The second part gives an account of the division of the land by lot among the several tribes.  This work was begun as is described in chapters 13-17, and after an interruption through the dilatoriness of the people, for which Joshua rebuked them, was continued and completed at Shiloh.  Chaps. 18, 19.  Six cities of refuge were then appointed, three on each side of the Jordan; forty-eight cities were assigned by lot to the Levites; and the two and a half tribes that had received their inheritance on the east side of the Jordan (Numb., chap. 32) were sent home.  Chaps. 20-22.  The twenty-third chapter contains Joshua’s charge to the elders of Israel, and the twenty-fourth his final charge at Shechem to the assembled tribes, on which occasion there was a solemn renewal of the national covenant.  The whole book is brought to a close by a brief notice of the death of Joshua and Eleazar, and the interment of the bones of Joseph in Shechem.  This brief survey of the contents of the book reveals at once its unity, its orderly plan, and the place which it holds in the history of the Theocracy.

4.  The authorship of the book cannot be determined from the title alone, any more than that of the two books which bear the name of Samuel.  Jewish tradition ascribes it to Joshua himself, except the last five verses.  But it records some transactions which, according to the most obvious interpretation of them, occurred after Joshua’s death.  Among these are the conquest of Hebron (chap. 15:16-19, compared with Judges 1:12-15), and especially the excursion of the Danites (chap. 19:47), which must be regarded as identical with that described in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Judges.  Unless we assume that this notice of the Danites is an addition made by a later hand, we must suppose that the book was written by some unknown prophetical man after Joshua’s death.  He may well have been one of the elders who overlived Joshua, since at the time of his writing Rahab was yet living among the Israelites.  Chap. 6:25.

The eighteenth chapter of the book of Judges, which records the invasion of the Danites, is evidently an appendix, introduced by the words:  “In those days there was no king in Israel;” and that this invasion took place not long after the settlement of the people in Canaan, is manifest from the object proposed by it.  Judges 18:1.  At the time of the conquest, Rahab was a young woman, and may well have survived that event forty years or more.  The only apparent indication of a still later composition of the book is that found in the reference to the book of Jasher, chap. 10:13.  From 2 Sam. 1:18, we learn (according to the most approved interpretation of the passage) that David’s elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan was written in the book of Jasher.  But we are not warranted in affirming that this title was applied to a book of definitely determined contents.  It may have been a collection of national songs, enlarged