TEXT [Commentary]

2.   Acsah’s request (15:13-19)

13 The LORD commanded Joshua to assign some of Judah’s territory to Caleb son of Jephunneh. So Caleb was given the town of Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), which had been named after Anak’s ancestor. 14 Caleb drove out the three groups of Anakites—the descendants of Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the sons of Anak.

15 From there he went to fight against the people living in the town of Debir (formerly called Kiriath-sepher). 16 Caleb said, “I will give my daughter Acsah in marriage to the one who attacks and captures Kiriath-sepher.” 17 Othniel, the son of Caleb’s brother Kenaz, was the one who conquered it, so Acsah became Othniel’s wife.

18 When Acsah married Othniel, she urged him[*] to ask her father for a field. As she got down off her donkey, Caleb asked her, “What’s the matter?”

19 She said, “Give me another gift. You have already given me land in the Negev; now please give me springs of water, too.” So Caleb gave her the upper and lower springs.

NOTES

15:13 Hebron. See note on 14:13.

15:14 Anakites. See note on 11:21.

15:15 Debir. About six miles south of Hebron; the modern village on this site is Rabud.

Kiriath-sepher. The name means “town of the book” (or scroll).

COMMENTARY [Text]

This is now the fourth brief account of the taking of Hebron; the previous three occur in 10:36-37; 11:21-22; 14:12-15. A fifth notice occurs in Judges 1:10. The implication of Caleb’s speech to Joshua (in which he asked, “Give me the hill country,” and referenced the descendants of Anak as though they still dwelt in Hebron) is that Caleb would lead the battle against them, then occupy Hebron as his inheritance (14:12). It may be that we should see 15:13-14 as simply a summary reminder, and translate the verbs as past perfects: “The Lord had commanded . . . Caleb had been given . . . Caleb had driven out.” The main narrative, then, the account of Othniel and Acsah, has its necessary prologue freshly in the mind of the hearer or reader.

By the canons of military reporting virtually through the ages, Joshua as commander could be given credit in the first two (summary) reports (10:36; 11:21-22), without discrediting Caleb. Caleb’s clan, the Kennizites, had attached itself to Judah (see note and commentary on 14:6); by the same token, then, the tribe of Judah could be named (Judg 1:10) as taking Hebron, though Caleb led the action. A solution along these lines seems to take seriously the circumstances and details of Caleb’s request of Joshua (14:12). Two references (14:12-14; 15:13-14) clearly name Caleb as the conqueror of Hebron.

Turning his attention to Debir, Caleb offered an opportunity to a younger man. We cannot know whether his nephew Othniel was the only one or the expected man to take up Caleb’s challenge. We do know that first-cousin marriages have been desirable matches through much of the history of the Middle East (cf. de Vaux 1965:29-32).

Giving a daughter’s hand in marriage as reward for a great exploit is not an invention of medieval fairy stories; now and again, it really happened in the ancient world. This is not to say Caleb had the absolute moral right to give Acsah in marriage this way; he did not. But in the world of ancient Israel it would not have occurred to anyone, including Acsah, to think Caleb in the wrong in making this offer. From the brief episode that follows, we may surmise that Acsah did not object to her new husband. In any case, Othniel became Israel’s first judge (Judg 3:9-11), so from a historical perspective, Acsah married well. From the evidence of these few verses, so did Othniel.

The Septuagint reading in 15:18 is: “He [Othniel] urged her [Acsah] to ask her father for a field [as a wedding present].” The rendering is easy to explain because the ensuing conversation was between Caleb and Acsah, not between Caleb and Othniel. However, “urged” is a very forceful verb; some have translated it “nagged,” then conjectured whether the editors of the Hebrew text changed it to protect the first of Israel’s judges from the charge of “nagging” (Boling 1982:373-374). Given several plausible scenarios, with little knowledge of their personalities, we cannot be sure which of the newlyweds urged the other to ask for the field. We do know Acsah was the one who spoke to her father.

Caleb spoke first. The NLT’s “What’s the matter?” (15:18) may be a bit too strong. The Hebrew phrase is a normal greeting or initial inquiry, “How are you?” or, “What’s going on?” Caleb was not inviting Acsah to ask him for something. But since she was not doing well without a water source for the town her husband had conquered, her father’s greeting, “How are you?” gave Acsah the opening she needed. Acsah’s response was, literally, “Please give me a blessing”; in this context, though, “Give me another gift” (15:19) is not a distortion. “In the Negev” (15:19) is misleading, however. The Negev is the semi-arid and southernmost of Judah’s districts, but in the ensuing list, Debir clearly is located in the hill country (15:49). Here, we should understand negeb [TH8486, ZH9402] as “the [dry] southland” of Hebron, the district Caleb possessed. Acsah called her new home of Debir, “the Negev” (“dry”), because it had no water source of its own. “The upper and lower springs” are two water sources close together, but too far from Debir to belong to it naturally, hence Acsah’s need to ask her father for the blessing of water. The Hebrew word gulloth [TH1543, ZH1657] is not “springs”; these are more like wells, and Acsah was asking for them specifically.

These wells are about one-and-a-half miles north of the modern village of ­Khirbet Rabud. Their modern Arabic names translate as “The Upper Well of the Leech” and “The Lower Well of the Leech.” Rabud, like Debir of old, has no natural water source of its own; these wells still provide water for the vicinity. Given their presence just where they should be, and given that the archaeology and geography of Rabud fit the requirements for Debir perfectly, there no longer can be the slightest doubt that Rabud is Debir and that these two wells are the “springs” Acsah asked her father to give her as a wedding gift. Looking into them and drinking from them is a most moving experience.