The Northern Coalition Falls; the Land Rests from War

Hazor was the largest city in Canaan, some two hundred acres at its height, and it already appears in letters from Mari on the Euphrates in the eighteenth century BC. A “Jabin king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor” returns in Judges 4:2, which suggests Jabin may have been a dynastic name.

Chinneroth is the Sea of Galilee, called Kinneret from kinnor, a lyre, perhaps for the lake’s harp shape. “The borders of Dor” are the heights of Dor, the coastal city south of Mount Carmel. The coalition stretches from the lake to the sea.

The list reaches from the Canaanites on both coasts, east and west, to the Hivites “under Hermon”, the snow capped mountain at the northern edge of the land. The Jebusites of the hills are included, though Jerusalem’s king had already fallen in the south.

“As the sand that is upon the sea shore” is the phrase of God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 22:17), here applied to Israel’s enemies; Judges 7:12 will use it of the Midianites. Horses and chariots appear for the first time in the Book of Joshua.

The waters of Merom were once identified with Lake Huleh, but many now place them at the springs near Meiron in the Galilean hills. “Met together” is a verb for assembling by appointment: the kings keep a rendezvous.

“To morrow about this time” gives Joshua a timetable to the hour. Deuteronomy 17:16 had forbidden Israel’s king to multiply horses. David later hamstrung the chariot horses taken from Hadadezer, but “reserved of them for an hundred chariots” (2 Samuel 8:4).

“Suddenly” repeats the tactic of the night march to Gibeon (10:9). Striking at Merom, in broken hill country, meant catching the chariots where they could not wheel and charge, an inference from the ground rather than a detail the verse states.

“Great Zidon” is Sidon the great, the Phoenician city named as Canaan’s firstborn (Genesis 10:15). Misrephoth-maim, “burnings of waters”, may refer to hot springs or salt works near the coast; it marks a border again in 13:6.

The verse repeats the command of verse 6 in the same words, now as a report: houghed their horses, burnt their chariots. Psalm 20:7 turns the policy into a confession: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.”

Yigael Yadin excavated Hazor from 1955 and found a thick layer of burning over the Late Bronze city, destroyed in the thirteenth century BC; later excavators have argued over who burned it. “Beforetime” means formerly: Hazor had been the head, and is no longer.

“Any left to breathe” is kol neshamah, every breath, the word of Genesis 2:7 where God breathed into the man “the breath of life”. The sentence ends on fire: of all the northern cities, only this one is named as burned.

“As Moses the servant of the LORD commanded” points to Deuteronomy 7:2 and 20:16–17. The verse is a summary of the whole northern campaign in one line: all the cities, all the kings, taken and struck.

“Stood still in their strength” is literally “stood on their mounds”, al tillam: towns built up on their own tells. Jeremiah 30:18 uses the word in a promise of restoration, “the city shall be builded upon her own heap.” Israel left these towns standing to live in.

Deuteronomy 6:10–11 had promised “great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, and houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not”. The spoil and the unburned cities are that promise arriving. The last clause repeats verse 11 almost word for word.

“He left nothing undone” is literally “he did not turn aside a word”, using sur, the verb of the charge in 1:7, “turn not from it to the right hand or to the left”. The chain runs from the LORD to Moses to Joshua, and Joshua is judged by whether he dropped any link.

The list of regions distinguishes “the mountain of Israel” from “the mountains of Judah” (verse 21): the northern and southern hill countries already carry separate names long before the kingdom split in two.

Mount Halak, “the bald mountain”, rises in the Negev toward Seir; Baal-gad, “Baal of fortune”, lay under Hermon in the far north. The two names mark the south and north limits of the campaign, and one of them is still named for a god.

Caleb supplies a figure in 14:7–10: he was forty when he spied the land and is eighty five when he claims Hebron, forty five years later. Take away the thirty eight years in the wilderness, and the wars lasted about seven years. Six words in Hebrew hide that span.

“Made peace” is hishlimah, from the root of shalom. 2 Samuel 21:2 describes the Gibeonites as “the remnant of the Amorites”, where the Book of Joshua calls them Hivites; the peoples’ names were used loosely.

“Harden” is chizzeq, to make strong, the verb used of Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9:12; 10:20) and from the same root as the charge to Joshua, “be strong”. “Have no favour” echoes Deuteronomy 7:2, “nor shew mercy unto them.”

“Who can stand before the children of Anak!” had become a proverb in Israel (Deuteronomy 9:2). Anab lay near Debir in the hills south of Hebron (15:50). The Anakim were driven from the very region where the spies had first seen them (Numbers 13:22).

Gaza, Gath and Ashdod became three of the five Philistine cities. Goliath came from Gath (1 Samuel 17:4), and 2 Samuel 21:18–22 lists four giants of Gath killed by David’s men. The remnant named here resurfaces in David’s wars.

“Rested” is shaqat, to be quiet, the verb of the refrain in the Book of Judges: “the land had rest forty years” (Judges 3:11; 5:31). The sentence is repeated at 14:15, closing the account of Caleb’s claim to Hebron.