Achsah, Who Received the Upper Springs and the Lower Springs

13He gave to Caleb the son of Jephunneh a portion among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of Yahweh to Joshua, even Kiriath Arba, named after the father of Anak (also called Hebron). 14Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak: Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. 15He went up against the inhabitants of Debir: now the name of Debir before was Kiriath Sepher. 16Caleb said, “He who strikes Kiriath Sepher, and takes it, to him I will give Achsah my daughter as wife.” 17Othniel the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter as wife. 18When she came, she had him ask her father for a field. She got off her donkey, and Caleb said, “What do you want?” 19She said, “Give me a blessing. Because you have set me in the land of the South, give me also springs of water.” So he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.

Jesus called the twelve disciples himself, taught them the word for three years, and trained them in person, showing them signs and wonders. He called men who had lived in the world as they pleased and labored to make them grow through the word. The salvation of their souls was, of course, his greatest purpose, but he called the Twelve in particular to make them heralds of the Kingdom of God.

When he saw that the disciples he had trained had grown through the word, he sent them out into the world two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. Because it was not easy to preach Jesus at that time, he gave them authority to drive out demons, helping them preach the gospel with greater power. With spiritual power the disciples proclaimed that people should repent of their sins. They cast out demons, healed the sick, and preached the Kingdom of Heaven through these gifts. Hearing the gospel the disciples preached with such power, people came to know Jesus.

When the disciples went out and preached the gospel, far more souls were saved than their efforts alone could account for. This was because the word and the authority Jesus had given them worked many miracles with the help of the Holy Spirit. Jesus taught the disciples so that they could preach the gospel unshaken in any circumstance, and he helped them so that their devotion would become a reward. Though he had laid aside his throne and come into the world to atone for the sins of humanity, he still thought carefully about how the disciples could preach with confidence in the word, and how their labor would not be in vain.

As the disciples preached the gospel as Jesus had taught them, they came to know how much God loves people. They also came to understand that Jesus had come to this earth with a love that gave his own life. That conviction carried them on to martyrdom, which shows how precious a right faith is.

Joshua 15:16

16Caleb said, “He who strikes Kiriath Sepher, and takes it, to him I will give Achsah my daughter as wife.”

Here the wisdom of Caleb shines. Caleb drove out Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the sons of Anak. Going farther up from there lay Kiriath Sepher, and Kiriath Sepher was the original name of Hebron. Hebron means the city of books, or the city of records. Given that meaning, it seems Hebron had many scholars.

Caleb publicly declared that he would give his daughter Achsah as wife to whoever conquered this land. The declaration may have been meant to find a capable warrior, but I think it was also meant to find a dependable man to whom he could entrust the daughter he had raised so carefully in the faith. In those days it was the custom to give one’s daughter to a man who had distinguished himself in battle. When Saul promised his daughter to whoever killed Goliath, it seems a father’s authority was absolute. Yet Caleb loved Achsah dearly and granted everything she asked, and that suggests he made this pledge not so much to follow custom as to see his beloved daughter build a beautiful home and live happily.

Othniel, Caleb’s nephew and a valiant warrior, heard Caleb’s words and volunteered to go to war and take the land. Othniel fought with all his might to conquer Canaan, and he captured Kiriath Sepher. As he had promised, Caleb gave him his beloved daughter Achsah as wife. When Achsah went with Othniel to the land of the South, she respectfully told her father Caleb what she wished for. Seeing Caleb grant the wish of a daughter about to follow her husband far away, we can sense what a father feels as he gives a cherished daughter in marriage.

Joshua 15:19

19She said, “Give me a blessing. Because you have set me in the land of the South, give me also springs of water.” So he gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.

Achsah was leaving her father’s house to follow Othniel. She asked her father for a particular field she wanted, land rich in water. The place she was going was at the southern tip of Canaan, a dry and parched region where water was scarce. So Achsah wanted a well-watered field, and it was good land that she could never have had if Caleb refused.

When his daughter, about to set out, begged for that field, Caleb gave her not one spring but two. Giving her the lower springs as well as the upper, he blessed her more richly than she had asked. In Canaan, where water was precious, to receive the upper and lower springs was a great blessing. It was likely a blessing Achsah could receive because she was Caleb’s daughter. Setting out for the South with Othniel, she would have been overjoyed at so great a gift from her father. As she went on her way, carrying with her the love of a father who would not hold back even precious springs for her sake, her heart was, I imagine, warm and full of thanks.

Having entrusted his daughter’s life to so stalwart a young man as Othniel, her father would have felt somewhat at ease. Since he could not see his beloved daughter often, he provided the upper and lower springs so that life would not be hard for her, and even then he probably worried that it might not be enough. A parent’s love gives everything and counts nothing a loss. We, too, are loved by God in this way. For no other reason than that we are his children, God keeps giving us abundant water and fills the lower spring so that it never runs dry. I hope you will plant faith in your children and pour out your love on them, so that this love may flow on from generation to generation.

