Numbers 21:3

3. They utterly destroyed them and their cities It is supposed by some that the actual destruction of the cities did not take place then, for two reasons: 1.) It would have required an entrance into Canaan in order to destroy Arad and its allied cities; and, 2.) it was standing after Joshua led in the nation, and its king was destroyed by him. Joshua 12:14. The difficulty all disappears when the word destroyed is rendered, as it should be, anathematized, or put under the ban. The identification of Hormah with Sebaita, (see below,) only twenty-five miles north of Kadesh, (Gadis,) leads others to interpret the ban as executed at that time. But when the Israelites retired the fugitive Canaanites returned and rebuilt the city, which was again taken and destroyed in the conquest of southern Canaan by Judah and Simeon after the death of Joshua.

Hormah Derived from a Hebrew word signifying to anathema, or a devotement to destruction. Its earlier name was Zephath. Judges 1:17. Robinson identifies it with the pass Es-Sufa, both on account of the name and the situation in the mountain, which, running southwest and northeast, completes the plateau of southern Palestine. But the true identification is Sebaita, twenty-five miles southwest of Beer-sheba. See notes on Joshua 12:14, and Judges 1:17. It is evident, if it was not destroyed now, that till its actual conquest by Judah and Simeon it was called Hormah proleptically. Keil suggests that it may have been captured in the time of Joshua and retaken again by the Canaanites, who restored its old name, Zephath, and that it was subsequently permanently conquered by Judah and Simeon, and received its new name once for all.