Thirty-One Kings, Counted One by One

The Arnon is the deep gorge now called Wadi Mujib, Moab’s northern border; Hermon is the mountain at the far north. The eastern list runs south to north. The Book of Joshua starts its register of victories with the ones won under Moses, “toward the rising of the sun”.

Heshbon, Sihon’s seat, is usually placed at Tell Hesban. Aroer stood on the rim of the Arnon gorge. The Jabbok, Sihon’s northern border with Ammon, is the stream where Jacob wrestled through the night before meeting Esau (Genesis 32:22).

Beth-jeshimoth, “house of the wastes”, lay near the northeast shore of the Dead Sea and was Israel’s last camp before the crossing (Numbers 33:49). Ashdoth-pisgah are the slopes of Pisgah, from whose summit Moses was shown the land.

“The remnant of the giants” is the remnant of the Rephaim. Deuteronomy 3:11 adds that Og’s iron bedstead, nine cubits long and four wide, could still be seen in Rabbah of Ammon. Ashtaroth and Edrei were his two royal cities (Deuteronomy 1:4).

Salcah, probably Salkhad on the Hauran plateau, was the far eastern limit. Geshur and Maacah were never driven out (13:13). David married Maacah, daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, and she bore him Absalom (2 Samuel 3:3), who fled to Geshur after killing Amnon.

The grant is recorded in Numbers 32:33. These eastern tribes, the first to receive their land, were also the first to lose it: Tiglath-pileser of Assyria carried away the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half tribe of Manasseh (1 Chronicles 5:26).

The western list is bounded by the same two landmarks as 11:17, Baal-gad and Mount Halak, but in the opposite order: north to south instead of south to north. The land is walked from the other end.

Six landscapes and six peoples. The landscapes are mountains, Shephelah, Arabah, slopes, wilderness and Negev; the wilderness, the dry eastern fall of the Judean hills, is added to the list in 10:40. Every kind of ground in Canaan is named before any king is.

The Talmud (Megillah 16b) says that in a Torah scroll most songs are written like bricks laid over gaps, but the list of Haman’s sons and “the kings of Canaan” are laid out brick over brick, in stacked columns. The list of kings on the page looked like a wall.

The first two kings of the southern coalition. Hebron would become David’s first capital, where he reigned seven and a half years over Judah (2 Samuel 5:5), and Jerusalem his second. Both royal cities of this line became his.

Jarmuth, at Khirbet Yarmuk in the Shephelah, and Lachish both reappear in Nehemiah 11:29–30 among the towns resettled by the people of Judah after the return from exile. Their kings fell to Joshua; their names outlived Babylon.

Gezer, with Hazor and Megiddo (verses 19 and 21), makes up the trio of cities Solomon fortified according to 1 Kings 9:15. Excavators have found almost identical six chambered gates at all three sites, often dated to his reign.

Geder appears only here and has no account of its capture; it may be the Gederah or Gedor of Judah (15:36, 58). With it the list starts naming kings whose defeats the Book of Joshua never describes.

Arad’s king attacked Israel in the wilderness and took prisoners; Israel vowed to destroy his cities and named the place Hormah, “devoted to destruction” (Numbers 21:1–3). Judges 1:17 tells the naming again. Two kings from the far south, where the first battle for the land was fought.

Adullam gave its name to the cave where David hid from Saul and gathered his four hundred men (1 Samuel 22:1–2). Judah’s friend Hirah was “an Adullamite” (Genesis 38:1). Libnah’s king has already been counted in the southern campaign (10:30).

Bethel, the old Luz, later became one of Jeroboam’s two royal shrines, where he set up a golden calf (1 Kings 12:29). Makkedah is the city of the cave. The two sit together on one line of the list though one is in the Shephelah and the other in the hills.

Hepher is also a clan name in Manasseh: Hepher was the grandfather of Zelophehad, whose daughters won the right to inherit (Numbers 26:32–33). There were at least two places called Tappuah, “apple”, one in Judah (15:34) and one on Manasseh’s border (16:8).

Aphek means a stronghold, and several places bore the name. The Aphek in the Sharon plain was where the Philistines mustered before they captured the ark (1 Samuel 4:1). Lasharon means “of the Sharon” and may describe Aphek rather than name a separate city; the Greek reads it that way.

Madon’s king was Jobab (11:1); the Greek version reads the name as Maron. Hazor, rebuilt as one of Solomon’s fortresses, fell to Tiglath-pileser of Assyria two centuries later (2 Kings 15:29).

Shimron is the town of 11:1, here with “meron” attached. Achshaph, later on the border of Asher (19:25), appears in Egyptian texts of the New Kingdom as a Canaanite town on the route north.

Deborah’s song places the battle against Sisera “in Taanach by the waters of Megiddo” (Judges 5:19). Megiddo guarded the main pass through the Carmel ridge; Thutmose III fought a famous battle there in the fifteenth century BC, and Revelation 16:16 takes its name for Armageddon.

Kedesh in Galilee became a city of refuge (20:7) and the home of Barak (Judges 4:6). Jokneam “of Carmel”, at the foot of the Carmel ridge, was later given to the Levites of Merari (21:34).

“The king of the nations of Gilgal” is odd, since Gilgal was Israel’s own camp; the Greek reads “Galilee”, which fits Isaiah’s phrase “Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1). A “king of nations”, Tidal, already appears in Genesis 14:1.

Tirzah later served as the capital of the northern kingdom before Omri moved it to Samaria (1 Kings 16:23–24), and the Song of Solomon praises a beloved as “beautiful... as Tirzah” (6:4). The Hebrew total is thirty one; the Greek list has twenty nine.