‘ The king of Kedesh, one, the king of Yokneam in Carmel, one, the king of Dor, in the height of Dor, one, the king of Goiim in Gilgal, one, the king of Tirzah, one. All the kings thirty and one.'
Kedesh is probably Kedesh in Naphtali (Joshua 19:37; Joshua 20:7; Joshua 21:32; Judges 4:6). It is the modern Tell Kudeish, north west of Lake Huleh, which was occupied during the early and late bronze ages. It was on the route south from the north and thus a target for any invaders from the north. Yokneam (Joshua 19:11; Joshua 21:34) was mentioned in the list of Tuthmosis III. It is modern Tel Yoqneam, twelve kilometres (seven and a half miles) north west of Megiddo. For Dor see Joshua 11:2. Goiim (‘nations') of Gilgal is unknown, it could mean ‘the king of nations in Gilgal' referring to a foreign population. This Gilgal, being between Dor and Tirzah, was probably on the edge of the maritime plain of Sharon. Tirzah probably lay in the northern part of the hill country of Ephraim, at the head of the Wadi Far‘ah along which passed the road from Transjordan to the central hill country, to Shechem, Samaria,Dothan and other towns. It was assigned to Manasseh (Joshua 17:2-3) and later became for a time the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel before Omri transferred the capital to Samaria.
Thus were listed the thirty one kings killed by Joshua. The common mistake is to assume that because the kings were killed the cities were captured, but that was not necessarily so. Indeed in the case of the king of Gezer we have good reason to believe it was not. But the deaths of so many kings had undoubtedly weakened the power of the Canaanites. It is noteworthy, and in accordance with what we have seen earlier, that there is no mention of a king of Shechem (see on Joshua 8:30).