CRITICAL NOTES.—
Joshua 11:17. From the mount Halak] Marg. =“The smooth mountain;” or “the bare” or “bald” mountain: thought by Robinson and others to be a row of white cliffs, from sixty to eighty feet high, a few miles south of the Dead Sea, and supposed to be identical with the “ascent of Akrabbim.” Unto Baal-gad] Schwarz supposes this to be identical with the modern Banias (Cæsarea Philippi). These two extreme points are given to mark the extent, southwards and northwards, of Joshua’s conquest.
Joshua 11:18. A long time] Comparing chap. Joshua 14:7; Joshua 14:10, and the date of sending the spies from Kadesh-Barnea (which Fay seems to forget was between one and two years after the exodus), the war of Joshua with the Canaanites must have lasted between six and seven years. Perhaps about a year was employed in the first general overrunning of the south, the remaining period of somewhat more than five years being spent in subduing the north, and in rendering the southern conquests more complete. Joshua 11:21 obviously points to a return of the campaign to the southern part of the land, and is not to be read as merely a supplementary account of the same conflict recorded in chap. Joshua 10:36-41.
Joshua 11:21. Anab] Mentioned also in chap Joshua 15:50. “It has retained its ancient name, and lies among the hills about ten miles S.S.W. of Hebron, close to Shoco and Eshtemoa (Robinson i. 494).” [Smith’s Bib. Dict.]
Joshua 11:22. Gaza] This was one of the five chief cities of the Philistines. It was the frontier city on the way towards Egypt. It sustained for five months a siege by Alexander the Great, whose character, says Dean Stanley, suffers severely in the history of that event. (Cf. Grote’s “Hist. Greece,” xii. 193.) The coast line from Gaza to Cæsarea is remarkable in connection with the ministry of the apostles. Gath] Another of the five principal cities of Philistia. Mr. Porter concluded that it was situated on the hill now known as Tell-es-Safieh. Goliath, whose home was here, may have been a descendant of the Anakim. Ashdod] Now called Ashdud; the Azotus of Acts 8:40. It was in the lot of Judah (chap. Joshua 15:47), but seems never to have been entirely subdued. It preserved a language distinct from that of the Jews, till after the return from the captivity (Nehemiah 13:23-24). The siege by Psammetichus, the longest on record, lasted twenty-seven years, and is thought to be alluded to in Jeremiah 25:20. It was destroyed by the Maccabees (1Ma. 5:68; 1Ma. 10:84).
Joshua 11:23. And the land rested from war] This marks the close of the first division of the book. In a general sense, it is said that Joshua had taken “the whole land;” in the details given in the second part of the book we learn that this is not to be understood absolutely; thus Jehovah Himself says (chap. Joshua 13:1), “There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed.”
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE PARAGRAPH.— Joshua 11:15-23
Joshua 11:15-18. FIDELITY TO THE COMMANDS OF GOD.
I. True fidelity has regard, not to the commandment, but to God, from whom the commandment comes. Joshua “left nothing undone” which the Lord had bidden. Joshua’s instructions came to him indirectly. He received the Lord’s words through Moses. Joshua was concerned not so much with the stream, or its channel, as with the source from which it issued. He had submitted himself to another will, and like a true servant he set himself to obey. Nor was this implicit obedience either blind or unintelligent. To really trust God is to believe that He cannot do wrong; that He cannot fail in righteousness; that He cannot lack knowledge; that He cannot want love.
1. Some men are faithful only in things which are pleasant. Where God’s commands and their own desires run in parallel lines, they go in the same direction as the commandments. Let not such deceive themselves; they are not in the way of the Lord. It is simply that their own way runs, for a little season, alongside the way of God. “He that offendeth in one point is guilty of all.”
2. Others only obey where they can understand. Unless they can see what they think some adequate reason for obedience, they choose to regard obedience as unimportant. This is really to question the wisdom of God.
3. True fidelity to God finds its controlling influences in God Himself. To a noble-minded man like Joshua, this work of blood and judgment must have been one of pain. Like a true soldier, and a true servant, he had respect to his Commander rather than to the nature of the command.
4. Such fidelity is a trust left to us by faithful predecessors. These commands had been given to Moses. (Cf. Exodus 34:11-14; Numbers 33:50-56; Deuteronomy 20:16-18.) So far as he could, Moses had been obedient to the Divine word (Hebrews 3:5). Had Joshua been disobedient, he would have impaired the faithful work of his predecessor. Each of us is called to continue the faithful service of some who have gone before us. For us to fail is to mar the work on which they so conscientiously laboured.
