Myth #88:

Joshua fought King Jabin of Hazor.

The Myth: And it came to pass, when Jabin king of Hazor had heard those things, that he sent to Jobab king of Madon, and to the king of Shimron, and to the king of Achshaph, … And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms. And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire. (Josh. 11:1, 10–11)

The Reality: Historically reliable passages of the Bible show that Jabin and Hazor dominated northern Canaan after the time of Joshua.

After the incidents at Gibeon and the capture of the cities belonging to the coalition of kings, Joshua moved north against King Jabin of Hazor, who organized the northern Canaanite kings in defense against Israel. Joshua eventually won the battle and burned the city of Hazor to the ground. Archaeological evidence, however, indicates that Jabin’s capital had been destroyed shortly after Joshua’s time, and other portions of the Bible also indicate that Jabin and Hazor continued to flourish and dominate northern Canaan after the time of Joshua.

Judges 5 contains a poem called the Song of Deborah. It tells about a mighty battle between several tribes in Israel and a coalition of Canaanite kings. Judges 4 contains a prose version of the same story and identifies the leader of the Canaanite coalition as Jabin, King of Hazor, who ruled over most of northern Canaan. Israel won the battle, defeated Jabin and destroyed his kingdom, although it doesn’t say that they destroyed Hazor itself.

The Song of Deborah may be the oldest passage of original biblical text to survive in the present version of the Bible and it probably originated contemporaneously with the events described therein, sometime in the twelfth to eleventh century B.C. In terms of biblical chronology, the events described in the Song of Deborah take place not long after the time of Joshua (thirteenth century B.C.). This doesn’t leave much room for Joshua to have killed King Jabin and burned Hazor to the ground and have another King Jabin rise to dominate northern Canaan from that same city.

The evidence suggests that somewhere in Israel’s early Canaanite history, a battle—real or fictional—occurred between Israelites and a King Jabin in Hazor. At the time of the writing of Joshua, tradition already had assigned that battle to a period when Israel had been settled in Canaan for quite some time. The authors of Joshua borrowed that story and rewrote it to make Joshua the hero.

As with so many other biblical stories, once again we have the same story told twice, with slightly altered facts and different characters.