Today, I am reading and commenting on  Joshua 10-11.

I never quite know what to make of the battles described in today’s passage.  First pass casual reading leaves one with the impression that the battle against the five southern kings took place in a single, extended, day and all five cities were razed on that day.  Similarly, the battle and razing of the northern cities seems like a single day battle.  However, if you read a little more carefully you see that only the battle against the five southern kings is described as being in a single day, and that is only the battle to relieve Gibeon.  Once Joshua and the Israelites had defeated the armies which attacked Gideon, they moved on to raze the cities from which those armies had come.  The passage does not really give us any clues as to how long that took, except that it was fast enough that the northern kings did not have time to muster before Israel had completed razing the cities and returning to Gilgal on the plains of Jericho.  A quick casual read also leaves one with the impression that when the Israelites had finished defeating these two armies (or groups of armies) that they had completely conquered the land.  Yet later in the Book of Joshua it describes further battles of conquest to gain control of the land, and even in the Book of Judges there are areas which the Israelites do not yet control until the time of David.  However, if you take your time and read more carefully, you realize that the conquest of the southern kings was only over the Amorites living in that area.  And you have a similar limited conquest over the northern region.  So, while at the end of these two wars the Israelites have eliminated everyone who could be an organized threat to them in the area, large amounts of land are still controlled by non-Israelites in the land.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.