World English Bible · Entering the land
Joshua 11
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When king of heard of it, he sent to Jobab king of Madon, to the king of , to the king of , and to the kings who were on the north, in the hill country, in the south of , in the lowland, and in the heights of on the west, to the on the east and on the west, the , the , the , the in the hill country, and the under Hermon in the land of . They went out, they and all their armies with them, many people, even as the sand that is on the seashore in multitude, with very many horses and chariots. All these kings met together; and they came and encamped together at the waters of , to fight with Israel. said to , "Don't be afraid because of them; for tomorrow at this time, I will them up all slain before Israel. You shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots with ." So came suddenly, with all the warriors, against them by the waters of , and attacked them. them into the hand of Israel, and they struck them, and chased them to great , and to Misrephoth Maim, and to the valley of eastward. They struck them until they left them no one remaining. did to them as told him. He hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots with . turned back at that time, and took , and struck its king with ; for used to be the head of all those kingdoms. They struck all the who were in it with the edge of , utterly destroying them. There was no one left who breathed. He burned with . captured all the cities of those kings, with their kings, and he struck them with the edge of , and them, as the commanded. But as for the cities that stood on their mounds, Israel burned none of them, except only. burned that. The took all the plunder of these cities, with the livestock, as plunder for themselves; but every man they struck with the edge of , until they had destroyed them. They didn't leave any who breathed. As commanded his servant, so commanded . did so. He left nothing undone of all that commanded . So captured all that land, the hill country, all the South, all the land of , the lowland, the , the hill country of Israel, and the lowland of the same, from Mount Halak, that goes up to , even to Gad in the valley of under . He took all their kings, struck them, and put them to . made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the , except the , the inhabitants of . They took all in battle. For it was of to harden their , to come against Israel in battle, that he might them, that they might have no , but that he might destroy them, as commanded . came at that time, and the from the hill country, from , from , from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. them with their cities. There were none of the left in the land of the . Only in , in , and in , did some . So took the whole land, according to all that spoke to ; and gave it for an to Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. Then the land had rest from war.
A public domain modern English translation, free to read and share. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Entering the land, 1250 BC to 1200 BC ›
Israel crossing into Canaan and contending with fortified city-states, each with its own king, in a land Egypt had recently dominated and was now losing its grip on.
- The collapse
- The whole eastern Mediterranean is coming apart. Within about fifty years the Hittite empire falls, its capital burns, the Mycenaean palaces are destroyed, Ugarit is wiped out mid-correspondence, and Egypt is fighting for its life against seaborne invaders. Nobody fully knows why. Drought, earthquake, migration, and the failure of interlocking trade are all in the explanation.
- Egypt
- Still strong enough to record a victory over a people called Israel on a stone monument around 1207 BC, the earliest mention of the name outside the Bible. But Egyptian control of Canaan is slipping, and within a generation it is gone.
- Canaan
- Not a country but dozens of walled towns, each with its own king, its own god, and its own quarrel with the next valley. This is why the book of Joshua reads as a list of kings rather than a war with a nation.
- Further afield
- Iron is beginning to replace bronze across the region, partly because the tin trade that made bronze possible has broken down. The Olmec are building San Lorenzo. The Zhou are about to overthrow the Shang in China.