We learn that Yehoshua took 7 years to conquer the land and another 7 to divide it. Why did both of these take so long?
- Conquest (at least from the details of the description in the text) took at most a couple of months, especially with the Divine assistance. (There is a Midrash Tanchuma that says he intentionally prolonged the conquest and was punished by losing 10 years of his life, however, it cannot be that he prolonged it for 7 years instead of a couple months - that'd be too gross of an error - there must have been something else.)
- Dividing land - what else had to be done besides the lottery, which I suspect hadn't lasted more than 1 day?
Thank you very much.
Answer
The division of the land included, among other steps:
- sending out commissioners to survey it (Josh. 18:4ff)
- ...and to evaluate the worth of the individual regions and plots of land, to make sure that the division would be equitable (Rashi to Num. 26:54)
- designating which roads would be private vs. public, depending on their grade (Eruvin 22b)
- assigning a plot to each adult male Jew living at that time, then redividing based on the identities of the Jews who had left Egypt (Bava Basra 117a and Rashbam there ד"ה אלא; Rashi to Num. 26:55)
- and perhaps only then casting the lots and asking the urim vetumim which tribe would end up in which part of the land.
So all of that can easily have taken quite a while.
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