Joshua 11

¹ When Jabin the king of Hazor heard these things, he sent word of them to Jobab the king of Madon, to the king of Shimron, the king of Achshaph

² and the kings in the northern highlands and in the valley south of Chinneroth and those of the lowlands and the hillsides of Dor westwards.

³ Eastwards and westwards lived the Canaanite; in the highlands the Amorite and Hivite and Perizzite and Jebusite; under Hermon the Hittite, in the land of Mizpah.

⁴ They set out with all their troops, a horde as countless as the sands of the sea, with innumerable horses and chariots.

⁵ These kings, having all agreed on a meeting place, came and encamped near one another at the waters of Merom, to fight against Israel.

⁶ Then Yahweh said to Joshua, ‘Have no fear of these men, for by this time tomorrow Israel shall see them all cut to pieces; you shall hamstring their horses and burn their chariots’.

⁷ Joshua and all his warriors caught them unawares by the waters of Merom and fell on them.

⁸ Yahweh delivered them into the power of Israel, who defeated them and pursued them to Sidon the Great and to Misrephoth-maim westwards and to the Vale of Mizpah eastwards; Israel harried them till not one was left to escape.

⁹ Joshua treated them as Yahweh had ordered; he hamstrung their horses and burned their chariots.

¹⁰ Joshua then came back and captured Hazor, putting its king to the sword. Hazor in earlier days was the capital of all these kingdoms.

¹¹ And they put to the sword every living creature there, because of the ban. Not a soul was left there, and lastly Hazor was burned.

¹² Joshua conquered all these royal cities and their kings and struck them with the edge of the sword because of the ban, as Moses the servant of Yahweh had ordered.

¹³ Yet of all these towns standing on their mounds Israel burned none, apart from Hazor which Joshua gave to the flames.

¹⁴ As for the spoils of these towns and the cattle, the Israelites took them for themselves. But they struck all the human beings with the edge of the sword, and wiped them all out; they did not leave one living soul.

¹⁵ What Yahweh had ordered his servant Moses, Moses in turn had ordered Joshua, and Joshua carried it out, leaving nothing unaccomplished that Yahweh had ordered Moses.

¹⁶ Thus Joshua mastered the whole country: the highlands, the whole Negeb and the whole land of Goshen, the lowlands, the Arabah, the highlands and the lowlands of Israel.

¹⁷ From Mount Halak, which rises towards Seir, to Baal-gad in the Yale of Lebanon below Mount Hermon, he captured all their kings, struck them down and slaughtered them.

¹⁸ For many a day Joshua had made war on all these kings;

¹⁹ no city had made peace with the Israelites except the Hivites who lived at Gibeon; all the rest they conquered in battle.

²⁰ For Yahweh had ordained that the hearts of these men should be stubborn enough to fight against Israel, so that they might be mercilessly delivered over to the ban and be wiped out, as Yahweh had ordered Moses.[*a]

²¹ Then Joshua came and wiped out the Anakim from the highlands, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the highlands of Judah and all the highlands of Israel; he delivered them and their towns over to the ban.

²² No more Anakim were left in Israelite territory except at Gaza, Gath and Ashdod.

²³ Joshua mastered the whole country, just as Yahweh had told Moses, and he gave it to Israel as an inheritance according to their division by tribes. And the country had rest from war.