Joshua 17: The Psychology of Strength and Weakness

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Quick Insights

The chapter reads as an accounting of inner inheritance, where parts of the self claim rightful place and demand recognition.
A voice that feels shortchanged confronts leadership of attention and asks for enlargement of imagination.
Unconquered cities and iron chariots are entrenched habits and fears that remain after conscious victories, requiring different methods than sheer force.
The daughters who inherit show the corrective power of neglected feeling and imaginative appeal to restore wholeness.

What is the Main Point of Joshua 17?

At its core this passage describes the psychological drama of claiming what is already yours by right: the mind apportions its territories, voices that have been marginalized step forward to demand their share, and the work of liberation becomes the deliberate clearing and shaping of inner landscape so imagination can settle and transform what resistance has left behind.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Joshua 17?

The narrative of lots and portions maps to how attention divides and assigns meaning inside of us. Some faculties are recognized and given wide territory; others are compressed or overlooked. The moment when a quieter, overlooked feminine voice approaches leadership to claim her portion is the moment of inner justice, when feeling, intuition, and creative longing insist on being integrated into conscious purpose. That recognition alters the balance of power; it shifts the scene from an outer conquest story into an inner redistribution where neglected resources become active contributors to reality-making. The places that could not be driven out represent persistent habits and conditioned responses that survive even after considerable growth. They do not yield because they are not merely external obstacles but held patterns of expectation, memory and identity. The concession to put such forces to tribute rather than eradicate them suggests a refined approach: transform the energy of resistance so it serves the new intention rather than annihilate it. This spiritual alchemy reframes opposition as potential raw material for a deeper autonomy. The exchange about territory being too small and the instruction to go up into the woodlands express a subtle teaching about creative work. When the known hill is narrow, one is invited away from crowded, familiar mental terrain into the untamed region of imagination and will. There, the inner worker must cut down what is overgrown—old stories, petrified beliefs—and clear a space where new constructs can be planted. The promise that even iron chariots can be overcome is not a boast about brute force but an assurance that anchored attention, applied imaginatively and persistently, dissolves apparent impossibilities.

Key Symbols Decoded

Inheritance and lots are the language of attention and identity: where you place your focus becomes your land. The daughters who come forward to claim their share are the emotional and imaginative faculties often sidelined by cultural or internalized patriarchy; their successful appeal means those faculties are recognized as legitimate authors of experience. The cities that remain inhabited by old ways are the psychological strongholds of habit and fear that hold out after visible progress, and their survival insists on a different tactic than bold assertion—they require conversion rather than conquest. The wood country and the mountain are topographies of the inner life: the wood is raw imagination, dark and fertile, demanding work and presence; the mountain is the higher standpoint of contemplative attention where clarity and perspective allow for wider plotting of inner territory. Iron chariots and giants are symbolic of rigid, mechanized thought patterns and towering anxieties; they look formidable because they enjoy the authority of long habit, but they are constructed realities susceptible to re-vision when the imagination is wielded with intent and feeling.

Practical Application

Begin by surveying your inner territory with quiet attention: name the faculties that receive plenty of space and notice the ones that have been allocated scant attention. Invite the neglected voices to speak and listen with the same seriousness you give any strategic part of your mind. In imagination, give those voices room; visualize an inheritance being restored, not as metaphoric charity but as reallocation of energy and attention so that feeling, creativity and intuition have resources to act. When you encounter stubborn patterns that refuse to leave, shift strategies from trying to destroy them to using their energy. Imagine converting the chariot's iron into plowshares; see the fearful habit hired into service of your new intention. Enter the woodlands of imagination deliberately: sit in sensory detail, cut down an image or belief each day by revising its ending in your mind, and plant a new scene that implies the outcome you desire. Persistent, embodied revision of inner scenes will gradually redraw your borders until the landscape of experience matches the claim you make in consciousness.

Claiming the Promise: Inheritance, Identity, and the Making of a People

Read as a psychological drama rather than a chronicle of wars and real estate, Joshua 17 becomes a map of inner territory — a careful inventory of consciousness, the allotment of faculties, and the negotiations by which neglected aspects demand their inheritance. The tribes, towns, boundaries and disputes are not external peoples and places but states of mind, feelings and imaginings, each claiming their portion of awareness. The chapter stages how the self apportions its inner kingdom and how imagination does the work of conquest and settlement.