I do not know exactly where the upper and lower springs were, but common sense says the upper spring was presumably on high ground and the lower spring in a field on low ground. Granted, if they lay far apart, water from the upper spring could not have flowed to the lower one. But let us suppose that water flows from above to below, and consider it as a picture of the relationship between God and his people.

If we take the love of God our Father as the water of life, we find hidden in the upper and lower springs God’s great love for his children. God is Yahweh, the precious one, who could enjoy his glory on his own. That same God gave his only begotten Son, the one he held most dear, in order to share his glory with his children. That God gave his Son means death—the sacrifice of Jesus. This love is the stream of life that overflows without ceasing from the upper spring. Because the grace of the blood of Jesus poured down like a waterfall, our spring below can receive eternal life.

The Lord, who is Creator, Christ, High Priest, and Judge, will pour out grace on the lower spring until the day of judgment. As long as Jesus Christ, the upper spring, lives, we who are the lower spring will not thirst. Love flows like this, from above to below. Just as God gives the blessing of eternal life without any condition, Caleb too, I believe, gave his treasured springs out of a heart that longed to bless his daughter.

John 4:13-14

13Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

This is the conversation Jesus had with the Samaritan woman in a town called Sychar, as he was passing through Samaria. The water the world gives is like salt water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become. But the water Jesus Christ gives is a spring welling up to eternal life, and whoever drinks it will never thirst, because it is the water of life, to be drunk forever in this age and in the age to come. If we pass over the precious water of eternal life flowing down from the upper spring and drink from another spring, we are drinking the water of worldly lust and greed, and we will be thirsty all our lives. So we must never drink the water of the world. If we drink the water of life God gives and hold fast to our faith, then, like Achsah and Othniel, we can live a life of peace under God’s blessing.

Judges 3:9

9When the children of Israel cried to Yahweh, Yahweh raised up a savior to the children of Israel, who saved them, even Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother.

Joshua was called home by God at the age of one hundred ten. Those who had conquered Canaan with him served Yahweh and kept the faith well, but as the years went by, they all passed away. The generation born after them faced no great hardship, since Canaan had already been conquered. But because they had not learned from their parents what Yahweh had done for Israel, their faith was not whole. They forsook the God who had led them until then and served the Baals and foreign gods in the sight of Yahweh. Until that time the nations had trembled at the mere name of God, but when they saw that Israel had left him, they no longer feared him. So Israel’s enemies could easily attack a people no longer under God’s protection.

Judges 2:14-15 tells us that God, angered by Israel’s idolatry, removed his fence of protection, and those who attacked them carried the Israelites off as slaves and sold them. It records that wherever they went, the hand of Yahweh brought disaster upon them. Yet this does not mean that God himself sent the disasters but that for Israel, to be without God was itself the disaster and the misery. When God’s grace departed, Israel came to realize how safe they had been under the protection of the God who had kept them until then. They could not see that love, but it was because of that love that they had been able to live.

After Joshua died, Israel sank further into corruption. To call such an Israel back, Yahweh used Cushan Rishathaim king of Mesopotamia as his instrument and put Israel through the fire for eight years. Then the children of Israel cried out to God to save them.

God put Israel through trials because they had worshiped idols and gone out into the world, yet even so he raised up judges and opened a way for them to return to him. While a judge was at work, he caused Israel to be delivered from the hand of their enemies. But the Israelites did not grasp the love of the God who had raised up the judges. Once life grew comfortable, they loved the world again and took the daughters of Canaan as wives.

When God gives people a season of ease, they take his grace lightly and go back to living for themselves. Then, when trouble comes again, only then do they seek God, but the testing has already begun, and the pain they suffer until it ends is theirs alone to bear. Friends, I hope you will pray while things are easy. When all is well and there is no trouble, may you not cast glances at the world but take up your calling in the fear of God and give yourselves to his service. A season of ease is God’s grace, given so that we will spread the gospel. If we do not understand God’s will and find ourselves with money and time to spare, we will wrestle not with how to live by God’s will but with how to spend that surplus on ourselves, and so we drift away from God.

That judges were raised up proves that the Israelites were sinning, because God raised up judges to rebuke them when they were living no differently from the Canaanites. Suffering for eight years under the king of Mesopotamia, the people prayed not so much in repentance as simply to escape that hardship. Yet God had pity on them and raised up a judge.

