“And Caleb [...] said to him, ‘[…] I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land […]. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. […] So now give me this hill country of which the LORD spoke on that day’” (Joshua 14:6-7, 10, 12).
Of the twelve spies who originally went into the Promised Land prior to the forty years of wilderness wandering, Joshua and Caleb were the only two who believed God would be with them as they fought against the inhabitants of the land. While everyone else wailed that would be killed, Joshua and Caleb insisted they could take the land. Because of their faithfulness, God spared their lives during the wilderness years, and they alone of that generation survived to enter the land.
Joshua led the people in this conquest, and Caleb fought alongside him. When they had conquered much of the land, Caleb approached Joshua and asked for his inheritance, a portion of the land God had promised to him over forty years ago. This sounds like a simple request, but for one little detail: enemies still lived there. Caleb was old, and it would have been easy for him to settle for a piece of land that had already been conquered. But this was the portion God had promised him, and Caleb didn’t want anything less than that. At eighty-five years old, he went against his enemies and defeated them, claiming the land God had given him.
Caleb was faithful to God, and God rewarded him for that. It wasn’t easy. Caleb still had to fight for what God had promised him. But he believed God, and his faith led him to do extraordinary things. He wanted what God had for him, no matter how long it took or how hard it was.
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