Then said Joshua, Open the mouth of the cave, and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave.
Joshua 10:22 belongs to Joshua's greatest work, begun when he was about eighty years of age, when he led Israel through the Jordan, divided the land for them, and set them in a fair way to conquer all their foes and find the promised rest. It stands in the chapter's account of battles and the conquest of Canaan and several petty kingdoms under Joshua. That conquest was made easier because Palestine was already in a greatly disturbed state and some of its people were identified as Khabiri, probably a Babylonian name for Hebrews. The people of those kingdoms were not spared, because allowing them to continue would have let them propagate the same corrupt seed.
Joshua's name means saviour, even as Jesus does in Greek, and he was one of the two of his generation who wholly followed the Lord during the forty years of temptation and the time of the wilderness. In the victory over the five kings the Captain of Jehovah's hosts was with him, as the invisible army of God leveled the walls when Jericho fell. Conquest came by trusting God, while failure to trust brought defeat as at Ai, and continued unfaithfulness after Jericho delayed full possession of the land into backsliding, repeated captivity, and years lived in adversity instead of prosperity.
In this chapter soul means a person, a whole person, not a separate man within a man, so where it speaks of souls destroyed or slain in the cities it means the people were slain, not that disembodied souls were killed. In this verse the five kings brought out of the cave are persons. In the original language those said to have their souls slain are described as lifeless souls, showing that a soul can be lifeless and can be killed. As Adam became a living soul when the breath of life entered him, he was a lifeless soul before, and the slain in Joshua are lifeless souls in the same sense.
Joshua 10:22 belongs to Joshua's greatest work, begun when he was about eighty years of age, when he led Israel through the Jordan, divided the land for them, and set them in a fair way to conquer all their foes and find the promised rest. It stands in the chapter's account of battles and the conquest of Canaan and several petty kingdoms under Joshua. That conquest was made easier because Palestine was already in a greatly disturbed state and some of its people were identified as Khabiri, probably a Babylonian name for Hebrews. The people of those kingdoms were not spared, because allowing them to continue would have let them propagate the same corrupt seed.
Joshua's name means saviour, even as Jesus does in Greek, and he was one of the two of his generation who wholly followed the Lord during the forty years of temptation and the time of the wilderness. In the victory over the five kings the Captain of Jehovah's hosts was with him, as the invisible army of God leveled the walls when Jericho fell. Conquest came by trusting God, while failure to trust brought defeat as at Ai, and continued unfaithfulness after Jericho delayed full possession of the land into backsliding, repeated captivity, and years lived in adversity instead of prosperity.
In this chapter soul means a person, a whole person, not a separate man within a man, so where it speaks of souls destroyed or slain in the cities it means the people were slain, not that disembodied souls were killed. In this verse the five kings brought out of the cave are persons. In the original language those said to have their souls slain are described as lifeless souls, showing that a soul can be lifeless and can be killed. As Adam became a living soul when the breath of life entered him, he was a lifeless soul before, and the slain in Joshua are lifeless souls in the same sense.