Joshua 19: Strength and Weakness as States of Mind

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Quick Insights

The chapter maps the psychic geography of an inner nation, where towns and borders are the various provinces of attention and desire.
Each allotment is a shift in identity, showing how certain clusters of thought receive focus and thus become lived experience.
Shortage and abundance both appear: some tribes find their place within another, indicating how consciousness can nest and borrow boundaries.
Conflict, conquest, and settlement are symbolic of internal struggles that resolve when imagination claims and dwells in a chosen state.

What is the Main Point of Joshua 19?

This chapter invites the reader to see inheritance as the distribution of inner territories: the imagination parcels the mind into provinces, and wherever attention is settled and named becomes the home in which a life is lived. The central consciousness principle is simple — what you occupy inwardly you will find outwardly, so the act of assigning attention, believing in a place within, and inhabiting it is the mechanism by which inner reality shapes outer circumstance.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Joshua 19?

Each named city and border is a tone of feeling and a way of seeing, an inner district where habits, memories, and hopes take residence. When a tribe’s allotment is described as being within another, it reveals how some patterns of thought depend on wider contexts of identity; a smaller fear, dream, or conviction may live inside a larger narrative such as family, duty, or faith. To look inwardly at these divisions is to map the unconscious territories that quietly govern choices, and to understand that the borders between them are fashioned by attention and repeated imagining. The moments of insufficient coast or the act of going to fight and possess highlight psychological tension: when a felt lack arises, imagination rises to meet it with action. The story of a people finding too little space and then expanding by decisive inner initiative illustrates how bold imagining, sustained by feeling, conquers limiting self-concepts. Settlement follows conquest, meaning that dwelling — the continued inner assumption of a state — consolidates what was once aspiration into a lived identity. The final gift to the leader and the closing of the division show completion and integration. There is a recognition that allocation of inner landscapes is not aimless; it is done 'before the Presence,' a figure for the witness consciousness that observes and seals the choice. The process described is therefore an inner ordinance: decide, imagine dwelling there vividly, and let the quiet authority of consistent feeling validate and realize the inheritance in daily life.

Key Symbols Decoded

Cities and villages function as discrete patterns of mind: a city is a dominant, organized cluster of belief, while the villages that surround it are subtler habits and memories that support and extend that central theme. Borders are attention's edges, the habits that determine where one state ends and another begins; when borders shift, identity shifts. Names that recur indicate the tone of that sector of mind — a name like Beersheba can be read as a wellspring of selfhood to be drawn upon, while Leshem becoming Dan is the renaming that happens when imagination claims and rebrands an inner condition. The act of casting lots and dividing is symbolic of choice and allocation: the imagination casts its own lot when it assigns thought to a particular scene, and the resultant territory is not mere possibility but the blueprint for action. Conquest, renaming, and dwelling are sequential movements of the psyche — conceive, assume, and inhabit — and together they form the grammar by which inner pictures become outer facts.

Practical Application

Begin by surveying your internal map in quiet moments, naming the dominant states, their supporting habits, and the boundaries between them. Notice which inner provinces feel cramped and which overflow; where one pattern lives within another, trace the dependency and imagine gently reassigning attention. Use vivid, sensory imagining to inhabit the desired province — not as a future hope but as an already lived room in your inner house — and rehearse the feeling of being there until it acquires the texture of memory. When resistance appears as lack, meet it as a neighbor to be invited in rather than an enemy to be fought; imagine enlarging the coast of the desired state until it contains the smaller one. Practice brief, repeated acts of inner assumption: see the name, feel the scene, speak it quietly in the imagination, and then carry that feeling into ordinary tasks. Over time the settled habit of dwelling will reconfigure the borders of your life, turning imagined provinces into inhabited realities.

Staging the Inner Inheritance: Mapping the Territories of the Self

Joshua 19, read as a psychological drama, is a map of how the human mind divides, assigns, and finally inhabits its inner landscape. The allotment of cities and borders to each tribe is not a historical census but an unfolding of consciousness: attention is parceled out, faculties are named and located, and the inner man learns to dwell in that which he has imagined.

The casting of lots is the first image: chance, or the appearance of it, is how decisions within consciousness are surrendered to an inner law. When the text says the second lot came forth to Simeon, it is describing a moment in which a particular function of mind — the Simeon faculty — receives its field. Simeon’s inheritance lies within the inheritance of Judah. Psychologically this is precise: some powers of the self do not appear as independent kingdoms but dwell within the larger identity. Judah represents the dominating sense of self, the ruling identity or the center of egoic authority, and Simeon lives as a specialized impulse inside it — perhaps the slumbering indignation, the inner enforcer, or the intimate register of conscience that functions within the broader personality.

