Pray
Lord, I look to scripture for guidance, inspiration, and instruction. As I seek to better know the stories of women who are part of my lineage of faith, I pray you will open my eyes and help me to see how these stories can help inspire and shape my faith and my spiritual path.
Read
Joshua 15:13-19
Reflect
One of the blessings of this current series on obscure women of the Old Testament is that, by going through scripture with a fine-toothed comb, I’m catching moments that I would otherwise likely just breeze by. Such is the case with Achsah, a woman who demonstrated wisdom and initiative on behalf of herself and her descendents recorded in the books of Joshua and Judges.
Do you ever imagine what day-to-day life was like during the forty years that the nation of Israel sojourned through the wilderness? During that time, the OGs in the exodus from Egypt got married, raised children, and cultivated relationships. By the time they got to Canaan, most of the original exiles died—all but two of them, in fact. But their children and grandchildren inherited the land they had been pursuing for forty years.
Deuteronomy 1:36 captures a moment when YHWH reached the end of His rope with grumbling Israel. “‘Not one of you from this wicked generation will live to see the good land I swore to give your ancestors, except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see this land because he has followed the Lord completely. I will give to him and his descendants some of the very land he explored during his scouting mission.” In fact, both Caleb and Joshua made it out, and when they did, Caleb held Joshua to God’s promise:
Caleb said to Joshua, “Remember what the Lord said to Moses, the man of God, about you and me when we were at Kadesh-barnea. I was forty years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh-barnea to explore the land of Canaan. I returned and gave an honest report, but my brothers who went with me frightened the people from entering the Promised Land. For my part, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God. So that day Moses solemnly promised me, ‘The land of Canaan on which you were just walking will be your grant of land and that of your descendants forever, because you wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God.’
“Now, as you can see, the Lord has kept me alive and well as he promised for all these forty-five years since Moses made this promise—even while Israel wandered in the wilderness. Today I am eighty-five years old. I am as strong now as I was when Moses sent me on that journey, and I can still travel and fight as well as I could then. So give me the hill country that the Lord promised me. You will remember that as scouts we found the descendants of Anak living there in great, walled towns. But if the Lord is with me, I will drive them out of the land, just as the Lord said.” (Joshua 14:6-12)
And drive them out, Caleb did.
Now he gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh a portion among the sons of Judah, in accordance with the command of the Lord to Joshua, namely, Kiriath-arba, Arba being the father of Anak (that is, Hebron). And Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak: Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. Then he went up from there against the inhabitants of Debir; now the name of Debir previously was Kiriath-sepher. (Joshua 15:13-15)
Remember, Caleb is eighty-five years old at this point, and they have not been eight-five easy years! He was enslaved in Egypt. He witnessed the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea and deliverance from Pharaoh. After the Exodus, he served as a spy for Moses, and in fact, was only one of two spies, the other being Joshua, who advised the Jews to go immediately and take the promised land. He was one of Moses’s right hand men throughout the journey through the wilderness. In fact, over half of his life was spent wandering in the wilderness toward the Promised Land. And now, at the end of his life, Caleb is establishing roots and sealing his family’s legacy, which included establishing his land. One scholar I read pointed out that “Achsah’s story serves as a metaphor used by the biblical writer(s) to represent societal transition from Wandering to Conquest to Settlement.” (Heidi M.Szpek, Achsah’s Story: A Metaphor for Societal Transformation)
And Caleb said, “The one who attacks Kiriath-sepher and captures it, I will give him Achsah my daughter as a wife.” (Joshua 15:16) Having already taken Kiriath-Arba, Caleb incentivizes his men to capture nearby Kiriath-sepher by offering his daughter in marriage to whomever successfully take the land. Rabbinical tradition holds that Achsah, whose name means “ankle bracelet” or “ornament,” must have been very beautiful. In fact, her name became synonymous with anger, as in, when a man sees Achsah, he becomes angry with his own wife for not being as beautiful as she. This is, of course, pure speculation, but it’s fun to imagine the possibilities.
To my modern ears, this sounds so wrong. But in the original context, there was at least one benefit for Achsah in this arrangement: she was guaranteed a husband who was a powerful and effective warrior. If he was the one who captured this land, chances were that he would also be an effective protector and provider.
As it turned out, Achsah’s cousin (Caleb’s nephew) Othniel captured the land, so she became his wife. I wonder if they grew up together in during the Exodus. We know that both of them were born during the sojourn. Perhaps they played together as children. Perhaps Othniel knew Achsah well. Perhaps there was something about her that motivated him—her beauty, sense of humor, or intellect— to capture this land in order to have her as his wife.
But he soon learned that he was not the only one with skills. He may have been a valiant warrior, but his new wife was an effective negotiator.
And it happened that when she came to him, she incited him to ask her father for a field. So she dismounted from the donkey, and Caleb said to her, “What do you want?” Then she said, “Give me a blessing; since you have given me the land of the Negev, give me springs of water also.” So he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. (Joshua 15:18-19)
The fact that Achsah was given some of Caleb’s land is interesting, because ancient Jewish law and customs did not generally allow for women to own land. Some scholars suggest that the land promised to Achsah was her dowry, but that is a matter of rabbinical tradition and not clarified in the Bible text itself.
At any rate, land is only helpful if there are springs to keep it supplied with water, and Achsah knew this. Whether the land was a dowry or not, without water, it was not helpful to her. By asking for these streams, Achsah is asking “for life itself—and receives it in double measure. Caleb gives not one spring but two. Unlike Caleb, perhaps, she knows that the two of them cannot live fruitfully on their own. They need that gift. And Caleb, asked, immediately recognizes this truth and blesses them with a gift that goes beyond the asking. Caleb’s gift overflows.” (David M. Gunn and Danna Nolan Fewell, Narrative in the Hebrew Bible)
The thing I love about Achsah is that, once again, she demonstrated wisdom and initiative, two character traits that every woman would benefit from holding. In fact, reading about Achsah reminds me of Proverbs 31, which describes a woman who is considered “excellent, for her worth is far above jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life… She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard.” (Prov 31:10-12, 16)
While it may seem at times like female heroes are hard to come by in the Bible, Achsah is yet another reminder that they are there, waiting to be discovered and celebrated.
We need only to make time to find them.
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Photo by Jackson Cassidy on Unsplash
Coffee Stains on my Bible 