Joshua 11:9

Joshua’s victories up to this point had been in the south and centre of the land. Now Jabin king of Hazor has called together the kings of the north, and they have come out with a vast army and a great many horses and chariots to fight Israel at the waters of Merom (Joshua 11:1–5). Hazor was the leading city of the region, and Scripture calls it “the head of all those kingdoms” (Joshua 11:10).

Chariots were the strongest weapon of the day. They carried archers and spearmen into battle at speed, much as armoured vehicles do in modern war, and the great powers of the time, Egypt and the Hittites among them, relied on them, as did the cities of Canaan, especially on open ground. Israel’s army was made up of men on foot, so a force like this one was a frightening thing to face.

Into that fear the LORD speaks first. “Be not afraid because of them” uses the verb yârêʼ, to fear or dread, and it is a command God often gives to the leaders he has chosen, usually joined to a promise of his presence and help. Joshua had heard it at the very start of his work: “Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:9). Joshua’s courage was to rest on God’s presence and God’s word, and that is why the command comes with a reason.

The reason is a promise fixed to the hour: “for to morrow about this time will I deliver them up all slain before Israel.” God names the day of a battle still to be fought and speaks of the enemy as already slain. The verb behind “deliver them up” is nâthan, the ordinary word for giving, which can also mean to put or set. The LORD is the giver, and Israel receives the victory from his hand. The same verb returns in verse 8, “the LORD delivered them into the hand of Israel,” where the promise is kept.

God had Israel destroy the enemy’s horses and chariots so that his people would trust him alone for every victory still to come. The order is given in verse 6 before the battle and carried out in verse 9 after it.

To hough a horse is to hamstring it, cutting the tendons of the hind legs so that it is lame for good and useless in war. The Hebrew verb is ʻâqar, whose wider meaning is to pluck up or root out, and used of animals it means this act of laming. To burn is sâraph, the plain word for setting something on fire, and chariots built of wood and leather would burn to ash. Between the two, the horses and chariots were finished for good, beyond any repair by Israel or recovery by the enemy.

To a soldier this was a costly order. Horses were valuable, and the chariots were the most advanced equipment of the age, the very things Israel lacked. If Israel had kept them, its people could easily have begun to credit their victories to their own strength and equipment and to forget the LORD who gave them. David’s psalm says it plainly: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7). Another psalm says, “There is no king saved by the multitude of an host,” and “An horse is a vain thing for safety” (Psalm 33:16–17). And the LORD’s word through Zechariah is, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6).

The order at Merom belongs to one steady teaching across Scripture. The law Moses had already given looked ahead to Israel’s kings and forbade them to gather many horses (Deuteronomy 17:16). Isaiah later pronounced woe on those who went down to Egypt for help and put their trust in its horses and chariots (Isaiah 31:1).

The order also kept Israel distinct from the nations around it. Their warfare rested on horses and chariots, and taking up their weapons and their ways could have drawn Israel toward their gods as well. By destroying the very things that made those nations strong, Israel showed that its strength lay in its covenant with the LORD, a holy nation set apart for him.

Joshua acted on God’s word at once. He “came, and all the people of war with him,” the whole fighting force moving together under its leader, and fell on the kings by the waters of Merom “suddenly.” His name, Yᵉhôwshûwaʻ, means “the LORD is salvation,” and this battle bears it out, because the LORD saves Israel here through the man he appointed.

The word pithʼôwm means suddenly or unexpectedly, and in a battle it describes a surprise attack. The northern kings had come out with horses and chariots in great number (Joshua 11:4), and chariots need open ground and time to form up. Striking without warning would have kept the enemy from forming battle lines, ordering their great numbers and bringing their chariots to bear. The ground by the water may also have been marshy or uneven, which would have hindered the chariots against men fighting on foot at close quarters. “They fell upon them” uses nâphal, the ordinary verb for falling, here in its sense of falling on an enemy in attack.