II. Fidelity that is thorough is also fruitful.
1. The good results of faithful service are foretold (Exodus 23:20-23). We also have exceeding great and precious promises.
2. The good results of faithful service are attested by human experience. Did ever any labour conscientiously for God, and find that he had served in vain?
3. The good results of faithful service are not of man’s efforts, but of God’s grace. This the Israelites themselves cheerfully acknowledged for many centuries after (Psalms 44:1-3).
III. The fruits of fidelity have to be gathered with patience. The war lasted for nearly seven years. (Cf. Joshua 11:18, and Critical Notes.)
1. Patience is essential to faithfulness. Unless men had to wait, there would be no time for testing or shewing fidelity.
2. Patience cultivates faithfulness. To wait well is to discipline ourselves in fidelity.
3. Patience is often necessary for the very prosperity which we seek. God repeatedly told the Israelites that sudden success would be harmful to the very estate which they sought to inherit (Exodus 23:29-30; Deuteronomy 7:22).
4. Patience does not reap less because it reaps slowly. To wait for God never means to wait for nothing. “The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie.”
“Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
No man can conscientiously and perseveringly do the will of his Father in heaven, to find, ultimately, that he has laboured in vain. There is no field so fruitful as that which we plough at the bidding of God.
I. The patience of the Lord’s servants.
II. The persistence of the Lord’s enemies.
“THE EXTIRPATION OF THE CANAANITES:
1. Due to their idolatry and immorality.
2. Executed through a Divine command.
3. Set as a warning example for all times.
“They left nothing remaining which had breath. So when a whole people have sinned, the less guilty and the guilty fall together.”—[Fay.]
Joshua 11:20.—HARDENED HEARTS.
This cannot mean that God directly influenced the Canaanites to resist Himself and all repentance of their sin. The thought is too dreadful to be entertained even for a moment. It would be God’s active participation in the Canaanites’ guilt. Whether in the time of the Old Testament or in that of the New, “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man.” On this authority of the Holy Spirit, then, Calvin is simply wrong when be says: “The Lord commanded Moses to destroy the nations whom He had doomed to destruction; and He accordingly opened a way for His own decree when He hardened the reprobate.… God hardens them for this very end, that they may shut themselves out from mercy.” On the other hand, the words mean more than that God permitted the Canaanites to become hardened. God had been permitting the Canaanites to have their way ever since they settled in the land. He had warned them repeatedly; His Spirit had striven with them in those warnings; but God had done nothing to coerce them. To that extent, the Lord always permits everybody to have his own way. Even to the apostles, Jesus Christ says, “Will ye also go away?” They had liberty to depart, if they chose. God ever leaves so much of liberty to every man. Were it not so, saved men would no more be holy than a criminal is holy, who happens to be temporarily redeemed from the actual commission of guilt, and who walks, by a compulsion he cannot resist, the successive rounds of the treadmill. God had always “permitted” these Canaanites, in the sense of not coercing them. We must look for the Divine meaning, then, somewhere between these two positions. The essentially holy God could not influence these men to sin: yet God, who calls nothing holy which does not come from the choice of our hearts, had always permitted these men to sin. When it is said “It was of the Lord to harden their hearts,” if the words are not meaningless, some change is indicated in the Divine attitude towards these Canaanites. This change must lie somewhere between the two positions indicated. What is the change of attitude intended? Perhaps it may be defined, as nearly as we can define it, in some such thoughts as the following:—
I. God’s ordinary way with all men is to actively promote their sanctification. Solemn and cheering providences. Messages of warning, or mercy. Examples and consequences of piety, and wickedness. Perhaps, also, the direct influences of His Spirit on the heart (cf. Genesis 6:3).
II. In the resistance which men offer to God, there is a certain point at which God forsakes those who are determined to transgress. Were this not the case, no man could ever be lost hopelessly. If God were actively working for the lost in perdition itself, there must be hope even there. Nothing can be hopeless that is furthered by the hand of the Infinite. But perdition is without hope. It follows that, at some time or other before perdition, God must refrain from all His ordinary active interference for the salvation of those who are about to enter that state. That cessation of God’s active interference is the time of God’s forsaking.
III. When God so forsakes men, they may be said to be given over by Him to hardness of heart. He does not actively work the hardness. He no longer works to hinder it. True, this may be called “permitting” men to harden their own hearts; but the liberty to sin is so enlarged, it is so removed from all the direct gracious influences of heavenly constraint, that the “permission” must not be confused with that ordinary measure of liberty which God gives to all men. Henceforth, the result is so certain that language like that of the text is at least appropriate. If, in these New Testament times, no man can call Jesus Lord “but by the Holy Ghost,” the issue in those Old Testament times must have been so certain that it was proper to speak of God as having already given the transgressors over to judgment. In fact, when God leaves a man in absolute freedom to sin, to that man the beginnings of judgment have come already.
