Overall strategy Joshua’s strategy was essentially based upon three elements: stealth, speed, and knowledge of the terrain. But the real secret of Joshua’s success was that he “wholly followed after the Lord his God” (Joshua 14:8). Joshua was one who had a passion for God and followed hard after God.

Jon Courson, Jon Courson’s Application Commentary: Volume One: G enesis–Job (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 674.

Sometimes in the Spirit-filled life, people say, “Strategy and organization are not necessary. We’re just going to go with the flow.” But when I read Joshua, I see in his Spirit-filled model a great emphasis on strategy. Yet although organization is a very good servant, it’s a very bad master. It must not be what determines what we do. We know if organization is our master by how we start our day. Do we begin it on our knees in prayer—or with our Daytimer? If I begin my day on my knees saying, “Lord, by Your Spirit, inspire my thoughts, write upon the table of my heart what You would have me to do,” then organization is in its proper place.

Jon Courson, Jon Courson’s Application Commentary: Volume One: G enesis–Job (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 674–675.

There is an odd addition of the numeral “one” in the MT after each king’s name, as if counting on one’s fingers; this “suggests that the list may have been refashioned to focus on a single king for each city, rather than the city itself,”5 since at the end of the impressive list a count of all these “ones” is totaled to “thirty-one kings in all.” Thus the focus we have noticed on the kings as the special target of ḥerem warfare in the book of Joshua up until this point now comes to its culmination, making the negative point that the land grants to follow are not to be more of the same under a new name. A radical alternative to political sovereignty is being presented in the land grants. “The repetitive listing … [of the] kings of the land, here revealed in all their multiple majesty (‘thirty-one kings in all’) have been overcome by unified Israel under the command of Joshua.”6 This distribution will thus be the work of the anti-king, the man Joshua, whose name denotes his person: “YHWH saves,” a salvation incarnate in his life’s work as servant of YHWH in the making.

MT Masoretic Text

5 Dozeman, Joshua 1–12, 495.

6 Hawk, Joshua, 176.

Paul R. Hinlicky, Joshua, ed. R. R. Reno, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2021), 184.

Now, at the end of the day, when the reader finishes reading “thirty-one kings in all” (v. 24), is there really no king left? No, there is one st ill standing—Almighty King Yahweh, Israel’s God. In fact, he is the only real “King of all the earth,” who “reigns over the nations”—the Greatly Exalted One to whom earth’s kings belong (Ps. 47:7–9). All others are mere pretenders. And, as we will now see, his royal sovereignty still continues

Robert L. Hubbard Jr., Joshua, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 372.

Verses 1-6 The conquest began on the east side of the Jordan River under Moses. After Moses’ death Joshua led Israel across the river, capturing first the fortified cities of Jericho and Ai. Those strategic victories provided access to the hill country and drove a wedge into the middle of Canaan. Two major campaigns followed—a southern and then a northern—which won for Israel in six years’ time the key cities of Canaan, defeating 31 kings and concluding the initial and principal stage of the conquest.

Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Conquest and Allotment of the Land,” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 507.

Verse 5

Salecah was a city that marked the eastern edge of the Bashan. Moses mentioned it in his review of the conquest of Og, king of Bashan (Deut. 3:10), and it appears in the summary of the conquest in Josh. 12:5. Apparently the city was assigned to the half of the tribe of Manasseh after the conquest (Josh. 13:11), but later became the residence of Gad (1 Chr. 5:11). The site is probably marked today by Salkhad, located on an extinct volcanic cone just south of Jebel ed-Druze, about sixty miles east of the Jordan. It occupies a strategic position at the southeast approach of the fertile Hauran Valley, the southern approaches to Damascus and the western end of the desert route to the Persian Gulf.

Thoralf Gilbrant, “‏סַלְכָה,” in The Old Testament Hebrew-English Dictionary, The Complete Biblical Library (WORDsearch, 1998).

Verse 6 12:6possession. “Possession” (yerushah) refers to the tribal “inheritance” from the Lord. The Transjordan tribes have fulfilled their obligation to their fellow Israelites (1:15; Deut. 3:20). Defeat of the Amorites is the first stage of fulfilling the promise (Num. 32:33; Deut. 2:31–3:3), and it alarms the Cisjordan Canaanites (2:10; 9:10).

Kenneth A. Mathews, Joshua, ed. Mark L. Strauss and John H. Walton, Teach the Text Commentary Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2016), 110.

Joshua’s strategy was to divide and conquer. He struck first in central Canaan by taking the city of Jericho and surrounding territory. Then he launched rapid attacks to the south and north. This strategy quickly gave the Covenant People a foothold in the land. After weakening the enemy’s position with this strategy, Joshua led numerous minor attacks against them during the next several years.

