Joshua10chapter 10

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.

a.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.