Joshua10chapter 10

Joshua 10:1-2

Jerusalem is named here for the first time in Scripture, and Genesis 14:18 had called the place Salem. Its king is Adonizedek, lord of righteousness, which Albert Barnes sets beside the Melchizedek of that verse, king of righteousness, and reads as a title carried by the Jebusite kings rather than a personal name. What moves the coalition is a treaty rather than a siege: Gibeon, a great city with fighting men, has gone over to Israel, and verse 2 gives fear as the reason five kings arm.

Joshua 10:3-5

Four kings are summoned by name, and the five cities are Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish and Eglon, all of them in the hill country and lowland south of Gibeon. This is the first alliance in the book, since Jericho and Ai each fell as a single city, and from here Joshua meets armies rather than towns. All five are called Amorites, a term Scripture uses both of one people and as a label for the inhabitants of the land, and Genesis 15:16 had put it in place long before. The same five are counted again in the king list at Joshua 12:10 to 12.

Joshua 10:6-7

Gibeon calls in the league of chapter 9, and the oath the princes swore at 9:15 and 9:19 is what obliges Joshua to march for a city that obtained its treaty by lying. The oath holds long after him: 2 Samuel 21:1 to 2 lays a three year famine in David's reign at Saul's door for slaying the Gibeonites in breach of it. Matthew Henry observes that the men who deceived Joshua now have nothing to lean on but his word, and he brings the whole army and the mighty men of valour.

Joshua 10:8-9

Fear them not, for I have delivered them into thine hand, is close to the word Moses received about Og at Deuteronomy 3:2, and Joshua had the same before Ai at 8:1. The promise comes before the march, so the night climb of verse 9 carries out a settled outcome. Gilgal lies near the Jordan and Gibeon stands in the hills, so the army covers roughly twenty miles uphill in the dark and arrives suddenly, which is the word the verse uses.

Joshua 10:10-11

The verb rendered discomfited is used of Joshua himself at Exodus 17:13, where he discomfited Amalek with the edge of the sword; here the LORD does it and Israel chases. Hailstones occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the last time hail fell on an army Exodus 9:26 recorded that in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail. Verse 11 keeps the count: more died by the stones than by the sword, so the larger part of the day is not credited to the men who marched all night. Isaiah 28:21 later names the valley of Gibeon as the place of a strange work of God.

Joshua 10:12-13

The words Joshua speaks stand as poetry, addressed to the sun over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Ajalon, which are the two ends of the sky from a man on that battlefield. The book of Jasher is named here for the first time in Scripture and once more at 2 Samuel 1:18, and the book itself has not survived; the volumes printed under that title today are later compositions with no line back to the one this writer cites. Keil and Delitzsch make the quotation the governing fact and hold that a poet's language should not be pressed for astronomy, while Matthew Henry and John Gill read a real lengthening of the day. Habakkuk 3:11 uses the same picture, the sun and moon stood still in their habitation, inside a poem.

Joshua 10:14

The verse weighs no mechanism. What it calls unrepeatable is that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man, so the marvel is placed in answered prayer. Adam Clarke canvasses the means at length, including whether the light was prolonged rather than the earth halted, and reaches no settled account; John Gill raises the shadow that went backward for Hezekiah at 2 Kings 20:11 and holds that this day stands alone by the reason the verse itself gives. The tale that modern astronomers found a missing day in their calculations has no source behind it and is evidence for nothing here.

Joshua 10:15

Verse 15 sends Joshua back to Gilgal, verse 43 says it again word for word, and verse 16 has him still in the field at Makkedah. Readers have long asked what it is doing here, and two answers are old: that it closes the extract taken from the book of Jasher, or that the writer gives the outcome first and then returns to fill in the day. Nothing in the chapter settles between them.

Joshua 10:16-19

The five kings are sealed in the cave with stones and left under guard while the pursuit goes on, so Joshua takes the fighting first and the trophy last. His order at verse 19 is to strike the hindmost and keep them from entering their cities, which is the whole tactic, since a beaten army behind walls has to be besieged town by town. Matthew Henry notes that the watch at the cave costs him men he could have used in the chase, and he sets it anyway.

Joshua 10:20-21

Verse 20 grants what verse 19 tried to prevent, that a remnant reached the fenced cities, and the rest of the chapter is Joshua taking those cities one at a time. Verse 21 closes with a line carried over from the night Israel left Egypt, none moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel, which answers to Exodus 11:7, where not a dog would move his tongue against them. There the words belonged to the plague of the firstborn; here they are said of a whole country in arms.

