TEXT [Commentary]

D.   Joshua’s Victory at Aijalon (10:1-43)

1.   Gibeon’s call for help (10:1-6)

1 Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard that Joshua had captured and completely destroyed[*] Ai and killed its king, just as he had destroyed the town of Jericho and killed its king. He also learned that the Gibeonites had made peace with Israel and were now their allies. 2 He and his people became very afraid when they heard all this because Gibeon was a large town—as large as the royal cities and larger than Ai. And the Gibeonite men were strong warriors.

3 So King Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem sent messengers to several other kings: Hoham of Hebron, Piram of Jarmuth, Japhia of Lachish, and Debir of Eglon. 4 “Come and help me destroy Gibeon,” he urged them, “for they have made peace with Joshua and the people of Israel.” 5 So these five Amorite kings combined their armies for a united attack. They moved all their troops into place and attacked Gibeon.

6 The men of Gibeon quickly sent messengers to Joshua at his camp in Gilgal. “Don’t abandon your servants now!” they pleaded. “Come at once! Save us! Help us! For all the Amorite kings who live in the hill country have joined forces to attack us.”

NOTES

10:1 Adoni-zedek. The name means “Lord of righteousness” or “my Lord is righteous”; it is similar to the name of an earlier king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek, meaning “king of righteousness” or “my King is righteous.” Melchizedek had been a friend of Abraham (Gen 14:18-20), but Adoni-zedek was no friend to Joshua.

Jerusalem . . . Ai . . . Gibeonites. Ai was about 10 miles north of Jerusalem; Gibeon was only six miles north-northwest of Jerusalem. From Adoni-zedek’s point of view, these new allies of the encroaching Israelites were dangerously close.

completely destroyed. The Hebrew root is kharam [TH2763, ZH3049]. See NLT mg, and see also discussion under “Theological Concerns” in the Introduction. So also in 10:28, 35, 37, 39, 40.

10:2 very afraid. This is the seventh and last report that Canaan was afraid of Israel (cf. 2:9-11; 2:24; 5:1; 6:1; 9:9-11; 9:24). Their “perfect” fear (represented by the number seven) led the Gibeonites to submit to Israel, but led most of the Canaanite kings to choose war.

10:3 Hebron. This was about 20 miles south-southwest of Jerusalem, in the hill country.

Jarmuth. This was about 15 miles west-southwest of Jerusalem, in the northern Shephelah, the lower “foothills” region lying west of the Judean hill country proper.

Lachish. This was an important city about 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem, near the southwestern edge of the Shephelah.

Debir. This is possibly an error in transmission, or a mispointing of the vowels because Debir is the name of a town in the hill country south of Hebron. LXX Vaticanus has “Dabein”; as both consonants are liquids, “r” and “n” sometimes were confused.

Eglon. This was about seven miles southeast of Lachish, in the southern Shephelah.

10:5 five Amorite kings. The Hebrew text lists them again, though not by name: “the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon.” When a distinction was made, the Amorites were located in the hill country, and the Canaanites in the larger valleys and the coastal plain. Three of these five cities were in the Shephelah, not geographically part of the hill country, and carefully distinguished from it throughout the Bible. We may excuse the Gibeonites, however, for not naming the Shephelah separately in their desperate message to Joshua (10:6).

COMMENTARY [Text]

In chapter 10, we see that the treaty with the Gibeonites precipitated events that led to the breaking of Canaanite resistance in the south. Gibeon was only six miles from Jerusalem, and it guarded the approach to a major route ascending from the coastal plain into the hill country. Gibeon and its neighboring cities occupied the plateau of Benjamin (as it came to be called), a relatively level rectangle immediately to the north of Jerusalem, about 100 square miles in area. Control of this plateau was essential to control of the entire hill country. Throughout history, with few exceptions, whoever controlled Benjamin controlled the hill country. With Gibeon now allied to Israel, control of the plateau, and thus of the hill country, belonged to Israel. The Canaanite kings had to conquer Gibeon before Joshua could come to its rescue, or their cause was lost.

The Amorite coalition reached Gibeon, but the Gibeonites sent a message (probably via a runner) to Joshua, on a crescendo of urgency. Beginning with a relatively restrained, “Don’t abandon your servants now!” (10:6), it moved to the more urgent, “Come at once!”—climaxing with the almost-panicked, “Save us! Help us!” The Gibeonites knew they had brought upon themselves a life-or-death crisis from which only Joshua could save them. “Don’t abandon” in Hebrew is “don’t slacken your hand from,” an idiomatic way of asking Joshua’s help, but also a tacit recognition that Joshua could have been tempted to drag his heels (to use a modern English idiom). He easily could have delayed to “equip the men” (or something else), and Israel would have arrived too late.

Instead, Joshua responded quickly and in good faith. To come to the rescue of a vassal threatened by outside enemies was practically the only obligation a suzerain pledged himself to in the kind of treaty Israel had entered into with Gibeon. Having sworn by Yahweh to rescue Gibeon when they were threatened, Joshua and Israel undertook now to do it. However, this initiative was in Joshua’s interests, too. If he could rout the combined Canaanite forces by this lightning strike, it would give Israel a tremendous advantage, both in position and in momentum.