Ronald F. Youngblood, F. F. Bruce, and R. K. Harrison, Thomas Nelson Publishers, eds., Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1995).

Verse 9 Jericho and Ai Joshua’s campaign in central Canaan (6:1–8:35) places a strategic wedge between the northern and southern cities preventing a massive Canaanite alliance against Israel. This divide-and-conquer strategy proves effective, but God’s directions for taking the first city (Jericho) sound like foolishness from a military point of view. The

Bruce Wilkinson and Kenneth Boa, Talk Thru the Bible (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1983), 55.

After the Transjordan nations (those across the Jordan River to the east of Palestine) had been conquered, Joshua’s campaign began with an attack on Jericho. This key city, just above the Israelite base of Gilgal, gave access both to the heart of Palestine and to Joshua’s source of supply across the Jordan. It also controlled two trade routes up into the central highlands. In taking Ai and Bethel (8:17; 12:16), Joshua cut the land in two and was then able to campaign against a divided enemy. He dealt first with the Southern and then with the Northern kings. The taking of Jericho first was thus of great strategic importance. And here divine intervention seemed essential. Leon Wood, in A Survey of Israel’s History (Zondervan) describes Jericho’s walls:

[They] were of a type which made direct assault practically impossible. An approaching enemy first encountered a stone abutment, 11 feet high, back and up from which sloped a 35 degree plastered scarp reaching to the main wall some 35 vertical feet above. The steep smooth slope prohibited battering the wall by any effective device or building fires to break it. An army trying to storm the wall found difficulty in climbing the slope, and ladders to scale it would find no satisfactory footing. The normal tactic used by an army to take a city so protected was siege, but Israel did not have time for this, if she was to occupy all the land in any reasonable number of months.

Any impression we may have that Palestine was some rustic backwater and that Joshua’s army was like some overwhelming horde of savages, is quickly dispelled by this description. The men of Palestine were acquainted with war; their offensive and defensive skills were highly sophisticated. But they had no defense against Israel’s God. Jericho’s walls, which normally would have held off Israel for months or even years, fell down in a moment.

Lawrence O. Richards, The Teacher’s Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987), 169.

Verse 11

Jarmuth is listed in the summary of sites in Joshua 12 whose kings are said to have been killed. Ongoing French excavations at this site have revealed a 3rd millennium Canaanite town with massive defenses, which flourished again briefly in the Late Bronze and early Iron Age. But there is no sign of a 13th/12th century destruction there, despite the prominent tell and its strategic location guarding the corridor up into the central hills (like nearby Beth-shemesh).

William G. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 64.

Verse 19 Madon - "Hattin (hah-teen´), Horns of, a prominent hill about five miles west of the Sea of Galilee, called in modern parlance the “Mount of the Beatitudes.” The site controls a strategic segment of the ancient road from Egypt to northern Syria, near the point where the highway begins its descent to the Sea of Galilee. The remains of the important Canaanite city found on top of the hill have been identified with biblical Adamah (Josh. 19:36) or Madon (11:1; 12:19)."

´ primary stress

Mark Allan Powell, ed., “Hattin, Horns of,” in The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary (Revised and Updated) (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 365.

Hazor "Located eight miles directly north of the Sea of Galilee, Hazor sat at the crossroads of two important trade routes: (1) The Great Trunk Road stretched from the Egyptian delta to the city of Damascus, and eventually to upper and lower Mesopotamia. This route is often termed the Way of the Sea, but inaccurately so, according to Barry J. Beitzel (The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands [Chicago: Moody Press, 1985], 65–69). And (2) the Beqa’ Valley Road stretched north from the Jordan River Valley and the Sea of Galilee into the Beqa’ Valley of central Lebanon."

William C. Williams and Stanley M. Horton, eds., They Spoke from God: A Survey of the Old Testament (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House; Logion Press, 2003).

Verse 21 This is the Bible’s first mention of Taanach and Megiddo (v. 21), and they are most commonly mentioned together (17:11; Judg 1:27; 5:19; 1 Kgs 4:12). They were strategic cities in the Jezreel Valley, about five miles apart, and they controlled a heavily traveled pass going southwest into the Plain of Sharon.293

293 Woudstra, Joshua, 206; Boling, Joshua, 328–29.

David M. Howard Jr., Joshua, vol. 5, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 282.

These are the first references to Megiddo in the Bible. It is located on the western edge of the Jezreel Valley near the foot of Mount Carmel. Its importance lay in its strategic position overlooking a narrow pass of the Via Maris, the ancient super-highway that connected Egypt with Mesopotamia. The city stands just east of where the Wadi Ara enters the Jezreel Valley. That wadi is the shortest pass through the Carmel Range.

Adolph L. Harstad, Joshua, Concordia Commentary (Saint Louis, MO: Concordia Pub. House, 2004), 480.