly, even by small and cheap [things] whose habit delights us, are we drawn in — by “conveniences,” though not rarely truly inconveniences. Fourthly: fear, too, of the Canaanites — who were not yet destroyed — slowed their minds; and since two [things] fought in them, the desire of new lands and the fear of the Canaanites, this [fear] conquered that [desire], and restrained the impetus of all toward entering upon new possessions. And for a similar cause, the Lord did not lead the Israelites — [having] gone out from Egypt — by the way of the land of the Philistines, which is near, “reckoning lest perhaps it might repent them, if they should see wars rising up against them, and [lest] they return into Egypt” (Exod. 13, v. 17). Fifthly: but the fount and origin of this fear was a [too-]weak and slack faith in them. For if they had trusted in God and in his promises, as was [fitting], they would have dreaded nothing of the Canaanites’ arms — especially [being] raised up by so many, and so favorable and wonderful, battles as they had waged hitherto. And here we see, as it were, a certain mirror of our human infirmity and viciousness: [we] who, when we have begun some good [things] with great and eager spirit, yet a little afterward languish, grow numb, and by the least trifles — and indeed often [by trifles] feigned by some false suspicion, and exceedingly pernicious — are broken, impeded, and bound. To certain pious actions, to the zeal of virtue and perfection, to religion, [and] to the heavenly inheritance, the divine lot calls us. We see [that] the most blessed heaven-dwellers have gone before us on the same way — some even known to us, friends, intimates; we have perhaps begun to hold the same journey with them too, to obtain the best state of life, to exercise virtue with an inflamed spirit — and lo, suddenly, all at once, we come to a standstill, we freeze up, [and] we linger more willingly in the Gilgal of this world. But why? Let each one descend into himself: he will assuredly perceive [they are] the vainest and most foolish delays.