Yehoshua Chapter 15

This chapter proceeds to describe the borders of the Tribe of Yehuda in all of their detail. We are told of the conquests of Kalev, including the fact that he drove the infamous and imposing “Children of the Giant” out of Qiryat Arba. Kalev promised that whoever was successful in capturing Qiryat Sefer would be rewarded with the opportunity to marry his daughter, Akhsa; his own brother, Otniel ben Qenaz, conquered the city and married her. She was displeased with the property that her father Kalev had given her and her new husband as a “nest egg”; it was arid land that would be difficult, if not impossible, to cultivate.

Her husband Otniel did not want to confront his brother on this issue, so she personally pleaded with her father to provide her with springs of water that would enable her to irrigate the fields she had received. Kalev graciously honored her request and presented her with a field that had plentiful sources of water both above and below it. The chapter closes by mentioning that the tribe of Yehuda could not (or, at least, would not) conquer Yerushalayim, leaving it in the hands of the Yevusim for the foreseeable future.

The Rabbis interpret the scenario with Kalev, Otniel and Akhsa along totally different, spiritual lines. According to their reading of the incident, Kalev offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to whoever was able to reconstruct the thousands of halakhot that had been lost during the thirty days of mourning that followed the death of Moshe Rabbenu. “Qiryat Sefer”, the “City of Book”, is understood as a symbolic reference not to a military conquest but an intellectual achievement. Otniel rose to the occasion and, with his remarkable powers of reasoning, was able to rediscover and restore the details of law that had been forgotten after Moshe’s passing.

When Akhsa complained to her father, it was about the fact that he had given her “dry land” – suggesting, idiomatically, that he had married her off to a person who had only Torah and spirituality but no practical means of supporting her on a financial level. Therefore, Kalev provided the new couple with additional fields that he knew would allow them to live comfortably and harmoniously together.

The Rabbis could not accept the notion that Kalev, a “man of spirit”, would allow his daughter to be married to a man whose only merit was military prowess. There had to be more to Otniel (later to become the first “Judge” in the Book of Shofetim) than a mighty warrior. Thus, they understood the story as a parable that reflected the spiritual strength of Otniel and his ability to resolve a major religious crisis – the loss of halakhot – that had vexed the Jewish people.

Interestingly, this account of Kalev, Otniel and Akhsa appears twice in the Tanakh – once here and once in the Book of Shofetim. The commentary Malbim explains that both the physical conquest version of the story and the spiritual one are true, and that the verbatim repetition of the narrative is intended to reveal to us BOTH dimensions of what actually took place.