The waters of Merom are generally identified with Lake Hula, or with a spring or marshy ground near it, in the upper Jordan Valley. Water and open space made it a natural gathering place for a large army, and it lay close to Hazor.

Israel had always confessed that the LORD fights for his people. At the Red Sea Moses told them, “The LORD shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace” (Exodus 14:14). The law promised that the LORD goes with his people to fight for them against their enemies and to save them (Deuteronomy 20:4). The southern campaign closed with the words “because the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel” (Joshua 10:42). David could say, “For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall” (Psalm 18:29). Joshua’s swift march was his obedience, and the strength behind it was God’s.

Verse 8 opens by naming who won the battle: “And the LORD delivered them into the hand of Israel.” The promise of verse 6 is kept to the letter, with the same verb, nâthan, to give. Then Israel did its part. The verb for “smote” is nâkâh, the ordinary word for striking or smiting, and “smote them” comes twice in this verse, once for the battle and once for the end of the pursuit.

The pursuit ran a long way. Israel chased the kings to “great Zidon,” the great city on the Mediterranean coast far to the northwest, to Misrephothmaim, a place on the coast probably north of Acco toward Tyre and Sidon, and to “the valley of Mizpeh eastward,” which may lie near Mount Hermon or in the Beqaa Valley. The beaten army fled in more than one direction, and Israel followed every part of it until the coalition was broken beyond regrouping.

“Until they left them none remaining” uses shâʼar, to remain or be left over, and the phrase turns on the noun sârîyd, a survivor, one who escapes or is left after a defeat. The verb on its own means only to be left, and the completeness of the defeat comes from the words “none remaining.” They speak of the armies that came out against Israel, and they mean that this whole coalition was destroyed and its power in the north was ended.

A later psalm looks back on these years and gives God the credit: “they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance” (Psalm 44:3).

Verse 9 repeats the command of verse 6 as a record of what was done: “he houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with fire.” The command came from the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, the covenant name of God, the self-existent God who acts in the history of his people, and so the order rested on his authority, whatever a soldier’s reckoning might have said. Joshua carried it out exactly, though horses were worth a great deal and could have served Israel in war, in travel and on the farm. He let every one of them go.

This is the pattern of the whole campaign. As the account goes on to say of Joshua, “he left nothing undone of all that the LORD commanded Moses” (Joshua 11:10–15). The land itself was the LORD’s promise to Israel’s fathers, renewed to Joshua when he took command (Joshua 1:2–6), and each step of obedience brought Israel further into it.

Joshua’s name is the Hebrew form of the name Jesus, and the victory at Merom points ahead to a greater one. Christ overcame sin, death and the devil through his death and resurrection: “having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). The “Be not afraid” spoken to Joshua is matched by Jesus’ word to his disciples: “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Christ won his victory in the way the burning of the chariots points to, through humility and obedience. He came to Jerusalem riding on a donkey, as Zechariah foretold (Zechariah 9:9). He told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5–8). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1–2).

The battle his people fight is of another kind as well. Paul writes, “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12), and “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God” (2 Corinthians 10:4). John adds, “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4). Joshua gave Israel rest in the land, and Hebrews says that a fuller rest remains for the people of God (Hebrews 4:8–10). At the end Christ rides out on a white horse, Faithful and True, who judges and makes war in righteousness (Revelation 19:11–16).

These verses show us a God who speaks to fear before the battle begins. He tells Joshua the hour of the victory and then brings it about exactly as he said. He is the one who gives the victory, and he wants his people to know it, which is why he had Israel destroy the very weapons that could have taken the credit.

Our own horses and chariots may be money, influence, skill or a sense of being in control, and the God who had Israel give up its trust in theirs still calls his people to lean on him alone. Joshua’s obedience cost him something, and it was the road into the land God had promised. In Christ, the greater Joshua, the decisive battle has already been won, and his word to his people is the word the LORD spoke to Joshua: “Be not afraid.”