Joshua 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jabin king of Hazor gathers a large alliance of northern kings with horses and chariots at the waters of Merom, and the LORD tells Joshua not to fear them. Israel attacks suddenly, defeats them, hamstrings their horses and burns their chariots, then takes Hazor and the other cities of these kings. The chapter closes the account of Joshua's campaigns: he takes the whole region from Mount Halak to Baal-gad, cuts off the Anakim from the hill country, and divides the land among the tribes as their inheritance, and the land has rest from war.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Jabin was king of Hazor.
   • Jabin king of Hazor heard about these things.
   • Jabin sent word to Jobab king of Madon.
   • Jobab was king of Madon.
   • Jabin sent word to the king of Shimron.
   • Jabin sent word to the king of Achshaph.
2. 11:2
   • Jabin sent word to the kings who were in the north, in the hill country.
   • Jabin sent word to the kings in the Arabah south of Chinneroth.
   • Jabin sent word to the kings in the lowland.
   • Jabin sent word to the kings in the heights of Dor on the west.
3. 11:3
   • Jabin sent word to the Canaanites in the east and in the west.
   • Jabin sent word to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, and the Jebusites in the hill country.
   • Jabin sent word to the Hivites at the foot of Hermon in the land of Mizpah.
4. 11:4
   • These kings went out to battle.
   • All their armies went out with them.
   • The people with them were numerous as the sand on the seashore.
   • They had very many horses and chariots.
5. 11:5
   • All these kings joined together by appointment.
   • They came and camped together at the waters of Merom.
   • Their purpose in camping there was to fight against Israel.
6. 11:6
   • The LORD spoke to Joshua.
   • The LORD told Joshua not to be afraid of them.
   • The LORD said that by this time tomorrow he would give all of them over slain before Israel.
   • The LORD told Joshua to hamstring their horses.
   • The LORD told Joshua to burn their chariots with fire.
7. 11:7
   • Joshua came against them at the waters of Merom.
   • All the fighting men came with Joshua.
   • They came upon them suddenly.
   • They fell upon them in attack.
8. 11:8
   • The LORD gave them into the hand of Israel.
   • Israel struck them down.
   • Israel pursued them as far as Great Sidon.
   • Israel pursued them as far as Misrephoth-maim.
   • Israel pursued them as far as the valley of Mizpeh eastward.
   • Israel struck them down until no survivor was left to them.
9. 11:9
   • Joshua did to them as the LORD had told him.
   • Joshua hamstrung their horses.
   • Joshua burned their chariots with fire.
10. 11:10
    • At that time Joshua turned back.
    • Joshua captured Hazor.
    • Joshua struck the king of Hazor with the sword.
    • Hazor had formerly been the head of all those kingdoms.
11. 11:11
    • They struck every person in Hazor with the edge of the sword.
    • They devoted them to destruction.
    • No one who breathed was left.
    • Joshua burned Hazor with fire.
12. 11:12
    • Joshua captured all the cities of those kings.
    • Joshua captured all those kings.
    • Joshua struck them with the edge of the sword.
    • Joshua devoted them to destruction.
    • This was as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded.
    • Moses was the servant of the LORD.
13. 11:13
    • Israel did not burn any of the cities that stood on their mounds.
    • Hazor alone was the exception.
    • Joshua burned Hazor.
14. 11:14
    • The Israelites plundered for themselves all the spoil of these cities.
    • The Israelites took the livestock for themselves.
    • They struck all the people with the edge of the sword.
    • They struck them until they had destroyed them.
    • They left no one who breathed.
15. 11:15
    • The LORD commanded Moses his servant.
    • Moses commanded Joshua just as the LORD had commanded Moses.
    • Joshua did just so.
    • Joshua left nothing undone of all that the LORD commanded Moses.
16. 11:16
    • Joshua took all that land.
    • He took the hill country.
    • He took all the Negev.
    • He took all the land of Goshen.
    • He took the lowland.
    • He took the Arabah.
    • He took the hill country of Israel and its lowland.
17. 11:17
    • The land taken extended from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir.
    • The land taken extended as far as Baal-gad in the valley of Lebanon at the foot of Mount Hermon.
    • Joshua captured all their kings.
    • Joshua struck them.
    • Joshua put them to death.
18. 11:18
    • Joshua made war with all those kings for many days.
19. 11:19
    • There was no city that made peace with the Israelites.
    • The Hivites who lived in Gibeon were the exception.
    • Israel took all the rest in battle.
20. 11:20
    • It was from the LORD to harden their hearts.
    • The hardening was so that they would come against Israel in battle.
    • The purpose was that Joshua might devote them to destruction.
    • The purpose was that they should receive no mercy.
    • The purpose was that they might be annihilated.
    • This was as the LORD had commanded Moses.
21. 11:21
    • At that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the hill country.
    • He cut them off from Hebron.
    • He cut them off from Debir.
    • He cut them off from Anab.
    • He cut them off from all the hill country of Judah.
    • He cut them off from all the hill country of Israel.
    • Joshua devoted them to destruction along with their cities.
22. 11:22
    • No Anakim were left in the land of the Israelites.
    • Some Anakim remained in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod.
23. 11:23
    • Joshua took the whole land.
    • This was according to all that the LORD had spoken to Moses.
    • Joshua gave the land to Israel as an inheritance.
    • He gave it according to their allotted divisions by their tribes.
    • The land had rest from war.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

"These things" refers to the campaign in the previous chapters: Israel's victory at Jericho and Ai, the treaty with Gibeon, and the defeat of the coalition of southern kings. Hazor was the largest city in northern Canaan, a fortified site of some two hundred acres, and its king's position at the head of a league of city-states is why he is the one who sends the summons. Each of these "kings" ruled a single walled city and the villages and farmland around it, not a country.