IV. Past that point at which God gives men up as hopeless, all influences which tend to the shortening of life are merciful rather than otherwise. Sin would be aggravated, indeed, by a prolonged life in such a state of heart. Surely no words ever breathed on earth were more profoundly full of pity than the words of Jesus to Judas, after all the “wooing of the betrayer” at the table had failed: “What thou doest, do quickly.” Mercy had said, “It were good for that man that he had never been born.” The birth and the life, however, were irremediable. The next best thing that Mercy could devise was that the end should come as soon as possible. Hence those words of terribly significant pity: “What thou doest, do quickly.”
Joshua 11:21-22.—THE OVERTHROW OF THE ANAKIM.
The Anakim were a race of people of gigantic stature, descended from Arba (chap. Joshua 14:15; Joshua 15:13). From passages like the former, it has been concluded that the word Anak was not the name of an individual, but of the race. Hebron seems to have been their principal city previous to their destruction by Joshua and Caleb. The chief tribes of this people appear to have been named after Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai.
I. The Anakim as an old occasion of fear and unbelief. The spies saw these giants, and reported, “We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (cf. Numbers 13:22-33). At the time referred to in this passage, the Israelites refused to trust God.
1. They preferred to walk by sight rather than by faith. From Deuteronomy 1:22 it seems that the wish to send spies had originated with the people; and thus Numbers 13:1-3 must be read merely as shewing that God had acceded to this wish, taking the direction of the matter, however, into His own hands. God had declared the land good, and had promised it to the people for an inheritance. They wished to send and see for themselves.
2. When the spies did see, they were less able to believe than before. The cities were walled, and these sons of Anak looked so huge. Seeing made believing harder than ever. This is not an unusual result of trying to walk by sight, where God asks for our trust. He who depends on his intelligence for his faith must not wonder if he soon has cause to question both.
3. The unbelief of the ten spies resulted in the unbelief of nearly all the host. Only Moses, Joshua, and Caleb seem to have escaped the contagion. He who believes well generally leads others also to faith. Unbelief is even more fruitful than faith. No man can doubt to himself.
II. The fear and unbelief of the past becoming victory and joy in the present. The forty years in the wilderness had not been in vain. The Israelites had grown in grace. Where they had once sought to flee, they had now strength to fight. Where of old they had come to shame, they now found victory. Where they had formerly gathered a terrible heritage of pain, they now entered into joy and honour. There are fields of conflict behind most of us which yet wait to be redeemed from shame. The spiritual foes of our past, from whom we have fled in unbelief, should be confronted and conquered at the first opportunity.
III. The fear and unbelief of the past turned into victory and joy only by the grace of God. Divine mercy had led and taught these Israelites till at last they did not fear to attack even the Anakim.
1. God’s patience in training.
2. God’s encouragements through mighty works.
3. God’s perseverance unto the end. It is He who “giveth the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” His love and power, as seen in the past, should make us strong in faith to meet the enemies of the future.
“Even that opposition which seemed invincible was got over. Never let the sons of Anak be a terror to the Israel of God, for even their day to fall will come. Giants are dwarfs to Omnipotence.
“This struggle with the Anakim was reserved for the latter end of the war, when the Israelites were become more expert, and had more experience of the power and goodness of God. God sometimes reserves the sharpest trials of His people, by affliction and temptation, for the latter end of their days. Therefore ‘let not him that girdeth on the harness boast as he that puts it off.’ ” [Henry.]
Joshua 11:23.—THE PEOPLE FOR WHOM THE LORD FIGHTS.
I. The magnitude of their difficulties should be regarded as only the measure of their victories. “Joshua took the whole land.”
II. Their most signal earthly victories are ever incomplete. The whole land, yet not the whole (cf. chap. Joshua 13:1).
III. The triumphs which they do win are ever the fruit of God’s promises. “According to all that the Lord said unto Moses.” This clause serves also to limit and explain the former. God had specially told Moses that the whole land should not be conquered too suddenly (Exodus 23:29-30).
IV. The inheritance thus given by God should be the inheritance of all God’s people. “Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes.”
V. The rest which they obtain here faintly foreshadows the perfect rest hereafter. “And the land rested from war.”
1. Rest after severe strife.
2. Rest only through faith and obedience.
3. Rest, but rest which still requires that they watch and pray.
4. Rest, which though but an imperfect pattern, should stand for a sure prophecy of the rest which is perfect. If we really enter into the rest of faith, it will be by that Holy Spirit of promise, “which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.”