Joshua 11:23

11:15-23 Never let the sons of Anak be a terror to the Israel of God, for their day to fall will come. The land rested from war. It ended not in a peace with the Canaanites, that was forbidden, but in a peace from them. There is a rest, a rest from war, remaining for the people of God, into which they shall enter, when their warfare is accomplished. That which was now done, is compared with what had been said to Moses. God's word and his works, if viewed together, will be found mutually to set each other forth. If we make conscience of our duty, we need not question the performance of the promise. But the believer must never put off his armour, or expect lasting peace, till he closes his eyes in death; nay, as his strength and usefulness increase, he may expect more heavy trials; yet the Lord will not permit any enemies to assault the believer till he has prepared him for the battle. Christ Jesus ever lives to plead for his people, and their faith shall not fail, however Satan may be permitted to assault them. And however tedious, sharp, and difficult the believer's warfare, his patience in tribulation may be encouraged by the joyfulness of hope; for he will, ere long, rest from sin and from sorrow in the Canaan above.

So Joshua took the whole land,.... Of Canaan, the far greater and better part of it, all before described; all that he went against, he failed not in any of his attempts; no place stood out against him that he besieged or summoned, all yielded to him: according to all that the Lord said unto Moses: in Deuteronomy 11:23, and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel, according to their divisions by their tribes; as is after related in this book: and the land rested from war; there were no combinations of any of the dispersed Canaanites, or insurrections made by them, nor any annoyance given to Israel by the Philistines, who inhabited five principal cities, with what belonged to them; nor did Joshua attempt anything more in a warlike manner: and so it became a land of rest, as the heavenly Canaan will be to the spiritual Israel and church of God, after their militant state is ended, in which they now are; being engaged with many spiritual enemies, the Canaanites that are in the land, but then their warfare will be ended.

Joshua 11:23 . So Joshua took the whole land — Which either the Canaanites or the Anakims possessed; that is, subdued it, so that none rose up against him, though many places were not yet in the possession of the Israelites. According to all that the Lord said unto Moses — See Deuteronomy 31:7-8 . God had promised to drive out the nations before them: and now he had fulfilled his promise. Our successes and enjoyments are then doubly comfortable when we see them flowing to us from God’s faithfulness to his promise. This is according to what the Lord hath said — Just as our obedience is the more acceptable when it has an eye to the precept. And if we make conscience of our duty, we need not question the performance of the promise. And the land rested from war — None of the lords of the Philistines, nor any others, presumed to give them any disturbance, so that they now became “peaceable possessors of that fine land of promise, and thought only how to divide it among them, as we shall see in chap. 13. Here begins the seventh year, reckoning from their first seed-time, after the passage over Jordan; the first sabbatical year celebrated by them after Joshua had brought them into rest; that rest which is a type of the eternal rest, which the great Joshua of the new covenant prepares for his people in heaven, Hebrews 4:8-9 . &c. From this same epocha we are to reckon the jubilees.” — Dodd. See on Leviticus 25:8-10 .

23 . And the land rested from war ] But this does not denote a permanent cessation. It rather implies that the Israelites no longer needed to war unitedly against the Canaanites. There was yet much land to be possessed, but the time had arrived for the occupation of the country by the different tribes, and the completion of the work of conquest was now to be left to the separate action of each.

23. Joshua took the whole land—The battle of the take of Merom was to the north what the battle of Beth-horon was to the south; more briefly told and less complete in its consequences; but still the decisive conflict by which the whole northern region of Canaan fell into the hands of Israel [Stanley].

Verse 23. - Joshua took the whole land. The word must not be pressed to mean that every Canaanitish stronghold was razed or appropriated. The word כֹל , as has been before remarked, has a very loose signification in Hebrew. What is meant is simply this. Joshua had established an unquestioned military preponderance in Palestine. He had broken down all resistance; but before he completed his conquests to their full extent, he had to provide for the peaceable settlement of the tribes in the territory he had seized. The complete extermination of the Canaanites formed no part of his commission or his plan ( Deuteronomy 7:22 ; cf. Exodus 23:29, 30 ). To have effected it would have been to throw the land out of cultivation, and to expose its possessors to the usual inconveniences of depopulated districts. Therefore it was Joshua's policy to leave the Canaanites to be extirpated by degrees, and to encourage the Israelites to cultivate the arts both of war and of peace; to nourish a martial spirit by remembering that numerous and active enemies still dwelt in their midst, while yet they were not neglectful of the importance of a settled and civilised, an agricultural and pastoral life. See also Judges 3:1, 2 . This purpose was defeated, not only by the usual effects of civilisation upon hardy or savage tribes, but also by the Israelites becoming addicted to the pleasant but enfeebling vices of the races they had supplanted.

We see in the Israelitish history the best exemplification of St. Paul's theory that the "law worketh wrath," although it is "holy, just, and good." The excellence of the moral precepts delivered by Moses did but serve to manifest more clearly the inherent depravity of our nature ( Romans 3:20 ; Romans 5:20 ; Romans 7:7, 8 ), and its need of a Saviour, who should render obedience possible by the gift of regeneration, and the infusion of His own Spirit. According to their divisions. Literally, their divisions by lot , the word being derived from the same root as the word Halak in ver. 7, because a smooth stone was usually employed in casting lots. Hence it came to mean any authoritative division or distribution, as the courses of the Levites ( 1 Chronicles 23:6 ), the classification for purposes of enlistment ( 1 Chronicles 27:1 ) and the like. And the land rested from war. That is to say, the Canaanites were so thoroughly cowed and dispirited that they dared offer no further resistance to the Israelites in their task of portioning out the land. They were quite contented to be allowed to live in peace in such of their cities which remained, and had no disposition to court an overthrow such as took place at the battles of Gibeon and Merom, with its inevitable results of the absolute extermination, not only of every one who took up arms, but of every human being in the city to which they belonged.

In Joshua 11:21 , Joshua 11:22 , the destruction of the Anakites upon the mountains of Judah and Israel is introduced in a supplementary form, which completes the history of the subjugation and extermination of the Canaanites in the south of the land ( Joshua 10 ). This supplement is not to be regarded either as a fragment interpolated by a different hand, or as a passage borrowed from another source. On the contrary, the author himself thought it necessary, having special regard to Numbers 13:28 , Numbers 13:31 ., to mention expressly that Joshua also rooted out from their settlements the sons of Anak, whom the spies in the time of Moses had described as terrible giants, and drove them into the Philistine cities of Gaza, Bath, and Ashdod. "At that time" points back to the "long time," mentioned in Joshua 11:18 , during which Joshua was making war upon the Canaanites. The words "cut off," etc., are explained correctly by Clericus: "Those who fell into his hands he slew, the rest he put to flight, though, as we learn from Joshua 15:14 , they afterwards returned." (On the Anakim, see at Numbers 13:22 .) They had their principal settlement upon the mountains in Hebron (el Khulil, see Joshua 10:3 ), Debir (see at Joshua 10:38 ), and Anab.