11:2

Chinneroth (Chinnereth) is the lake later called the Sea of Galilee; the name comes from a Hebrew word for a harp, which the lake's shape resembles. The "valley" south of it is the Arabah, the deep rift valley that runs from Galilee down past the Dead Sea. The "low hills" are the Shephelah, the belt of rolling foothills between the coastal plain and the central mountains. Dor was a port on the Mediterranean coast south of Mount Carmel.

11:3

These are the standard names for the peoples living in Canaan before Israel's arrival; ancient writers used them loosely, and the lists vary from passage to passage. "Canaanite" is here the coastal and lowland population, "Amorite" the hill population; Jebusites held Jerusalem, and Hivites the region around Gibeon. Mount Hermon is the snow-capped peak at the far northern edge of the land, about nine thousand feet high and visible for a great distance.

11:4

Horses in this period were not ridden into battle but harnessed to light two-wheeled chariots carrying a driver and an archer. Chariot forces were expensive, professional, and effective on flat ground; they were the decisive weapon of the Canaanite lowland cities, and Israel, fighting on foot in the hills, had none. "As many as the grains of sand on the seashore" is a stock Hebrew phrase for a number too large to count, not an estimate.

11:5

The waters of Merom were most likely a spring and stream in the hills of upper Galilee, north-west of the Sea of Galilee. The site is broken, hilly ground, which matters for what follows: it is poor country for chariots.

11:6

To cut a horse's leg tendons, "hough" or hamstring, is to sever the large tendon above the hock, permanently crippling the animal so it can never pull a chariot again, though it can still be kept for breeding. Together with burning the chariots, the order means the captured equipment is destroyed rather than taken over and used.

11:8

"Greater Zidon" (Sidon) is the standing title of the old Phoenician port on the Mediterranean coast, well to the north; the adjective distinguishes the main city from smaller settlements bearing the same name. Misrephoth-maim, whose name may mean something like "burning waters" or "lime-kilns by the water," is an unidentified place on the northern coastal plain. The three names together mark how far the rout ran in each direction, not places that were captured.

11:10

"Put to the sword" translates a Hebrew phrase, literally "struck with the mouth of the sword," that is the ordinary way of saying a place was taken by force and its people killed. Hazor's position as "head of all those kingdoms" reflects its real standing: Hazor is named as a major power in Egyptian and Mesopotamian records from centuries earlier.

11:11

"Giving them over to destruction" translates the Hebrew term herem, sometimes rendered "devoted" or "put under the ban." A person or thing placed under herem was handed over entirely to God and so removed permanently from ordinary use: it could not be spared, ransomed, sold, or kept as private property. The word describes the legal status of what was captured; it is the same term used elsewhere for property irrevocably dedicated to the sanctuary.

11:12

The command referred to is in Deuteronomy 7 and 20, which set different rules for distant cities, which were to be offered terms of surrender first, and for the cities inside Canaan itself, which were placed under the ban.

11:13

Ancient cities were rebuilt on the rubble of the towns before them, so that over centuries each site rose into an artificial flat-topped mound, called a tell, standing above the plain. The Hebrew says these cities stood "on their mound"; the King James "stood still in their strength" reads it instead as cities still standing fortified. The point is that the buildings were left usable rather than burned.

11:14

Under the terms described in verse 11, portable goods and livestock could be kept here, unlike at Jericho, where everything was destroyed. The rules for what could be taken varied from campaign to campaign.

11:15

Moses was the leader who brought Israel out of Egypt. Joshua took his place after Moses died.

11:16

This verse marks out the territory by its recognized regions: the central hill country; the Negev, the dry grazing land south of Hebron; a district called Goshen in southern Canaan (unrelated to the Goshen in Egypt where Israel had lived); the Shephelah foothills; and the Arabah, the rift-valley floor.

11:17

North-and-south boundary markers, a standard way of stating extent. Mount Halak (the name means "the bare mountain") lies at the southern edge, toward Seir, the highland region of Edom south-east of the Dead Sea. Baal-gad, at the northern end, was a shrine-town at the foot of Mount Hermon named for the god worshiped there.

11:19

The Hivites of Gibeon had obtained a treaty by disguising themselves as travelers from a distant country, as told in chapter 9; once sworn, the oath could not be revoked. "Made peace" here means formally submitted and entered a treaty, not merely refrained from fighting.

11:20

"Harden the heart" is a Hebrew idiom for making someone resolute or unyielding in a course of action. In Hebrew thought the heart is the seat of decision and will rather than of feeling, so the phrase concerns stubborn resolve, not cruelty or emotion. It is the same expression used repeatedly of Pharaoh in Exodus.

11:21

The Anakim were remembered as a people of unusual height living in the southern hill country; the report of the scouts in Numbers 13 says the Israelites felt like grasshoppers beside them, and it was fear of them that had turned the people back a generation earlier. Hebron, Debir, and Anab are towns in the highlands south of Jerusalem.

11:22

Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod lie on the coastal plain and later became three of the five chief Philistine cities, Gath being the home town of Goliath, whom a much later account describes in terms recalling these same tall warriors. Naming them signals that this stretch of the coast stayed outside Israelite control.

11:23

"Inheritance" translates nahalah, a permanent family land-holding that could not simply be sold off but passed down through the generations; the whole land is being treated as a single such holding, then divided among the tribes. "The land had rest from war" is a set phrase in these books marking the end of a period of fighting, and it is the formal close of this half of the book.