Manasseh and Ephraim, here the children of Joseph, are not merely families but archetypal faculties: the active will and the imaginative faculty. Manasseh, twice present with lands on both sides of Jordan, represents an aspect of consciousness that exists both above and below the threshold of waking awareness — its portion east of the Jordan are those powers that have been developed in a more private, interior realm; its portion west are the same powers expressed in everyday life. Machir, “the man of war,” who receives Gilead and Bashan, is the militant, decisive faculty that claims the wild and uncultivated regions of the psyche. That he is rewarded for being a man of war tells us that the self’s inner aggressiveness — its willingness to confront inertia and fear — will be allotted the fertile, untamed realm of imagination (Gilead and Bashan are symbolic of energetic terrains where new life springs up once claimed).

The scene where Zelophehad’s daughters — Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah — come before Eleazar the priest, Joshua, and the princes to claim their father’s inheritance is one of the most vivid psychological moments. These daughters are the feminine faculties of perception, intuition and creative yearning that in many systems have been denied full voice. Their approach to the priest and leader represents an appeal to the conscious and the spiritual authorities within — to the rational priesthood of belief (Eleazar) and to the executive imagination (Joshua). The complaint they make, that their father had no sons and therefore no allotted portion, is the cry of neglected capacities: "Why are we not given what is our due in the inner country?" The response — the Lord commanded Moses and an inheritance was given to them — dramatizes how inner law, when acknowledged, corrects the oversight. The imagination, when allowed to act, assigns voice and property to those parts of us previously overlooked. This is a model for how suppressed creativity is restored: petition to one’s inner law (conscience, revelatory insight) grants the place it requires.

The allotments — ten portions to Manasseh beside the land of Gilead and Bashan — reveal how the psyche divides and multiplies itself when it recognizes abundance. Ten is a symbol of completion and ordering: when the inner warrior acknowledges and organizes the raw materials of imagination, multiple domains of expression open. The land’s borders — coasts, rivers, sea — are boundaries of attention and the limits of current belief. Where the coast is claimed, the imagination has defined its domain; where it meets another tribe, faculties meet and mingle. The description of towns that remain occupied by the Canaanites — inhabitants the children of Manasseh could not drive out — is crucial psychology. The Canaanites are those old habit-forms, fears, doubts and ingrained limitations that live in the psyche as tenants. Even after a conscious claim has been made and the new order established, these old beliefs remain as tributaries: "they put the Canaanites to tribute, but did not utterly drive them out." This is the ordinary outcome of psychological reform. Old patterns are reduced to secondary roles; they furnish energy and revenue but are no longer masters. They continue to dwell unless the imagination rises to finally displace them.

When the children of Joseph complain that they have been given only one lot, their complaint is the complaint of an ego that knows its own greatness but sees too narrow a world. Joshua’s answer — "If thou be a great people, then get thee up to the wood country, and cut down for thyself there" — is instruction in the technique of creative expansion. The wood country is raw, unformed imagination — wild thought-stuff and untamed possibility. "Getting up to the wood country" is a deliberate movement of attention into imaginative work. Cutting down is the discipline of shaping, pruning, and defining internal images until they become hospitable to manifestation. Joshua does not promise more external allotment; he issues a charge to act imaginatively and industriously. If the imaginative faculty considers itself great, it must prove it by creating room within consciousness: by clearing the wilds of doubt and constructing scenes of the wished-for state.

The resistance the Joseph-tribe describe — that the hill is not enough and that the valley Canaanites have chariots of iron — names two forms of inner opposition. "The hill is not enough" is the sense that one’s present aspirational stance feels limited; "chariots of iron" are rationalizations and the apparent power of external evidence — the iron certainty of habit, scientific materialism, and entrenched memory. Chariots of iron seem formidable because they have mass and history; they represent the armored arguments of the skeptic mind. Joshua’s reply is again psychological courage: "Thou art a great people... the mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down... for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong." The claim is that the imagination’s work on the mountain — its high acts of assumption — will render the iron-chariot arguments impotent. The imagination obliterates appearances by creating the felt reality of the desired end. Material evidence has weight only as long as the inner scene supporting it remains unchallenged.

Another layer: territories like Bethshean, Megiddo, Jezreel, Endor, Dor, Taanach — towns retained by Canaanites — are specific memory-nodes where resistance lives: defeat, shame, nightmares, ancestral expectations. These are the places in consciousness where old stories hold tenancy. The narrative does not condemn their presence; instead it invites the imaginative conqueror to transform them: put them to tribute (use their energy) but do not let them remain as governors. Psychology here is pragmatic: unexpunged fears will serve as the background texture of experience until they are scene-changed by deliberate assumption.