To have an inheritance “within” another is to experience a nested state: a belief, an emotion, or a talent that finds expression only inside a prevailing self-conception. It explains why many faculties seem small until the ruling identity expands to make room for them. The long list of cities allotted to Simeon — Beersheba, Sheba, Moladah, Ziklag and so on — are not mere geography but distinct plots of inner territory: wells of memory and desire (Beersheba), hidden pastures (Ziklag), places of cessation or repose (Moladah). These are sub-states: clusters of feeling, memory, and habitual thought entrusted to this inner function.

When the narrative enumerates Zebulun’s borders, the language of sea-coasts and valleys becomes psychological topology. Zebulun’s field “going up toward the sea” and touching towns like Sarid and Japhia depicts the faculty of curiosity and commerce — the part of consciousness that trades, communicates, and ventures toward the unknown. Its border toward the sea is the edge of awareness where imagination meets experience. The village names are nuances of that edge: risk, skill, the places where thought negotiates the world.

Issachar’s portion, described with towns like Jezreel and Tabor, frames the laboring, contemplative faculty that tills meaning out of the soil of life. Issachar carries steadiness, the inclination to learn patterns and to interpret seasons. The borders reaching to the Jordan picture the meeting of inner labor with the currents of feeling and life events. Here is the slow, fertile intelligence that knows seasons and recognizes when to yield and when to reap.

Asher’s generous list of twenty-two cities becomes the psychology of pleasure, abundance, and grace. Its coast to Tyre and Zidon suggests the faculty that savors beauty and harvests the pleasures of life. Asher’s territory touches many others; abundance is not isolated but relational, influencing and being influenced by neighboring states. The coastlines to the sea are the channels by which joy is externalized into relationships and circumstance.

Naphtali’s inheritance, with its fenced cities and villages, reflects swiftness, intuition, and freedom. The dotted towns — Hamath, Hazor, Kedesh — are beacons of imaginative quickness and the ability to dart mentally into new configurations. Naphtali's field contains fortified points: protected inspirations and swift perceptions that require boundaries to retain their integrity against the chaotic outer world.

Dan’s story within this chapter is the clearest moral of inner transformation. Dan’s “coast went out too little for them” — the sense that this faculty is undersized or under-resourced — describes how some parts of the psyche feel cramped. Instead of accepting limitation, Dan “went up to fight against Leshem and took it.” Psychologically, this is the faculty that will not remain neglected; it organizes an audacious act of imagination and conquers new territory. Leshem becomes the formerly unclaimed possibility now seized by daring thought. This is the inner principle that, when offended by limitation, wages a creative war and renames the conquered state after its own identity: Leshem becomes Dan. The implication is profound: perceived lack can be transformed by directed imaginings into felt possession and new identity.

The act of dividing the land “in Shiloh before the LORD, at the door of the tabernacle” places the whole procedure in the presence of awareness. Shiloh is not a city but a state of inner listening — the tabernacle is the altar of consciousness where decisions made in imagination are witnessed by the still, central awareness. Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun represent two qualities engaged in allocation: Eleazar, the priest, is the repository of sacred memory and ritual (the habitual attunement to the holy), while Joshua, as the leader, is the operative will that asks for and receives a portion for itself. When Joshua is given Timnathserah in Mount Ephraim, builds the city, and dwells therein, it symbolizes the conscious will claiming and embodying a new state. The act of building the city is the disciplined imagining, the persistent dwelling in a state until it becomes real.

Psychologically, Timnathserah — a small portion but sufficient — is the personal fruitfulness that comes when will and imagination align with the central awareness. To “ask” for a city and to be “given” it dramatizes the inner negotiation: desire names a future state, imagination assumes it as present, and awareness sanctions the assumption. The dwelling that follows is literalization: by living mentally in the wished-for state, the outer world becomes a reflection of the internal settlement.

There is an economy implied throughout Joshua 19. Inheritance is not earned by outer striving alone but by interior allotment. The lot is cast, but the lot is effective only insofar as the imagination that identifies with it remains faithful. The borders — described in precise, meandering lines — are psychological boundaries. They mark where attention consistently returns and by that returning establishes nations. The repetition of towns, coasts, and villages emphasizes that every complex emotional or mental ability is made up of many small scenes: memory-traces, habitual responses, imagined outcomes. To change the nation, you must change the mapped scenes.

