Joshua 11:1

With a format quite like that in Joshua 10, this chapter recounts the great Israelite victory over the Northern Coalition led by Jabin king of Hazor. Joshua is far from giving a detail of all the fighting that took place in the Conquest of Canaan, but, taking the over-all view, the author of this book bases the conquest upon three, and only three great campaigns:

(1) the fall of Jericho and the destruction of Ai;

(2) the defeat of the coalition under Adonizedek; and

(3) the defeat of the coalition led by Jabin.

Afterward, all of the opposition encountered by Israel was of a merely local nature. After the events of this chapter, the whole land of Palestine lay open to Israel, and there was no power in the entire area that could effectively challenge them. The great pity, of course, is that Israel desired peace so earnestly that they neglected to continue the conquest in any thorough manner. Consequently, some of the tribes did not actually "possess their possessions." Also, there was the settlement of the two and one half tribes east of Jordan, which drastically cut into the manpower available for a longer and more thorough conquest.

This third and final major campaign does not appear to have been providentially aided as in the instance of Jericho and Beth-horon, except in the commandment which God gave to Joshua to "strike now." The significance of that timeliness of the attack is evident in this comment by Cook:

"Taken by surprise and hemmed in between the mountains and the lake, the chariots and horses had no time to be deployed and no room to act effectively; and then, in all probability, the host of the coalition fell into hopeless confusion."[1]

God's command for Joshua to hock the horses may also be classed as providential aid. This rendered the horses and chariots useless either for offensive purposes, or for retreat and flight in case of defeat. Thousands of the coalition troops were accustomed to "riding in chariots," and not to the infantry-like retreat which made them extremely vulnerable to Israel's hardened and skillful attackers.

Jabin's great host which was enumerated by Josephus as being composed of, "Three hundred thousand armed footmen, ten thousand horsemen, and twenty thousand chariots,"[2] were hopelessly crowded into a restricted area, which, in fact, amounted to a trap. It appears that Jabin would never have selected this spot for a battle and that the congregation of his forces there was thought by him to be an appropriate staging area for the forthcoming battle, which Jabin no doubt thought would take place at his option and choice of the site for the conflict. Joshua's lightning-like attack caught them utterly unprepared, and the great host was cut into pieces without their having an opportunity to make any effective move against Israel.

A word about Israel's weapons is also in order here. Rea has this description:

"The chief weapon of the Israelites was the short, thrusting sword (10 or 12 inches to eighteen inches in length) protruding from a hilt fashioned like a lion's mouth (whence the metaphor, `the mouth of the sword') ... They also used scimitars (Joshua 8:18), bows and arrows (Joshua 24:12), slings with stone balls (Judges 20:16), thrusting spears or lances (Numbers 25:7,8), and hurling javelins (1 Samuel 18:10,11)."[3]

From the military viewpoint the "short sword" of Israel was the predecessor and forerunner of the famed "short sword" of the Romans which overcame the vaunted phalanx of the Macedonians and won for Rome the domination of the world for centuries. In fact, nothing could ever stand against that weapon (the short sword) until the invention of firearms.

"And it came to pass when Jabin king of Hazor heard thereof, that he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, and to the kings that were in the north, in the hill-country, and in the Arabah south of Chinneroth, and in the lowland, and in the heights of Dor on the west, to the Canaanite on the east and on the west, and the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Jebusite in the hill-country, and the Hivite under Hermon in the land of Mizpah. And they went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the seashore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many. And all these kings met together; and they came and encamped together at the waters of Merom, to fight with Israel."

"Jabin king of Hazor ..." The name Jabin, "means the intelligent one!"[4] The city of Hazor, a metropolis at that time of some 40,000 inhabitants occupied a fortified site of about 200 acres and was in the times of Joshua, "by far the largest and most famous city in Palestine."[5] It is of interest that another king bearing this same dynastic name (Jabin) ruled over a rebuilt Hazor in the times of Deborah and Barak (Judges 4:2). Of course, critical enemies of the Bible could not resist trying to make the references various and contradictory accounts of the same event, as did Holmes, who wrote: "Joshua's victory here seems inconsistent with the account in Judges, where there is no reference to Jabin, but only to Sisera."[6] Rea emphasized the irresponsibility of such assertions, declaring that, "It is rash to assert that these stories are merely varying accounts of the same event."[7] Joshua indeed burned Hazor, but, as Israel did not settle there, the Canaanites rebuilt it, and much later they defeated Israel and oppressed the people for twenty years, until Israel again destroyed it. The destruction of the city analyzed by excavators almost certainly refers to the destruction mentioned in Judges.

"Jobab king of Madon ..." "Madon was a Canaanite city on a hill overlooking Lake Tiberias."[8] It has been identified as the "mountain" from which Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount as recorded by Matthew.

"Achshaph ..." Nothing is certainly known of the location of this place except that it was in the territory assigned to Asher (Joshua 19:25).

The various peoples solicited by Jabin to join the coalition are enumerated in Joshua 11:3,4, and, from the mention of the several racial groups that made up ancient Palestine, it seems that Jabin attempted to rally all of the Canaanites of the whole area for a war against Israel. Dummelow, however, thought that the racial groups cited here was more of a geographical than a racial identification."[9] This attempt succeeded in amassing an army of some 330,000 men, with the heaviest armour then known, namely horses and chariots.

"Hermon in the land of Mizpah ..." (Joshua 11:3). "The word Mizpah has about the same meaning that Belle View has in English, namely, "`Beautiful View.' There were several other names by which Hermon was identified, such as Shenir (as the Amorites called it), and Sirion (the name preferred by the Sidonians).[10] All of these names were similar to a name that the Indians of North America used, Shenan, meaning stars or shining, and from which our word Shenandoah (daughter of the stars) is derived. These names have been said to mean "glorious one," or "shining coat of mail," all such names being descriptions of the beautiful snow-covered Hermon with the sun shining upon it!

"The waters of Merom ..." This location was probably intended to be the staging area where full preparations for an assault upon Israel would be completed. Joshua's sudden attack frustrated that plan. "Merom lies between Lake Huleh and Lake Tiberias some ten miles west of Jordan, where copious springs feed a tributary to Jordan."[11]

Matthew Henry speaks of the tremendous confidence that must have built up in the minds of the Coalition and their leaders, due to the tremendous numbers of their armies,[12] and that may account for the element of their carelessness in the choice of a staging area in such a restricted location.

Despite the fact that many of the most accurate scholars have denied and refuted the critical assertion that the events of this chapter are a mere doublet of the various account of the same event in Judges 4, one still encounters the unsupported assertion of this error in much of the current literature. Even the Interpreter's Bible now affirms that, "It is more likely that the narratives of Joshua 11, and Judges 4, have to do with separate events."[13]