The chapter ends with the reaffirmation that the mountain, the wood, and the outgoings shall be theirs if they will act — for the mountain shall be theirs to cut and the outgoings shall be theirs to command. This is the creative psychology of the imagination: territory is not given by external decree but is created by interior acts of consciousness. The mountain is a high state of being; to possess it, one must imagine oneself as already inhabiting it, then behave and feel from that posture. The "cutting down" is disciplined imagination — persistent assumption and feeling until the inner image hardens into outward fact.

In this reading, Joshua stands for the executive imagination — the power that commands the inner army and issues methods for enlargement; Eleazar represents the priestly insight or conscience that legitimizes the claim; the princes are those organizing thoughts that allocate faculties their work. The daughters who claim an inheritance signify inner gifts that, once acknowledged, multiply the capacity of the self. The iron-chariots and the Canaanites warn that belief systems once dominant can survive as tributary forces, but they no longer need to be masters. The lesson is practical: make the imaginative ascent, clear the wood, enact the scene of the wish fulfilled, and let the old occupants serve while the new landscape grows.

Thus Joshua 17 is a manual for interior settlement. It teaches how to recognize neglected powers, to petition inner law for restoration, and to act creatively to enlarge one’s psychic borders. It promises not a literal conquest but a metamorphosis: when the imagination assumes and persists, the mountain becomes territory, the daughters receive their inheritance, and the iron chariots, however strong they appear, are rendered tributary to a new inner sovereignty.

Common Questions About Joshua 17

How does Neville connect the division of land in Joshua 17 to inner states and consciousness?

Neville Goddard interprets the division of land as an allegory for the partitioning of states within consciousness: each tribe and lot represents a psychological domain to be occupied by imagination, and disputes over borders mirror inner conflicts over belief (Joshua 17). Granting the daughters an inheritance shows how neglected states—feelings, ideas, desires—can be legitimized by assumption. The counsel to cut down the wood and drive out residents speaks to the inner work of removing limiting beliefs. Thus the map of territory becomes a curriculum for claiming and establishing new, settled states within, where outer circumstances then harmonize with the inner dominion.

What practical manifestation exercises can be drawn from Joshua 17 using the law of assumption?

Use the scene of Joshua allotting land as a template: quietly imagine the portion you desire as already given, feel the satisfaction and ownership, and dwell in that state until it hardens into fact. Visualize cutting down the wood, driving out the Canaanites, or crossing the boundary as symbolic acts of removing doubts and replacing them with inner acts of faith; do this in short vivid scenes before sleep and at moments of quiet. When resistant thoughts arise, return to the assumed end rather than arguing with present evidence. Persist in the imagined state daily until your outer circumstances align with the inward conviction.

How can Bible students use Joshua 17 to develop a nightly scene practice recommended by Neville Goddard?

Study the allotment story, then each night construct a short scene in which you are already living in your allotted portion: sense the place, the ownership, the labor completed, and the satisfaction of possession (Joshua 17). Include tactile and emotional details that mark completion—doors open, fields yielding, people honoring your right—then end the scene with a feeling of gratitude and rest. Repeat this single, vivid scene for several nights without trying to force evidence; let the imagination impress the inner mind. As you fall asleep in that assumed state, you plant the seed that brings the outer corresponding events.

How does Neville Goddard interpret the daughters of Zelophehad in Joshua 17 as a lesson in claiming your inheritance?

Neville Goddard sees the daughters of Zelophehad as an inner parable about claiming what is rightfully yours by asserting the assumption of possession; they stood before priest and leaders and spoke their inner conviction until the outer law yielded, showing that belief made manifest (Joshua 17). Their petition teaches that unfulfilled longings are legitimate heirs when met with confident imagination. By assuming the state of having the inheritance and living in that feeling, resistance yields and circumstances rearrange. The story urges the student to acknowledge and embody their inner claim, presenting desire not as supplication but as a present fact to which reality must conform.

What does 'mountains in possession' mean in Joshua 17 when read through Neville's teaching of imagining already fulfilled?

'Mountains in possession' signifies the inner high places of consciousness where dominion is exercised; to possess a mountain is to occupy a superior mental state that overlooks obstacles and governs lower impressions (Joshua 17). Imagining the mountain as already yours means you dwell in the elevated assumption of triumphant reality, not in effort to seize it. Once assumed, the mountain's resources and outgoings become available, and the so-called iron chariots lose power before the sovereign state of mind. This teaches that what appears vast or immovable in the world is only overcome by taking and abiding in the inward stature of its fulfillment.