Joshua 10:22-24

Setting the foot on the neck of a beaten king is a known act in the ancient east, carved on Egyptian and Assyrian monuments and meant as a public statement of who now rules. Joshua does not do it himself but calls the captains forward, so the sign is given to the men who have the rest of the land still to fight. Psalm 110:1 uses the same picture of enemies made a footstool, and Hebrews 10:12 to 13 applies that verse to Christ seated at the right hand of God.

Joshua 10:25

Fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good courage is the charge Joshua himself was given, by Moses at Deuteronomy 31:7 and 31:23 and by God at Joshua 1:6 and 1:9. This is the one place in Scripture where he hands it on, and he hands it to his captains rather than to the nation. The ground he attaches to it is the sight in front of them, that thus shall the LORD do to all your enemies against whom ye fight.

Joshua 10:26-27

The bodies come down at sundown, which keeps Deuteronomy 21:23 exactly, that a hanged body shall not remain all night upon the tree. Joshua had done the same with the king of Ai at 8:29, so the law is observed twice in this book on the men Israel had most reason to leave hanging. The cave that hid the kings becomes their grave, and the writer says the stones remain unto this very day, which places his account in a time when the spot could still be pointed out. Paul quotes that verse of Deuteronomy of the cross at Galatians 3:13.

Joshua 10:28-30

From here the chapter runs as a formula, town after town, with the refrain as he did unto the king of Jericho holding the list together. Makkedah falls the same day the kings are executed and Libnah next, and Libnah surfaces again at 2 Kings 8:22 as a town that revolted from Judah in the reign of Jehoram. The repetition is the writer's method rather than a shortage of material, since Joshua 11:18 says plainly that Joshua made war a long time with all those kings.

Joshua 10:31-33

Lachish is the only city in the run that takes two days, and it is the one the account slows for. Its mound has been excavated more thoroughly than almost any site in the country, and its burn layers are the ground of the argument over when the conquest happened, which is not settled. Horam king of Gezer comes out to relieve it and loses his army, and his city is never taken: Joshua 16:10 and Judges 1:29 both record that Gezer stayed Canaanite, and 1 Kings 9:16 has Pharaoh burning it and giving it to Solomon's wife.

Joshua 10:34-35

Eglon falls in a day, and its king had already been executed at Makkedah, so what is taken here is a city whose ruler died before the siege began. The formula moves by one word each time, according to all that he had done to Lachish, which chains each town to the one before it rather than to a single command. Keil and Delitzsch read the sequence as one southern campaign set down in the manner of a military report.

Joshua 10:36-37

went up from Eglon: Hebron is taken here, and it is given to Caleb to take again at 14:12 and 15:14, and Judah takes it a third time at Judges 1:10 with the same three Anakim named. Both accounts stand as they are written. Readers hold two ways of carrying them together: that this campaign broke the field armies and the towns were reoccupied behind Israel, since Joshua garrisons nothing, or that the later passages record the settling of ground this raid only swept. The city is Abraham's burial place at Genesis 23:2, where it is called Kirjath Arba.

Joshua 10:38-39

and fought against it: Debir is Kirjath Sepher, and Joshua 15:15 to 17 has Caleb offering his daughter to the man who takes it, with Othniel taking it and becoming the first judge of Israel at Judges 3:9. The same doubling stands here as at Hebron, since the town falls in this chapter and is fought for again in the allotment. Verse 39 closes the campaign by tying Debir back to Hebron and Hebron back to Libnah, so the last verse of the run recites the whole of it.

Joshua 10:40-42

The summary divides the south into four zones, the hills, the south, the vale and the springs, and Joshua 11:16 draws the same map. All that breathed answers to Deuteronomy 20:16, save alive nothing that breatheth, so the writer measures the campaign against the command rather than against the gain. The country of Goshen at verse 41 is a district in Judah, listed among its towns at Joshua 15:51, and not the Goshen of Egypt. At one time in verse 42 means one campaign, and Joshua 11:18 sets beside it that he made war a long time.

Joshua 10:43

The army returns to Gilgal, the camp pitched in chapter 5, and Gilgal remains the base until the tabernacle is set up at Shiloh in 18:1. Nothing is garrisoned and nothing is settled, which is why several of these towns are fought for again in the allotment chapters. The verse repeats verse 15 word for word and shuts the day the chapter opened.