Though God raised up a judge out of mercy, Israel slipped back into corruption, because they had not truly repented before God but wickedly sought only to escape the hardship in front of them. We are the same today. When we face trouble, we cry out to God for help, but once the hardship passes, we turn our backs on him and go back to living as we please. Such faith is just like Israel’s: it takes advantage of the compassion God has for his own people.

The man God raised up as judge was Othniel, son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, and Caleb’s son-in-law. When the Spirit of Yahweh came upon Othniel, he became Israel’s judge and won a great victory in the war with Mesopotamia. Othniel judged Israel for forty years, and during that time Israel enjoyed peace.

Even after they have received God, human beings live through many struggles between God and the world. So it was that Abraham, though called to be the father of many nations, could not fully believe God’s promise and fathered Ishmael, and yet he also showed the great faith to offer up Isaac. David, to endure until the day God would make him king, even pretended to be insane before Achish king of Gath, letting spittle run from his mouth. But for all his efforts to live by the word, once he became king he shockingly committed the wicked sins of taking Bathsheba and killing Uriah. In these men we see that when they were full of faith they lived with a faith ready to lay down their lives, but when they left God, they could not help sinning according to the evil of human nature.

God knows this evil human nature, and yet when we sin he takes up the rod, and when we cry out in pain he has mercy and raises up judges. Of course, once the life of the body is cut off, the chance to repent is gone forever. But until the moment our life ends, we have the chance to be sanctified. Because we do not know when our end will come, we must always depend on God as though this were our last day.

Today we have Jesus Christ. Just as the judges made God’s will known and fought the Gentiles before the people, Jesus makes God’s will known to us and wages war against Satan on our behalf. God, as the upper spring, is always pouring out grace like a waterfall, and so the Holy Spirit is filling your hearts to the full. This is the astonishing love in which we, his people, live.

Othniel, Caleb’s son-in-law, fulfilled his calling as judge well. He struck Kiriath Sepher and made it Israel’s land, and he attacked Mesopotamia and gave Israel peace. Othniel could do God’s work so well because he had a wise wife, Achsah. The wisdom of that woman, who asked her father for the upper and lower springs as she left for the South, is what made Othniel equal to the work God gave him.

Proverbs 19:14

14House and riches are an inheritance from fathers, but a prudent wife is from Yahweh.

Because Achsah supported him from behind the scenes so that he could do God’s work and live with confidence, Othniel was able to fulfill his calling as judge. Going in marriage to a barren land, Achsah had the wisdom to ask her father for the upper and lower springs. We can expect that a woman of such wisdom gave herself with all her might so that God’s blessing could rest on her home. In this way Othniel took as his wife a woman God had sent him, wise, prudent, and virtuous.

Proverbs 12:4 records that a worthy woman is the crown of her husband, but a disgraceful wife is as rottenness in his bones. When Achsah left the home of her father Caleb to share her life with her husband Othniel, she would already have thought through how she would build Othniel up in God and how she would lead their home in God, because asking Caleb for that field was not something she could have thought up on the spot. Through her prayers her husband fulfilled well the calling of judge that God desired of him, and her sons, Hathath and Meonothai, grew up well in faith. From this we can see that she built a home, bore and raised children, and lived a happy life.

Achsah came to hold so precious a faith because she had seen the faith of her father Caleb, who trusted in God alone. Growing up watching Caleb pray and serve God alone with his whole heart, she grew naturally into a child of God. This is how much it matters what life of faith parents show their children. Achsah, who grew up hearing Caleb exalt God, boast in him, and speak of him with reverence in the ordinary course of life, would have formed the habit of praying to God in every situation. When she considered what she could do as a wife to serve her husband wholeheartedly, it was probably the field with the upper and lower springs that came to her mind. When her husband went to war against Mesopotamia, it is likely she gave her all, believing that prayer was the one thing she had to do. Just as Caleb had lived by faith, Achsah strove to resolve everything within faith. As the disciples learned the word rightly from Jesus and proclaimed God, so Achsah learned right faith from her father Caleb and saved both her husband and her sons.

Caleb, wondering how so lovely a daughter could find a happy life, made his pledge to give her to the one who conquered Hebron, and in this way gained Othniel. God, who knew the earnest heart of Caleb as he prayed for his child, sent him Othniel, a man able to fulfill the calling of judge for forty years. Achsah, too, would have faced crises in her life. There were likely seasons of anxiety and worry, and times when she prayed with tears to overcome them. But because she believed that God’s absolute protection was with her, Achsah was always at peace and happy.

May you, too, live a blessed life, as Achsah did. There is no life more blessed than one lived under abundant grace and love. Let us strive, as Achsah did, to see our whole households saved. And I pray that you will be people of faith who, like her, are loved by those around you and who earn their trust. Then God will give blessing and peace to you and to everyone you love.

May you always endure in faith and exalt the name of God with wisdom. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.