Joshua 11:23

The Anakim were a people who lived in Canaan before Israel came, the descendants of Anak, and they were known for their great height and strength. The Hebrew name in verse 22, ʻĂnâqîy, means an Anakite. Moses mentions them as the measure of size when he says that another people, the Emim, were counted as giants like the Anakim (Deuteronomy 2:10–11).

Israel had met them once before. When the twelve spies came back from the land, they reported that they had seen the sons of Anak and that they felt like grasshoppers beside them (Numbers 13:33). That report filled the people with fear, and a whole generation died in the wilderness. Later Moses told the next generation plainly that they would face this great and tall people, and that the LORD himself would go over before them and drive out nations greater than they were (Deuteronomy 9:2–3).

So when Joshua cuts off the Anakim, the very people who had stopped Israel at the border are removed from the land. The victory is told last among the battles of the conquest, and it shows that the LORD can overcome the adversary his people dread most.

“At that time” places this campaign with the wars just described, the defeat of the southern kings in Joshua 10 and of the northern kings under Jabin of Hazor in Joshua 11:1–15. Joshua himself leads it, and he goes after the Anakim in the mountains, where they were strongest and hardest to reach.

Three towns are named. Hebron was formerly called Kiriath-Arba, Debir was formerly Kiriath-Sepher, and Anab stood with them in the southern hill country that would belong to Judah. These were the centres of Anakite power. From there the verse widens to “all the mountains of Judah” and “all the mountains of Israel”, and the words “all the mountains” are said twice so that we understand how wide the sweep was. The hill country of the whole land was cleared of them.

Two verbs describe what Joshua did. To “cut off” is kârath, a verb of cutting that here means removing an enemy completely from a place. To “destroy utterly” is châram, to put under the ban, to devote something to destruction. Both verbs stand together in the command Moses had given about the nations of Canaan. In Deuteronomy 7:2 Israel is told to destroy them utterly, with châram, and to make no covenant with them, where “make” is kârath, since a covenant was “cut”. Joshua is doing what that command required, and his obedience is the reason this verse reads as it does.

The verse speaks of the Anakim as broken as a people and removed from their strongholds. The next verse says where some survived, and the book later tells how Caleb asked for the hill country of Hebron, where Anakim were, and drove them out with the LORD’s help (Joshua 14:12–15).

Verse 22 states the victory and then its limit. In “the land of the children of Israel” none of the Anakim were left. The word for land, ʼerets, can mean the whole earth or one country, and here it means the territory Israel now held, the land God had promised to Abraham’s descendants.

The exception is three cities: Gaza, Gath and Ashdod. These were three of the five chief cities of the Philistines, strong fortified places on the coastal plain, away from the hill country where Joshua had fought. The name Gath is the same Hebrew word as the one for a wine-press. Israel had subdued the mountains, and the coast remained outside its control at this stage, so Anakim survived there.

Scripture records this honestly, and it matters for what comes later. The Philistines became Israel’s great enemy through the days of the judges and the first kings, and the most famous giant in the Bible, Goliath, came from Gath (1 Samuel 17:4). The book of Judges shows the same unfinished work in Judah’s own territory (Judges 1:19). The victory God gave under Joshua was real and great, and the work of possessing the land went on after him, calling for continued faith and obedience from the generations that followed.

Verse 23 closes the first half of the book, the story of the invasion and conquest, and opens the way to the dividing of the land that begins in Joshua 13. The verb “took” is lâqach, the ordinary word for taking or receiving. Canaan in those days was a land of many separate city-states, each with its own king, and Joshua had broken their armies and their alliances one after another until no organised power was left to stand against Israel.

The centre of the verse is the phrase “according to all that the LORD said unto Moses”. Everything Joshua accomplished was the keeping of an old promise. The LORD had told Abraham, “Unto thy seed will I give this land” (Genesis 12:7), he had bound himself to it by covenant (Genesis 15:18), and through Moses he had told Israel to go in and possess what he had sworn to their fathers (Deuteronomy 1:8). Moses had also told Joshua why he could go without fear: “Ye shall not fear them: for the LORD your God he shall fight for you” (Deuteronomy 3:22). The land was taken because God fought for his people, and what he says he brings to pass.

Joshua then “gave it for an inheritance unto Israel”. The word is nachălâh, an inheritance, a portion that stays in a family and passes from one generation to the next. In Israel a family’s land was bound up with its tribe and its name, and it was held as a grant from God, who owned the land and had the right to give it. Israel received Canaan as a gift of grace.

It was given “according to their divisions by their tribes”, in an orderly way, each tribe receiving its own share. The tribes had been numbered for this purpose in Numbers 26, and the chapters that follow in Joshua set out the boundaries one by one. With this clause the book turns from the sword to the measuring line, from conquest to settlement.

The last sentence is the shortest: “And the land rested from war.” The verb shâqaṭ means to be quiet, to be still, to be at rest. After years of marching and fighting, the land was quiet. Israel had wandered in the wilderness and then fought its way across Canaan, and now the people could settle, work the ground and build their life as a nation in the place God had given them.

Joshua led Israel against giants and brought the people into their inheritance and into rest. In all three he is a picture of Jesus, who leads his people against enemies far stronger than the Anakim: sin, death and the devil. By his cross Jesus disarmed principalities and powers and triumphed over them openly (Colossians 2:15). He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and through his own death he destroyed him that had the power of death and delivered those who were in bondage through fear of it (Hebrews 2:14–15).

Joshua’s victory covered one land and left Anakim on the coast. Christ’s victory is complete. God so loved the world that he gave his Son, so that whoever believes in him has everlasting life (John 3:16), and for those who are in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1).

The Anakim who remained in the Philistine cities picture something true of the Christian life as well. The war is won, and we still wrestle against spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12) and against the sin that lingers in us. We do so with a sure hope, because he who began a good work in us will finish it (Philippians 1:6), and Christ will return as the victorious King to complete his reign (Revelation 19:11–16).

The inheritance and the rest are fulfilled in him too. In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, and the Holy Spirit is the pledge of it until we possess it in full (Ephesians 1:11–14). And the quiet of verse 23 is answered by his own words: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

Forty years before, the sight of the Anakim had convinced Israel that God’s promise could fail. These verses record that the promise held and the giants fell. God’s faithfulness is measured here against the very thing his people were most afraid of, and that is a comfort when a sin, a fear or a circumstance stands before us as large as the sons of Anak stood before the spies. The LORD who fought for Israel fights for his people still.

The passage is honest about what remained as well. Anakim lived on in three cities, and a giant came out of Gath generations later. What is left unconquered in a believer’s life has a way of returning, which is why the thoroughness of Joshua’s obedience matters and why holiness is the work of a whole lifetime.

And the passage ends in quiet. The land that God promised was given, each tribe had its portion, and the fighting stopped. God gives his people an inheritance they did not earn and a rest that follows the battle, and both are held for us in Christ, where they are secure.