This chapter teaches a method: name the faculties, notice where they live, recognize their neighbors, and consciously redistribute attention. If Simeon’s inheritance is swallowed by Judah, notice the containment — enlarge Judah or relocate Simeon by imagination. If Dan’s coast is too small, imagine the conquest of Leshem. If Joshua is to live in Timnathserah, the will must imagine building, remain in the built state, and thereby externalize the interior city. The priestly presence at Shiloh is the requirement: changes are made in secret before the altar of consciousness and then act in the world.

Finally, the closing line — “So they made an end of dividing the country” — is an inner punctuation. The division is completed when all faculties have been recognized and allotted, when every hidden city of habit has a name and a guardian, when the will dwells in its chosen place and awareness holds court in the tabernacle. This is not a one-time historical event but an ongoing psychological process. Every moment a person reassigns attention, that moment is another division of the land. The text invites diligent imagination: to move within, to take hold of an interior hill, to name a town and live in it, until the outward reflects the inward.

Joshua 19, then, is a handbook of inner settlement. Its lists of towns and borders are precise because imagination is precise: each nuance matters. The casting of lots, the nested inheritances, the battles for new ground, and the priestly watching all show the way: know which part of you receives what, imagine living there, persist until the world aligns, and let the central awareness witness the completion. In this drama, the creative power is not a distant deity but the active, imaginal agency you use to divide, to build, and finally to dwell.

Common Questions About Joshua 19

How would Neville Goddard interpret the land allotments in Joshua 19?

Neville would read the detailed land allotments of Joshua 19 as a map of states of consciousness rather than mere geography, seeing each tribe and city as a distinct imagined state within human awareness. The allotment within another's inheritance shows how one assumption nests within another, for Simeon's inheritance lies within Judah's portion, teaching that a new state may be lived within an established one. The divisions and boundaries are inner lines we learn to cross by sustained imagination and feeling; the casting of lots signifies settled assumption, and taking possession is the mental act of dwelling in the desired state until it shapes your outer experience (Joshua 19).

What does Joshua 19 teach about inheritance and states of consciousness?

Joshua 19 teaches that inheritance is first an inner allotment of consciousness rather than simply land; the tribes receiving cities and borders mirror how we allocate attention and assume identities. Inheritance here means the imagined assumption you live in, with some portions contained within others, showing that one state may exist inside a larger prevailing belief. The fruitfulness of possession depends on entering the state, persisting there, and feeling it real; boundaries become the limits of one’s habitual thinking until imagination expands them. The detailed naming of cities reminds us to be precise in our inner acts, for specific assumptions produce corresponding outer circumstances (Joshua 19).

What practical manifestation exercises can come from studying Joshua 19?

From Joshua 19 you can derive simple, practical exercises: read the chapter and select one city or family allotment as the inner 'place' you intend to occupy; visualize crossing its border, picture the streets, homes, and a sense of ownership, and feel grateful as if already there. Practice dwelling in that state for short, repeated intervals until its feeling becomes habitual, then notice outer adjustments. Use the image of an inheritance within another to practice nested assumptions—hold a smaller, specific desire inside a larger settled conviction. Journal the sensations, repeat nightly before sleep, and treat each named place as a precise imaginative scene to be lived until manifested (Joshua 19).

Where can I find a Neville Goddard-style commentary or study guide for Joshua 19?

For a Neville Goddard-style commentary, begin by pairing the text of Joshua 19 with readings from his core works, especially Feeling is the Secret and The Power of Awareness, then apply the exercises of imagining and assuming as you read each allotment. Treat each city name as an imaginative scene: enter it mentally, feel possession, and persist, keeping a notebook of inner impressions and outer correspondences. Many study groups and audio lectures follow this method; practice nightly revision of the chapter, speak the scene into being in the first person, and test results by small, consistent assumptions until they become your lived inheritance. The Scripture itself will confirm the process (Joshua 19).

Can Neville Goddard's assumption and imagination techniques be applied to Joshua 19?

Yes; Neville taught that the Bible is a psychological drama and the allotments in Joshua 19 lend themselves readily to assumption and imaginative practice when treated as inner provinces to be inhabited. Use the chapter as a catalogue of states: choose a city or tribal border as the symbol of the desired state, imagine having already entered it, and feel the fulfillment as present reality. Persist in that assumption until it feels settled, like the casting of lots that fixed each inheritance, and notice how outer events adjust to your new inner territory. Read the chapter mentally as you assume the scene, allowing the imagination to complete and externalize your possession (Joshua 19).