event · E0010
Conquest of the Land כיבוש הארץ
Seven years of war under Yehoshua, opening with the walls of Yericho falling to the sound of the shofar and closing with "and the land was quiet from war." The seven-year figure is not stated outright — the tradition reads it out of Kalev's own mouth, from the ages he gives at the spies' mission and at the division of the land.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- כיבוש הארץ
- Also known as
- Kibbush HaAretz, Conquest under Yehoshua
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- 2488–2495 AM
- Date range
- 1273–1266 BCE (traditional)
- Duration
- ≈7 years
- Precision
- approximate
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yericho fell first: on the seventh day the people shouted with the shofar-blast, "and the wall fell in its place," and the city was taken — the opening of the conquest, kept inside this span rather than as a separate entity.
Confidence is for what the biblical text states. |
biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| Yehoshua took the whole land "and the land was quiet from war"; Kalev's ages frame the span — forty when Moshe sent him from Kadesh Barnea, eighty-five when the land was divided — leaving fourteen years for conquest and division together after thirty-eight further wilderness years. | biblical | ★★★★★ | |
| Seder Olam draws the conclusion explicitly from Kalev's arithmetic: "הא למדנו ששבע שנים היו מכבשין" — we learn that seven years they were conquering, and seven more dividing the land.
Hebrew verified against the Sefaria text of Seder Olam Rabbah 11. |
tradition | ★★★★☆ |