The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max
them. But when the children of Israel set forth from Gilgal, they came on the third day to their cities. Then Joshua called them and said: Why have ye deceived us and said, we are far from you. Be ye now accursed, and may ye never cease to be servants, and drawers of water, and hewers of wood for the house of my God. Thus he did to them, and saved them from the hand of the children of Israel that they slew them not.
Adoni-zedec, king of Jerusalem, heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and her king, and to Ai and her king, and that Gibeon had made peace with Joshua. He sent to Hoham, king of Hebron; and to Piram, king of Jarmuth; and to Japhia, king of Lachish; and to Debir, king of Eglon, and they gathered themselves and went forth, five kings of the Amorites, and encamped against Gibeon. Then Joshua set forth from Gilgal, and all the men of war with him. And Jehovah caused the Amorites to flee before the children of Israel, and Joshua cried: Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon waned not, till the people took vengeance on their enemies, and before this was no day like it, nor after it. And the five kings fled and hid themselves in the cave at Makkedah; and when it was told to Joshua, that the kings were hidden there, he said: Roll great stones before the cave, and set men there to watch it. But do ye halt not, but pursue your enemies, and smite the rear guard, and let them not come into the cities. And Israel accomplished the slaughter, and turned back to the camp at Makkedah. And Joshua caused the five kings to come forth out of the cave, and called to the leaders of his warriors and said: Come forward and set your feet on the necks of these kings. And when this had been done, Joshua smote the kings, and hanged them on five trees, and they hung on the trees till evening. Then Joshua commanded to take them down, and they cast them into the cave, and laid great stones on the mouth of the cave till this day.
Then Joshua took Makkedah, and Libnah, and Lachish, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and let no fugitive escape in Makkedah, Libnah, and Lachish; and did to the kings of Makkedah and Libnah as he had done to the king of Jericho. Horam, king of Gezer, went out to help Lachish, but Joshua defeated him and went from Lachish against Eglon, and from Hebron against Debir; and he set apart Eglon, and Hebron, and Debir, all the souls that were therein, and smote the kings of Hebron and Debir with the edge of the sword, and returned to the camp at Gilgal.
But Jabin, king of Hazor, gathered together the kings of Madon, Shimron, and Achshaph, and the kings of the north, who dwell towards the midnight, on the mountain and in the plain, and they encamped a great nation as the sands on the shore of the sea in multitude, with chariots and horses on Lake Merom. Then Joshua with all his men of war fell upon them suddenly, and smote them, and pursued them as far as Sidon, and to the valley of Mizpeh, and lamed their horses, and burned their chariots with fire. Then he took Hazor, the chief city of all these kingdoms, and smote their king with the sword, and all the souls that were therein; and all the booty of these cities, and all the cattle, the Israelites took for spoil. For a long time Joshua made war with all these kings, and he expelled the Anakites from the mountains of Hebron, from Debir and Anab, from the mountain of Judah and the mountain of Israel; with their cities he destroyed them. And there was no city which surrendered peacefully to the Hebrews except that of the Hivites of Gibeon.
Joshua was old and stricken in years, and Jehovah said to him: Divide this land among the nine tribes and the half-tribe of Manasseh. And Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun, and the chiefs of the tribes of the children of Israel divided the land by lot. And the lot of the children of Judah was in the south, as far as the wilderness of Sin and the brook of Egypt, and in the east as far as the Dead Sea and to the end of Jordan, and in the north the border was Gilgal and the valley of Ben Hinnom, and Beth Shemesh, and the western border was the Great Sea. And the lot came forth for the children of Joseph, and their borders on the south ran from the water of Jericho over toward Bethhoron, and from Bethhoron toward the sea. The land toward the south fell to Ephraim, and the land toward the north to Manasseh. And the whole community of the children of Israel were gathered together at Shiloh, and there they set up the holy tent, and Joshua spake to the seven tribes, whose possessions were not yet allotted: Choose three men out of each tribe to write down the land, for I will cast lots for you here at Shiloh before Jehovah. And so the men went and wrote down the land according to the cities, in seven parts, and Joshua cast lots at Shiloh, and divided the land to the children of Israel according to their divisions. But Jehovah commanded Joshua that he should speak to the children of Israel, and tell them to fix the cities of refuge, to which the homicide was to fly who slew a man in misadventure, in order that the elders of the city might receive him, and if the avenger pursued him, they were not to deliver him into his hand till he had been brought before the people. And they consecrated Kadesh, and Shechem, and Hebron, and Bezer, and Ramoth in Gilead, and Golan. And the chiefs of the tribe of the Levites went to Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun, and asked for cities to dwell in, and land for their cattle; and the Israelites gave them forty-eight cities and their land for their possession. And Joshua gathered the elders of Israel, and his leaders and judges, and gave law and justice at Shechem; and he died one hundred and ten years old, and they buried him in the land of his possession at Timnath-serah, on the mountain of Israel; and the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem, on the piece of the field which Jacob bought (pp. 411, 418), and the children of Joseph kept the place for a possession. And Eleazar, the son of Aaron, died, and they buried him in Gibeah, the city of Phinehas, his son, which was given to him on the mountain of Ephraim.
The conception of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel, and of the arrangement of law, as it existed in complete perfection in later times, dominates the two texts of the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua, no less than the prophetic revision of these texts (p. 386), and could not but exercise an influence on the narrative of the conquest of Canaan, i.e., the fulfilment of the prophecies. Even in the first text it is the direct command of Jehovah which leads Joshua to set out towards the Jordan; and it is the priestly ideas of this text which come out strongly in the feast of the passover and the circumcision before the conquest of Jericho. The miraculous passage of the Jordan is a repetition of the passage through the reed-sea. This narrative belongs, as it seems, to the second text, and is further amplified by the reviser.[668] The overthrow of the walls of Jericho, when the priests had blown their trumpets and the people raised the war-cry, is briefly narrated in the first text; here also the details are the work of the reviser. If the walls of Jericho were mounted at the first onset, tradition might well recount the story that they were broken down before the war-cry of Israel; and from this the farther account could be framed. The law of the priests ordained: "All that is devoted (cherem), what every man dedicates to Jehovah from all that is his, from men, or cattle, or the field of his possession, that cannot be bought or redeemed. All that is devoted is holy to Jehovah."[669] Joshua had devoted Jericho and all that was in the city to Jehovah. But one of the nation had taken something for himself from this devoted spoil. The punishment comes upon the whole people, and the first attempt on Ai is a failure. The more complete is the victory when that transgressor and his house is stoned to death. By this narrative the observance of the command was deeply impressed on all. When it was found long after the settlement in Canaan what pernicious results for life, morals, and religious worship followed from the fact that portions of the old population were allowed to remain among them, it appeared to the priestly mind that the due regulation and purity of the Hebrew nature required the extinction of the earlier inhabitants, and even before they took possession of Canaan, Jehovah must have given the command to make neither covenant nor marriage with the Canaanites, to destroy their altars and images, and to extirpate the nation.[670] Without doubt, at the time of the conquest a considerable number of the old population were not only driven out, but were put to death; and it is certain that when cities were taken by storm their inhabitants "from man to woman, from child to old man," were slain with the edge of the sword; but a systematic extirpation did not take place. Of the four cities of the Hivites—Gibeon, Chephirah, Beeroth, and Kirjath-jearim—Gibeon,