Six Cities

40] So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded.
A mass slaughter of every human being not only in the six cities, but in the entire land. The chief concern was the moral and spiritual breakdown. To describe the conditions that prevailed as abominations and abominable practices. A thorough and radical cleansing process was necessary if complete disaster, including loss of the land, was to be avoided.
The villagers outside the cities were an oppressed majority. Nothing is said about them in the conquest narrative. It is the villagers who would, like Rahab and the Gibeonites, rise up against their overlords to join the Yahwist revolutionary movement.
As the land had vomited out the previous rulers with their oppressive structures the 9 cities and the 9 kings because of the terrible evil they had done, so it would again vomit out its Israelite rulers and people in Lev. 18:24-30. Every person who lead or participate in the Baal cult, especially the priest functioning in the high places of Samaria, who were in fact killed by King Josiah in the course of his reform in 2 Kgs. 23:19-20. This seems to be not to a single battle, nor even the six battles, but the entire first half of the Joshua story, which is related to Deut. 1:30. G-d’s warfare against the powers of evil, for the victory of righteousness and the establishment of peace.
Important sites in this chapter are of the five coalition cities, Jerusalem and Hebron are well known today, controlling the north-south road along the hill country of Judah. Jarmuth (Khirbet Yarmuk) and Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir) guard roads leading from the coastual plain along the Valley of Elah to Bethlehem and another valley road to Hebron. Azekah, (Tell ex-Zakariyeh) Makkedah (not yet identified) and Libnah (Tell Bornat) are west and south of Jarmuth, while Debir (Tell Rabud), the largest and most important city south of Hebron, lies about 8.5 miles away.
The Nature of the Text
The stereotyped expressions already referred to in the descriptions of the conquest of each of the 6 cities indicate a symbolic, theological kind of writing, rather than factual reporting.
The lack of any report of casualties on the Israelite side, or survivors on the Amorite side, suggests that we are dealing with teaching material rather than a careful report of the actual battles.
The conquest of the six cities in a single campaign lasting only a few days gives the impression of condensation, and possibly rearrangement of original events.
Reference to all Israel reflect a view that the whole of the Israelite tribal league as it later became, was working together in the conquest of this part of the land. The Joshua group probably included only a part of what later became all Israel. This suggests an idealized rather than a sober factual account.
Both Caleb and his nephew Othniel were Kenizzites, a group which later became part of Judah, entered the territory later assigned to Judah from the south, and settled around Arad in (14:6). This seems to suggest that the conquest of the Negeb, claimed by the Narrator for Joshua, was a much more complicated process than is assumed in the final summary statement in v. 40.
The Cities
Lachish is the only one of the nine cities whose excavated ruins shows a destruction occurring in the early years of the Iron Age. The site was abandoned for more than 100 years after its destruction. Eight of the nine cities mentioned in this chapter are included in the list of cities belonging to Judah. The 9th century B.E. that all of the territory of Judah had been brought under Israelite control by the Ephraimite Joshua. The summary statement in v. 40-41 seems to be particularly relevant for Josiah and for later generations who would return to the land of Judah. Kadesh-barnea is not relevant to the Joshua story, but very relevant to Josiah’s national renewal movement. G-d fought for Israel is the entire story which began in Egypt and ended in the land of Canaan. G-d fights for Israel as part of His battle against the powers of death, and for salvation in the whole world (Ps. 74:12). The nine cities and nine kings have their counterparts in all the rulers of the earth, their nations, nation by nation who come under G-d’s judgment (Jer. 25:30-32; and Isa. 24:1-23). The massing of the five kings against Gibeon is reflected in the gathering of all the forces of evil into a single army against G-d (Ezek. 38-39). The death of Josiah led to the apparent failure of the religious reform and national renewal movement, and the end of the monarchy.
Humble Suffering Servant:
This exilic Joshua is blind (42:16, 19), oppressed (v. 22), despised by the powerful (49:7), walking in darkness (50:10). It is this blind, stumbling Joshua that G-d chooses (42:1) to make G-d’s salvation real to fellow sufferers (49:6), and to implant and establish G-d’s justice among them (42:1-4). In Col. 2:15 states the sword from his mouth will smite the nations. The sword issuing from his mouth may be an intentional reversal of the Hebrew idiom used here in Joshua, to smite with the edge (mouth) of the sword.